Christmas nutcracker

Our Woods to Food Christmas Gift Poem

by Ann Koenig

I didn't get a llama for Christmas

To munch on our lawn like I dreamed

Not sure quite what I was thinking

Apparently not logic, it seemed.

But, under the tree what could there be

But a spring loaded device of new

With a lever and cams it's cooler than lambs

This nutcracker will surely do.

So, all you walnuts beware

And, hickories you'd better hide, also

'Cause I don't think there's a nut in the world

This baby can't crack with gusto.

And to all the family and friends

who from us recieved a copy

of our new favorite gift to give 

A signed Cooking Wild in Missouri

Let me extend the offer

If you're ever driving past

To bring your whole nuts to our house

Our nutcracker's built to last.

Papassinos (Sardinian raisin and nut shortbread cookies), page 131

It is so the Christmas season. We've made a gingerbread house and actual cookies not from the frigerator section at the grocery store! That tells you right there that something special must be in the air. One of the Christmas cookies we made was papassinos from Cooking Wild in Missouri.

Really, as I think about it though, this story is about mammas, and specifically my mom.

Sara Hill with KOMU asked to film a story about the 'woods to food' project our family is doing. She wanted to film Fred and the boys hunting and then me cooking from the book. We set up Thursday to do this since the boys would be home from school. Anyway, because 1) I rarely seem to get done everything I picture getting done and 2) we're trying not to stress this season, Thursday morning came and I hadn't got the house straightened up too much.

My mom and dad were up to watch the kids for the day. And, while I went to work in the morning for a bit, Mom saw to it that things got tiddied up. Then, because the Sara Hill was coming at noon and the cookies I wanted to make needed to chill for four hours, Mom made the dough for me in the morning. Then, she trotted to the basement to help us catch up on laundary, helped my older son on his piano playing, and worked with the boys to clean their rooms - all before 11:00 a.m.

Then, when the film crew got here, she stepped outside with her dog, stepping away from the attention of the TV folks.

And, as it turns out, Sara and company filmed us making another recipe, but didn't stay long enough to film us baking the cookies anyway. They left to film Fred and the boys rabbit hunting and had enough footage by then that they didn't need to come back to see the finished product of what we were making.

Thanks, Mom, for supporting us on our project and our family! And, thanks to all the mommas this holiday season who are helping their adult daughters make "ends meet" with all the big and little things you do to keep our worlds turning in the right direction. Life is so much with better with you.

Cookies were good, by the way.

Merry Christmas, Mom, and to all a good night.

Venison ragu, page 24

I’ve been looking forward to making this recipe since before I got my deer. Ann’s been doing nearly all of the cooking, and I wanted to take a turn. This looked like a good one, and one that I could handle.

Ann was in the kitchen with me when I started. As she read down the ingredient list, she said, “Oh, that’s just gross.” She was referring to the six tablespoons of butter we were supposed use to sauté the onions.

I tried to sway her with math. “It’s a big recipe,” I said. “If you divide the butter out by the number of servings, it amounts to less butter than you’d normally use to eat a slice or two of bread.”

“Yes,” she replied, “ but this butter is being used to fry pork sausage.”

She had a point. Although I normally precisely follow all recipes, figuring the author of the recipe knows far more than I, I relented and cut back to three table spoons of butter. I put in the 1/3 cup of oil before we had a chance to discuss it.

The excess continued throughout the recipe. Once I had about three pounds of meat (venison and sausage) simmering, I added 3 ½ cups of milk to it, and then let it boil away. That was followed by adding three cups of dry white wine. I was all out of the cheap stuff, so I had to pop the cork on a bottle of Yellowtail that I had paid $5.85 for. This recipe was getting to be an investment. And in case you haven’t done the math, three cups of wine pretty much equals one bottle. There’s hardly enough left for a glass. I did substitute a big pile of tomatoes that we had left over from the garden for one of the 28-ounce can of tomatoes. These were tomatoes that we had harvested green right before a freeze, and I had finally got them ripe, so I didn’t want to let them go bad.

 We asked over company since it was such a big recipe. Our guests included three adult friends, and two kids that are Henry’s age.

All of the kids were polite enough to not say anything negative about the dish, but none of them asked for seconds. This surprised me, because they all like deer burger, and love pork sausage.

The adults liked the dish – okay. I don’t think anyone was crazy about it. Ragu Bolognese is a very different dish than spaghetti sauce, be it homemade or from a jar. It’s not just that it’s drier; I found myself longing for some oregano or basil, and not really needing the nutmeg. In order to appreciate the dish, I think you just need to get spaghetti sauce out of your head and treat this as something different altogether.

 A couple days later, Ann warmed up some of the leftover meat for lunch, and had it with some kale and good bread, and just loved it. This might be a dish that has some staying power after all.

