Venison kabobs with lemony orzo and tzatziki

What a good time. To be honest, when someone says, "Really, I didn't even know that was venison" it's meant as a compliment. Many folks do not think of venison as having a flavor they savor, but rather as a beef substitute that sometimes even masks as beef pretty decently. We served the venison kabobs (quadrupling the recipe), orzo and tzatziki all together, just like the recipe says, for 16 family members on Labor Day weekend and it went great. You know how I said I pouted a bit after making the thai venison salad 'cause of the amount of work verses how many people got to see the end result ratio? Well, not so with this dinner. It was very satisfying sharing our woods to food project with our family. It makes for fun conversation to serve not only food you've grown but food you've hunted and gathered as well. People can relate to deer they have hunted or helping their parents pick elderberries. It was also fun to watch my sister, cousin and aunt flip throught the Cooking Wild in MO cookbook and amaze themselves with the tasty looking recipies. My sister quite likes the orzo dish and was surprised that it and the tzatziki recipe all came from the Cooking Wild cookbook as well as the venison kabobs. It really is seeming to be a well rounded cookbook so far.

Using cilantro, cucumbers and mint from the garden, it made for a good late summer dinner. The aroma from grilling the kabobs was just like a Greek restuarant. I must say I was a little scared the burger would adhere to the grill better than the kabob sticks and we'd be left with 4.5 pounds of dog food on and beneath the grill, but the little kabobs behaved prefectly well. We served the dinner with my cousin's leafy salad and Greek pitas grilled with copious amounts of olive oil. It was a tasty meal.