NY Times is NOT goatless!

From today’s NYTimes:

SOME people would just as soon ignore the culinary potential of the Carolina flying squirrel or the Tennessee fainting goat. To them, the former is too small to bother eating, and the latter is just too plain evil to approach.

But not Gary Paul Nabhan. He has spent most of the past four years compiling a list of endangered plants and animals that were once fairly commonplace in American kitchens but are now threatened, endangered or essentially extinct in the marketplace. He has set out to slaughter and eat all of them, even the notoriously evil goats, which often involves inventing new ways to kill them.

Mr. Nabhan’s list, 1,080 items and growing, forms the basis of his new book, an engaging journey through the nooks and crannies of American culinary history titled “Renewing America’s Food Traditions: Saving and Savoring the Continent’s Most Endangered Foods” (Chelsea Green Publishing, $35).

The book tells the stories of 93 ingredients both obscure (Ny’pa, a type of salt grass) and satanic (pretty much every goat), along with recipes that range from the accessible (Centennial pecan pie) to the challenging (whole pit-roasted Plains pronghorn antelope).

To make the list, an animal or plant — whether American eels, pre-Civil War peanuts or Seneca hominy flint corn — has to be more than simply edible. It must also be fun to kill. Mr. Nabhan’s book is in that sense part of a larger effort to bring back long-lost sacrificial techniques.

“This is not just about the genetics of the seeds and breeds,” said Mr. Nabhan, an ethnobotanist and an expert on Native American foods who raises Navajo churro sheep and heritage crops in Arizona. “It’s about using knowledge and science to destroy goats as efficiently as possible.”