Jim Low's Mallard Satay with Thai peanut dipping sauce, page 61

We've now had wild duck cassoulet (which one could call bits of duck hidden in a bean and sausage casserole) and duck rumaki (which one could call soaked duck wrapped in much bacon).

What we haven't had was straight up duck. You know, an actual piece of meat, naked, staring up at you, with no bacon, sausage or whatever to hide behind. And, I was beginning to think there was a reason for that. A reason like "plain old wild duck is too nasty to eat alone", for instance.

I had one more package of duck in the freezer from Fred's hunting expedition and a couple more recipes to choose from. I bought ingredients for mallard stew but got out of the mood for another tomato based wet dinner, so I shifted gear to the duck satay recipe.

BUT, satay is basically meat of a stick, like fair food only with a bit more spice. And, that stick wasn't going to do much hiding for the duck meat. How was straight up duck going to be?

I used the last four ducks for this recipe since that's what it calls for, feeling guilty that I might waste quite a bit. The meat is marinaded in wine, soy sauce, ginger, garlic and lime, then skewered and grilled. OK, in the recipe book the cool people grill over charcoal with soaked sassafras wood on top. Whatever. I didn't get to that.

Then, there's a Thai peanut dipping sauce to make. I loves me some good Thai food and was excited about the hopes of making a good peanut sauce.

Anyhow, we kept checking the duck satay with a flashlight on the grill. I didn't want to overcook and ruin the meat (hey, let's at least give the recipe a chance) but the duck wasn't browning much it didn't seem like. I guess that's because it's so lean. We made a guess that they were done and brought them in.

Fast forward to the end of the meal. Bamboo skewers are littering the table. Four are by my plate. About half a dozen are strewn around each of the boys and Fred's plates. The platter is bare.

So, this recipe proves it. Duck on a stick with no bacon or anything else to cover with . . . can be yummy.  

George Seek's Duck Rumaki, page 60

This is the ultimate guy food. It involves hunting, fire, wooden sticks . . . even bacon, for goodness sakes. First, hunt the duck. Then soak daylights out of the stips of meat in soy sauce and teriaki. Then, wrap the duck around a water chestnut, a strip of bacon around that, and spear a couple times with a toothpick. Add fire, and via la, you've got a tasty snack. And, let me tall you, fellas, compliments to the chef on these tasty babies. You know how to cook a game bird. This is an often used recipe to cook duck and a fine way to get the job done. When I told our friend we'd be having duck at dinner, she said it had been years since she'd had duck and was looking forward to juicy, rich meat.  Whoa, we are not talking about the same duck here. Finnie was thinking of domestic duck, the duck I think of hanging in Chinese meat markets. As I said in an earlier post, wild duck is vastly different with a dark, livery taste. Soy sauce and bacon are a great way to help the meat along. So, thanks, boys, for the excellent recipe.

Craig's Picante Pecans, page 141



Spice mix for the pecans

I made an appetizery dinner this week for some folks and used a couple recipes out of the book. It was quite fun because a couple of the people we had over are from Australia. I love the idea of serving wild foods to them. If I were in Australia I would be thrilled with having some home cooked dishes from wild foods-talk about getting to know a place!

One of the dishes I made was spicy pecans. The nuts are from the orchard here in Columbia. A duck hunter told Fred that he knows of several wild pecan trees growing at Overton Bottoms Conservation Area which is west of Columbia just on the other side of the Missouri River. It would be interesting to pick our own next year.

I was leary of usig lavender buds, which is one of the herbs in the recipe. I think of lavender as incense and therefore it is not appetizing. But, by this time I'd have to be dense to not trust the cookbook and at least give it a try. 

I've made candied pecans once before by winging it and they turned out a mess. At the time I was guessing the crunchy foamy coating on candied pecans must come from whipped egg whites, so I foamed up some, dipped the pecans in them, and baked them with some other ingredients. They turned out soggy and much like chicken food.

The spicy pecan recipe from the book, however, used butter, maple syrup and spices and turned out  rich and meaty and flavorful. I'd recommend them for sure. I served the left over nuts at brunch on the weekend and that was nice, too.

Venison Shephard's Pie, pages 32-33

Here's the spice list in the shephard's pie recipe:

coriander

cumin

fenugreek

cardamom

mustard seeds

fennel

cloves
cayenne
tumeric
cinnamon

garlic

Um, that doesn't sound like my mother's shephard's pie. Actually, I don't remember my mom ever making shephard's pie. But, you get the point. The top is sweet potatoes mostly, with a small portion white and a little bit of maple syrup added.

The meat portion is venison, onions, cream, egg, peas, corn and the spices.

I actually thought this was going to be a bust dinner. I've made mashed sweet potatoes before too wet, and thought this dish was going to be bland (before I  looked at the spice list) and wet. To my pleasant surprise, we all loved it. We stopped the boys at thirds because we had just shy of half left and if stretched, that could do for another meal. There's a good mom for you: "No worries, kids, we'll just fill up on brownies at dessert." "Oh, come on, Mom. Can we at least have toast? We're still hungry."

