Until recent decades, Americans ate "cheap, plentiful" squirrel meat, reports Grist. The first edition of The Joy of Cooking, published in 1931, was heavy on squirrel recipes. "It's hard to imagine more sustainable local game -- squirrels are abundant, far from endangered, and don't even require refrigeration the way that big game does," writes Heather Smith. "The standard rule of thumb is that one squirrel = enough meat for one dinner for one person. The squirrel is road food -- the kind of prey that fed cross-country hikers, in the days before MRE and freeze-dried lentils. Squirrel is like the drive-through cheeseburger of the forest -- albeit a cheeseburger that needs to be gutted first."
