The Locavore Christmas

By Lisa Gosselin, "The Locavore Christmas," November/December 2010

EatingWell's Lisa Gosselin reflects on small town holiday spirit.

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A month went by. The snow fell. My parents arrived from Connecticut. I’d moved on to Plan B (free-range local turkey) when I got the message on my answering machine. It was the day before Christmas.

“This is the game warden. I got a deer.” The message then went on: the warden would be out of town, but the deer was in a pickup truck, parked under his carport, and I was welcome to retrieve it.

Retrieve it? What was I going to do with a deer carcass? I hit “Delete message.”

That afternoon as I drove home from work it began to blizzard. As I passed the turnoff to the warden’s house, curiosity overcame me and I pulled up the long driveway. The pickup was there and I half expected to see antlers sticking out of the truck bed.

There was nothing. I looked inside the cab. Nothing.

Then, just as I was driving out, my headlights caught something shiny on the tailgate. There, nestled in the drifting snow, was a small white plastic bag. Inside, wrapped in butcher’s paper, were two beautifully trimmed tenderloins, and the warden’s card.

On the back, scrawled in pencil, the words “Merry Christmas.”

Lisa Gosselin is the editorial director of EatingWell.