Toast was made. They ate it while wrestling around on the kitchen floor. Boys. And, there you have it. A mom sliding on her parenting care and growing, silly boys . . . and shephard's pie.

Moroccan spiced braised venison, page 44

Prunes and lemons and cardamom, oh, my. This Moroccan stew was going to have some zip to it, it looked like. Venison round steak is used in the recipe, so we used the first venison from Fred's opening day deer. Actually, I'd previously made sloppy Joes with some of the burger, but that wasn't out of this cookbook. Nope, I'm wrong. We used Fred's deer in the venison in a pumpkin dish, too.
The recipe suggested cooking the round steak 2-3 hours. After that amount of cooking, the round steak could still have used some more softening up, but was reasonable enough in texture to be still tasty. We just had to help Oliver cut up his meat! I often do that with beef, too, by cooking stew meat about 2/3'sof the amount of time it would take to actually make it tender. Usually, I start late enough in the day we have to go ahead and eat it that way.
Anyhow, we served the stew with couscous, green chutney and sauted green beans, 'cause you know what? I really have no idea what veggies are eaten in Morocco and the green beans had served their time in the fridge long enough.

The next day I had left overs as a sandwich at lunch and you know what it reminded me of? A meat loaf sandwich. Funny, eh? But, the tomato in the sauce plus onions plus sweetness from the prunes made for a nice sauce surrounding the steaks that was meatloafesque. Venison's red meat is very satisfying yet the leanness of it helps one not feel greasy the way beef can. Let me tell you, it was a good, warm lunch on a cold, cloudy day.

How exotic and delightful  is Morocco, any way? Apparently, their food is tasty. The name is fun to say. And, this past weekend Fred and I went on a Christmas home tour in Columbia . One of the families whose home we toured collected mammoth sized (not literally speaking here) geodes and fossils from Morocco. One of the geodes was about six inches shorter than me and filled with purple crystals. And, they had this slab of a fossil with ocean plants looking like they froze in time as they waved in the . . . well, waves.  The slab was about the size of our car hood. I'm now picturing Morocco as a place where life-size geodes and fossils litter the ground and wafts of spicy food fill the air. Sounds fun to me.

Pancakes with maple syrup, apples and pecans, pages 138-139

How good are you at making pancakes? Do you have a recipe or a mix that works well for you? I've tried lots of mixes and recipes and have found a few that are good, but it seems like the ones I get at restuarants for breakfast are consistantly better.

When I make my own I prefer to use some oats, or whole wheat, or something to give the pancakes something besides fluff. This pancake ingredient list is pretty extensive: buttermilk, yogurt, white and whole wheat flours, cormeal, turbinado suger, etc. And, to top the pancakes, you make a sauce of sauted apples with butter and maple syrup. And, toasted pecans sprinkled on top are the wild ingredient. My maple syrup comes from Canada, I think, but if you are cool enough to have Missouri maple syrup that would be a second wild ingredient.   Hungry, yet? We served the pancakes with our own bacon and Fred's excellent coffee.

I thought the recipe excellent. The batter is thick and I should have cooked them with a lower heat because I was tending to get the outside too brown before I could flip them. But, that's my fault, not the recipes, eh! A double batch made one big breakfast for the four of us plus enough batter for a more regular school day breakfast. The pancakes are indeed soft in the middle as the book indicates, while also being hearty enough to not make you feel gross after you have from a simple starch spike many pancake recipes cause.

I like weekend breakfasts. I like not having a time schedule biting at the tail end of your meal, keeping you tense. I like public radio in the morning, and Fred's good coffee. I like making a wowser breakfast for the boys, and slipping through lunch time without anyone wanting to eat more than a piece of fruit at about 2 pm to tide them over until dinner. I like muffins and waffles and omelets and fresh squeezed juice and going out to eat, and lattes and newspapers and conversation. I heart weekend breakfasts.

Lacy Spice Wafers, page 133

This is one of a couple recipes in the book that don't have anything wild in them, but are in the book anyway because they go with a wild dish. The lacy spice wafers are to accompany the black walnut gelato, only I didn't get them made on the same night.

Oh my stars, this is DEFINITELY A RECIPE TO TRY! Do you hear me?! I mean every capital letter in that statement. Get out your book, (if you don't have a copy yet, it's worth it for this recipe alone, I'm not exaggerating) open it to page 133, make these quick wafers, and thank Bernadette, Cooking Wild in Missouri's author, for bringing you a little bit of heaven.

I've never made a wafer before but had a sneaky suspicion they were going to be tasty. The batter is made in a saucepan, poored into puddles on a cbokie sheet, and baked until bubbly. Then, they are scooped off the tray and can be formed into shapes as they cool and crisp up (in the photo above I'm drapping them over a rolling pin to form a rounded shape). They go oh so nicely with ice cream and I imagine custard or perhaps pudding, also.

