Mika Brzezinski's coming of age in a McLean farmhouse sure sounds quaint, but in the spring issue of Capitol File magazine the "Morning Joe" co-host explains why it wasn't always so peachy.

"We're hunters," she said of her family. (Her father is, of course, former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski). "There were so many times I'd come home from school with a friend and there would be a dead deer hanging from the tree, gutted."

But it gets worse, Brzezinski says, remembering a day when her mom brought a deer carcass into the house and left it there. "So she threw it in the tub and opened the window so the winter air could make the bathroom a mini refrigerator," Brzezinski recalled. "She went off to do whatever it was that distracted her, and she was going to get back to it, but not before a friend that I had brought home from school walked in to go to the bathroom and had the sight of her life -- I will never forget that," Brzezinski continued, noting that the friend never came back.

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In the interview, conducted by co-host Joe Scarborough, Brzezinski also recalled spilling caviar on the lap of Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping during a farmhouse dinner party, after the United States had opened relations with China. "I was so nervous that I immediately started wiping it off," Brzezinski confessed.

The television personality and best-selling author also talked about her next book, "Obsessed: The Fight Against America's (and my own) Food Addiction," out May 7. "It's really revealing and raw; I hope that it has a similar impact that 'Knowing Your Value' had ... but it's a riskier venture because I'm going to tell stories about my own personal struggles in this department," she explained. "And I think, while many women have the same issues, they will be disappointing to people."