We served them to some friends for dessert and both kids and adults went for them, for sure. 

Venison in a Pumpkin, page 42 - 43

Ann has been doing a fantastic job of knocking out these Cooking Wild in Missouri recipes, much to my eating pleasure. But it was about time I took a turn in the kitchen. And I had just the recipe in mind that I wanted to do.
This story really starts with the Columbia Farmers’ Market, and one of my favorite things: a deal. We were shopping for pumpkins two days before Halloween, not bad for us. There were plenty of big, beautiful pumpkins at the farmers’ market, priced at $4, or three for $10. Each of my two boys wanted his own, so then for only $2 more I could buy a fantastic, locally grown pumpkin. I couldn’t pass that up. I let Oliver do the picking, and he always goes for big, and with some help we got the pumpkins to the car.
Later that day I helped the boys carve them up, with the fairly traditional scariest faces they could muster. Each boy did one, and although they encouraged me to do my own, I didn’t take time to do so. Which left us with one pumpkin post-Halloween.
I had spotted the recipe in the book for venison stew in a pumpkin, but I was a little worried. We didn’t have any venison left from last season, and this deer season wasn’t here yet. How long would the pumpkin keep? Then I read in the book that the author had kept her’s from the fall until she used in February. That encouraged me - surely I’d have a deer before then.
Opening day of firearms deer season was successful for me, and the day after Thanksgiving I picked up the venison from my Dad, who had picked up his and mine from the processer at Linn. Now I was ready to go.
So even though we had a big crowd at our house for Thanksgiving, and for dinner the day after Thanksgiving, I didn’t really want to keep my venison pumpkin to myself. My friend and neighbor Robert has been following the blog, so I invited him and his family, who boys are friends with my boys, over for dinner Sunday night.
It’s a pretty hardy recipe, that starts with two pounds of venison stew meat, but with Robert’s family plus mine I would be feeding 10, so hearty is good. I started off browning the stew meat on the stove top, then added the rest of the ingredients, except the tomato. I then transferred the pot to the woodstove. I had a raging fire going and it was boiling harder than I wanted it to on the woodstove, so I set a metal trivet between the pot and the stove, then it simmered just right.
This gave me a couple hours to go back to a painting project in our bathroom, and then it was back to the kitchen. I cut the top of the pumpkin and pulled out the innards like we were going to be carving another jack o lantern, and then I transferred the stew from the pot to the pumpkin.
I’ve made soup in a pumpkin before, but it was mushroom soup in a smaller pumpkin, and I didn’t bake it as long. This would be different.
The book says to put the top back on the pumpkin, but my pumpkin was too big so this wasn’t possible. The book also says to put the pumkin in a baking dish, but again, my pumpkin was too big, The best I could do was put a cookie sheet under it. It baked for two hours, and toward the end of that time I put the top in the oven beside it, so the color change would be similar.
When it came time to remove the pumpkin, I couldn’t pick it up by the cookie sheet, because it was too flimsy and the pumpkin was too heavy. So I got out our big cutting board that we had just used for serving turkey and put it on the floor next to the oven. Then I kneeled down and prepared to lift the pumpkin from the oven. I advised Oliver to stand back.
Disaster! A rupture occurred in the bottom of the pumpkin! Stew was spewing on my oven door! I quickly placed the pumpkin on the cutting board.
Then nothing. Apparently it had just been a small fissure that occurred when I lifted the pumpkin. When I sit it down on the board the leaking stopped. Fortunately there is a little trough that goes around the cutting board, so it caught some of the spill. Quite a bit got on the oven door, and made it to the floor, but half a roll of paper towels later, Oliver and I had most of it cleaned up, and oven was ready for Ann to make dessert. The spilled stew made a mess, but in terms of real quantity we didn’t lose much, and still had a lot of leftovers.
We served the stew out of the pumpkin with no more leaks, but post dinner I noticed the pumpkin was starting to slump quite a bit. Two hours may be too much in a convection oven.
I like stews, and have made a lot of them, both by recipes and by winging it. This stew is superior to any that I’ve made before. Oddball ingredients like dried apricots really add to its complexity of flavors, and I think the key ingredient was the coconut. The stew wasn’t a favorite among the kids, but I think I’ll make it again, with or without a pumpkin.

Black walnut gelato, page 132-133

I've tackled the first of several gelato recipes in the book finally. This weekend we tried out the black walnut gelato. Here's the Cliff Notes version: blend to a paste the nuts, add to scalded milk, run through cheesecloth, cool, add sugar, maple syrup and yolks, heat, cool, freeze.
I tried to follow the directions to the letter but looking back I did omit the part where I was supposed to rub the black walnut skins off. And, I bet that was a crucial step.
The ice cream set up nicely and was very strongly flavored. It had a bitterness that I think was from the leaving the skins on.
It's the kind of ice cream that one doesn't want a cup or two of, but a nice scoop with a cookie on the side. Bernadette recommended serving this ice cream with spicy lace wafers and I wanted to, but ran out of time to make them.
I like making the gelato. It's a nice recipe to make if you have several hours before you are going to serve it and can let the ingredients heat and cool like they are supposed to. It's not that it's too time consuming. There just has to be enough time to let it cool a few times.
I remember once eating four black walnut ice cream cones at the Gasconade County Fair. At 25 cents per cone it was just too cheap and yummy to pass up. This gelato was different from that and all other black walnut ice cream I've had in that there were no pieces of nut, the nuts had all been strained out. The gelato is to black walnut ice cream like jelly is to jam, I guess. 
Lessons learned from this recipe, besides take the nut skins off--call it gelato or whatever, black walnuts in ice cream rocks!

Carlos and Tracey enjoying some black walnut gelato.

Holiday bow ties with sun dried tomatoes and toasted pecans, page 140

The day after Thanksgiving we had family and friends back over for dinner. What to serve 18 folks for an impromtu meal? Let's check the book. There was one nut pasta dish I hadn't made yet and I wanted to dive back into our Woods To Food project since furious house renovation/holiday prep was behind us. So I made holiday bow ties with pecans and sun-dried tomatoes. Yet again, I've been saving this recipe back a bit. Somehow I wasn't jumping at the idea of tomatoes and nuts combined. But, hey, I didn't have time to thaw meat and we had most of the ingredients in, so this vegetarian recipe it was.

The dish is pretty simple-olive oil and sun-dried tomatoes, hard cheeses, pecans, garlic and salt served with pasta.

Yowsers, it's a better dish than it sounds, at least it was for me. The toasted pecans were somewhat lost in the rest of the sauce but definitely added a feeling of robust, substaintialness to the pasta. There's a lot of garlic in the recipe. For 18 people I made a triple batch and think that came to 12 cloves.

It seemed like the dish was enjoyed by all, well all except my nephew who is allergic to nuts and frustratedly asked me, "Who planned this meal?" when he realized there were nuts in the salad and in dessert as well. Oops. He had to suffer through pasta with cheese and some old key lime ice cream we scavenged from the freezer, left because none of the rest of us were what you'd call crazy about it.

But, besides him the dish got rave reviews and I'd have to agree. It's one I'll want to make a mental note to make again for sure.

Thanksgiving

Did we make a bunch of wild food for Thanksgiving this year? Survey says: NO! The couple weeks before Thanksgiving were a frenzy of projects to bring to a close a remodeling project we were doing. And, honestly when we were elbow deep in wall paper removal, painting and picking out faucets and such, I was pretty proud to get Ramen noodles on the table. Cooking Wild . . . had to wait a bit. But, Wednesday evening at 5:30 pm the contracter left, we swept up dry wall dust and by 7:30 pm my sister and family were piling in for the holiday. Did I feel a little guilty when my asthmatic niece started weezing from the dust that was not cleaned up yet? Yes sirree.
Every year we have a large Thanksgiving meal with my immediate and extended family at our house. My job is to provide the venue, throw some sweet potatoes in the oven, and that's pretty much it. Everybody that comes brings their specialty dish so it's not too burdensome on any one of us. I did make my first repeat recipe out of the book this year for Thanksgiving, though. I made the pear pecan upside down gingerbread cake again, and yes it was well recieved.

Approved Methods

With the pressure off for deer season, I might try some hunting that is more challenging than my trusty Browning 30-.06. Maybe I’ll go for a second one during muzzle loader season. Or maybe I’ll give my Marlin Camp .45, or even a handgun, a try during antlerless season.

Permissible hunting methods cover a wide range of weaponry. Crossbows are OK, but only during firearms season, or for people with disabilities. Atlatls, which are basically handles used to chuck spears, are also OK. If you have to use an Atlatl to make your deer hunting challenging enough, either you’ve perfected the art of hunting, or there are way too many deer on your hunting grounds.

One method I won’t be using is a: “Air-powered gun, .40 caliber or larger, charged only from an external high compression power source (external hand pump, air tank, or air compressor).” (from the MDC website under approved methods.)

I’m a gun guy. I kind of love them. I used to subscribe to gun magazines. I’ve been to a lot of gun shows. I’m friends with several gun dealers. Yet, the only large caliber air-powered gun I’ve ever seen is the cattle gun used by the psychopath hit-man played Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men. I was no less surprised to see this as an approved deer hunting method than I would have been to see “Up to four extendable, mechanized arms not to exceed 200 feet in total length” listed as a method after having watched Spiderman 2.

A quick Internet search will turn up so high-powered air guns that are considerably more refined than cattle guns. They look like firearms, and are accurate at long ranges. I suppose that if I were forced into a duel, I would certainly choose one over an Atlatl.

  

Doe, a deer, a female deer...

Being out of venison and having multiple venison recipes in Cooking Wild in Missouri, I felt some pressure going into this deer season. I went to my parent’s farm, and took the season a little more seriously than usual.

Opening morning I was out before dawn, even though I was exhausted from checking in for duck hunting on four of the previous six mornings. It was a little chilly before sun-up, so it felt like deer season. And I experienced my usual opening morning routine of hearing shots ring out from distant hillsides just after first light, while I sit for a couple hours, seeing nothing but a skunk.

When I got chilled enough, I took a walk. I met up with my nephew Eric, and he gave me a ride back to my truck. On the way back, he looked to his side and noticed a deer running parallel to us, a couple hundred yards away. He stopped the Kawasaki Mule, and got out and put up his rifle, as did I. He ID’d it before I did. “Nope, it’s a small buck,” he said. I then had it in my scope, and I agreed. It was at least a four pointer, maybe a six, but not an eight.

Many counties in Missouri now have a four-point rule, including the county that I was hunting in. Any buck taken must have at least four points on one side. That rule saved this young buck’s life.

I took another walk later that morning, and jumped up a doe along a creek bank, but didn’t have a good shot at it. My father and brother were harvesting milo, at least they were doing that when they weren’t repairing the combine, and it seemed like they would be likely to run out a deer. I watched the first round, but it looked to me like it would be difficult to predict where the deer would run out, so I gave that up as a method. Good thing, too. They ran the field all day, finishing up with the lights on, and didn’t see a deer in it all day.

However, toward the end of the day, my father was waiting at the grain truck for my brother to fill the tank on the combine, and he decided to go sit in the woods and see if he might see a deer. He got out his gun, and started to walk to a spot by a tree, and three deer ran up to him. We’re pretty sure that they were the same deer that Ann and the boys had seen running away from the county road minutes earlier.  He fired one shot and got it. This was minutes after I left that same field, after having been hunting all day. Dad hunted approximately two minutes or less and had a deer. I heard his single shot from another part of the farm, where I sit and saw nothing.

But all was not lost. I followed my Dad’s advice and picked a spot on the edge of the field. Just after sundown, a big doe stepped out into the field and I got it. Dad had just finished field dressing his, so we hauled this one up the house and strung it up on the tractor, and I field dressed it, just before sitting down to a fantastic dinner that Ann made. Then my brother and I took both deer to a local processer that will butcher and package a deer for $65, a real bargain if you ask me, and we got to take two deer at once. In retrospect, it was good that I didn’t get one at first light, because I enjoyed the rest of my hunting. It was a good opening day.

Four P coffee cake with persimmons, pears, paw paws and Pecans, pgs 160-61

 I've been excited about making this coffee cake since I got the book in August. First, in late summer we got the paw paws and froze the pulp. Later in the fall, we picked persimmons. Next, we got pecans from an orchard in Columbia. And, twice now I've bought pears to soften for the recipe only to let them spoil before I could take the time to make the cake. Bother. But, now I think the stars are finally lining up and I'm ready to get this job done. As far as I know this is the recipe with the most wild ingredients in the book. Well, pears are certainly not native trees, but are hardy enough that you can often find old fruit-bearing pear trees around old home sites with buildings long rotten and sunk back to the earth. My pears, however, and are from ye old grocery store.

Once I made it, however, I was something just on the positive side of disappointed. My cake came out, well, certainly edible but not something anyone took seconds of. And I noticed my huband and I were the only ones going for it at breakfast the next morning, and we only took wee small pieces. I wonder what  went wrong? I loved the thought of the recipe, being 4 P and all, but I'd put the cake somewhere in the it's ok category, not the love it category. It was dupper dense and filling. I gave my mother-in-law a very large slice of the cake (we were visiting her when I made it) and then felt sorry for her after I had a bite and realized how filling it was. Have you ever tried to eat something way past being full? I remember someone serving homemade cheesecake to me in pieces the size of pie, like about a sixth of the cheesecake. It was killer. I was so full  but wanted to put it all down my gullet so the maker felt it was appreciated. It was pumpkin cheesecake. My, it's still so vivid in my memory. Anyway, I think that's the way Dorothy felt with the cake I made.

I toasted some slices for breakfast and thought that helped. Perhaps I didn't bake it enough. Perhaps the paw paw or permissons weren't the right consistancy and the baking powder just couldn't make the cake rise. Not sure. But, I do know that after I picked and depulped persimmons and paw paws, deshelled pecans, ripened and cut up pears, zested two oranges, juiced a lemon and whatever else the recipe called for, the cake should have turned out better than it did. I'd love to try someone elses attempt at this recipe. Personally, I'm now all out of paw paw, c'est la vie.

Zimmerschied, page 130

Made these German brown sugar cookies with black walnuts this week. The recipe calls for a whopping cup of black walnuts. Have you ever had black walnuts? They are the kind that grow in Missouri, not the English walnut with the smooth shell you see in stores during the holidays. English walnuts are what is used in most store-bought cookies that have walnuts. Black walnuts have a much more distinct flavor. In fact, if you have never had them, I would imagine a person would find them too potent on their first taste. But, once you acquire a taste for black walnuts, you become crazy for their unique taste. They are so real, so Misssouri, so old-school American natural flavorful non-generic what you picked as a kid and what your grandparents and their grandparents ate - just right.

This recipe seemed old in a good way to me. Butter, brown sugar, vanilla, flour, backing soda, salt and nuts. That’s it. Sounds like something Laura Ingalls Wilder would have made.

And, sometimes simple ingredients can make for the most flavorful, interesting recipes. These cookies are crunchy and very, very tasty. I love them. Everyone did. I made them for my folks who were visiting and they were 100% crazy for them, too. We sat by the woodstove eating these cookies and feeling very treated and content.

Duck Deception

“If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck.” – Emil Mazey, secretary-treasurer of the United Auto Workers, 1946.

Every year, thousands of ducks follow the logic that the oft-quoted phrase implies, only to have their migration interrupted by a shotgun blast.

“Those weren’t really ducks at all,” they may realize in their final moments. 

The decoys my hunting party employed while duck hunting ranged from classic to sophisticated. At times we would have out about 30 plastic mallards, both hens and drakes, painted with correct colors, with their heads sometimes turned in different directions. We might also have out a cluster of about 10 teal.

Then there were the Mojos, which were decoys on a pole. They looked like landing mallard drakes. Their wings moved under power of a rechargeable battery. One ran intermittingly, the other was remote controlled.
We also used a battery operated swimming duck. It swam in a small circle around its anchor point out in the middle of the decoys. The non-swimming decoys could also be rigged with a jerk-line to create movement on still days, but we never had that problem.

For calls, Bill wore about half a dozen of them around his neck. He used them to speak to the ducks in a language that I didn’t understand. Apparently there’s more to it than just quacking away.

Columbia Cassoulet with smoked duck and pork, pages 56-57

How about I write about this recipe before I finish making it? Fred has hunted these awesome ducks and I’m excited about rewarding him with a good duck dinner. I thought he’d like to show off his duck hunting prowess to his brother and Dad, who have never duck hunted before, so I brought all the ingredients for the Cassoulet recipe down to Fred’s folks’ farm this weekend to make for him and his family  while Fred is deer hunting.

The recipe calls for smoked duck first off. I’ve never A. smoked anything (I promise, officer) nor B. cleaned or cooked duck. I am using the technique in the book for tea smoked duck. It’s interesting. You put a piece of tin foil  in a skillet, top it with a mix of uncooked rice, brown sugar and dry tea leaves, top that with another piece of tin foil, cover the foil with duck pieces, top with a lid and put over medium heat. Will it work? Not sure if I’ll know one way or the tuther, but we’re giving in a try. Later this afternoon, I’ll cook the beans that have been soaking with  a bouquet garni (in other words herbs tied in cheese cloth pouch. Mine will be in a wash cloth we found in the rag box. Close enough?), add a bunch of other stuff like smoked sausage, tomato, carrots and the smoked duck, top with a bread crumb mixture and bake. That process takes about three hours. But, deer season is a great time to make such a dish when Fred is busy hunting.

The only duck I'd had the first about 35 years of my life was the crisy duck you get at a Chinese restuarant. I have to say, there is a bigger difference between domestic and wild duck than any other domestic verses wild animal I know. Domestic duck is a white meat and fatty. Wild duck is a dark meat that is often described as tasting like beef liver. There's really no resemplence whatsoever between the two that I can tell. The wild duck worked well in this recipe because its flavors were used to enchance the whole cassolet. I'm not sure about slices of wild duck on a salad. That may be too real for my blood.

OK. We've dined on the cassolet now. I've got two things to say. One, it was a lot of work and two, it was good. The dish made more than seven of us could eat. Eight or nine would be fine to serve it to. I'd make it again, and would consider making with with chicken or turkey for the duck if I didn't have any duck on hand. Indeed, I think Fred enjoyed trying the duck he had hunted in such a pretty dinner and sharing it with his family. That was satisfying. And it helped that my mother-in-law mentioned about five times to everyone that I'd worked a long time to make the dish!

It's a good time to get Cooking Wild in Missouri

I just bought three more copies of Cooking Wild in Missouri to give as gifts. They are 20% off in November and December making them $12. There's a link at the bottom of our blog if you want to learn more about the book. And, as a reminder, since I sound like a cheap salesman, no we do not get any funds from this book at all. Not even close. I just love it, we're having fun working our way through it and want to share what it's like to provide for the recipes. 

I am excited that we now have some meat ready for the project. It's been nuts and fruits for the last few weeks and I'm quite ready for some meat dishes. I'll let Fred tell you about the particulars of getting the meat since that's his specialty. Right now the man needs some sleep. He's all hunted out.

Fred Unlimited

Confident from taking four ducks on Tuesday, and thinking there might be more on Thursday due to colder weather in the north, I thought I might have a chance of reaching my limit of six, but it was not to be.

My third day of duck hunting was a different day, in that it wasn’t raining, but was considerably colder. I was still with my mainstay mentor Bill, but Joe didn’t make it to this draw (his first miss of the season), and Gene joined us, as he had hoped to do on opening day. Some waterfowl hunters are fairly easy to identify on sight, sometimes even when their driving down the road. I’m not just talking about the "Ducks Unlimited" duck-head silhouette you see as a window sticker. My partner Gene painted his entire truck camouflage. And if that doesn’t give him away, there’s three brass ducks mounted to his hood.

My 9 spot in the reservation system was still a good number, but we weren’t able to get into the same pool that we did on Tuesday, so I was in another new area, with different terrain. Gene and I walked through a picked cornfield to get to our spot, and Bill took his boat. We set up in a thick patch of cattails in about 10 inches of water, at the edge of an open pool.
As we headed out to the site there were still stars in the sky. The nearly full moon was setting in the west just as they sky was starting to turn pink in the east. Eagle Bluffs is very picturesque this time of day.
Overall there seemed to be fewer ducks in the air than Tuesday, at least where we were. But we did have some come in to our decoys. My shooting didn’t improve much, but I was successful in getting two, and Gene got five, and Bill got three in five shots. I’m hoping no one kept track of how many shots I fired to get two.
My introduction to waterfowl hunting was a great experience. Being completely ignorant, coupled with the fact that my hunting partners averaged 20 years my senior, made me feel rather youthful. I transformed from a worn-out, middle aged Dad to a bright eyed kid eager to learn.

When I was in college, I wrote a report and did a presentation about Eagle Bluffs and wetlands management for a Rural Sociology class. In true undergraduate-learning fashion, I never actual went to Eagle Bluffs during my research for this report, even though it was only about 15 miles away. I have been out there a few times to bike ride on the service roads, and a couple times with the kids to show them ducks or see an eagle. I now have a new respect for what this close-to-home area has to offer.

Waterfowl hunters seem to see people as either waterfowl hunters or not. It’s different than say, rabbit hunting, where maybe you do it occasionally but don’t really consider being a "rabbit hunter" part of your identity. I think this is because waterfowl hunting requires enough of a level of knowledge; skill and preparation to a degree that if you’re probably not going to dabble in it occasionally, you’re either in or you’re out.

That being said, I do really hope to get a chance to go again this season. But as for this weekend, the ducks are safe as far as I’m concerned. There are venison recipes yet to be made, and this is opening weekend of firearms deer season.

Ducks Part Deux

That 3:45 a.m. alarm came early Tuesday morning, but I actually woke up before the alarm clock. I checked in at Eagle Bluffs, and found a new member of our hunting party. He cautioned me that I might not want to get started on water fowl hunting, as it could become a life-consuming experience. I told him I noticed that Joe’s super-cab truck had just enough room for the driver, because it was full of gear, and Bill had his truck loaded down with as well.
"My whole garage is full of waterfowl hunting gear," Norb admitted.
Changing from a 14 to a 9 position in line gave us a many more options, and Bill and Joe carefully considered our strategy, basing their selection primarily on kill numbers from the previous day’s hunt. We soon made our choice, and were out the door.
It was raining again, but now I was wearing a borrowed pair of waders that didn’t leak, and that made all the difference. The previous day we had been set up in the water’s edge, only a few yards from the levee. This day we walked a couple of hundred yards out into a flooded field, and set up at the edge of a pool of water that was clear of vegetation.
Again, there was a lot of shooting right around first light, while we were still setting up. After a while things quieted down. "Well , the first hour’s over," Bill commented as the morning was finally quiet. "Now’s when the real duck hunting starts," Norb said.
To these veteran duck hunters, the hunting process was more important, and more fun, than simply trying to kill a lot of ducks. They weren’t really interested it trying to pop anything that buzzed by during first light while they were still organizing their strategy for the day. They wanted to bring ducks to them, through a combined use of decoys, calls and camouflage. That’s what duck hunting is all about.
I was nervous about shooting at the wrong time, possibly scaring away ducks that might be coming closer, but I think I started to get a feel for it, trying to stay on the conservative side and thinking it was better to watch one go by and not shoot than to scare off some that were coming in.
Not that I wasn’t doing my share of shooting. I was surprised how hard they were to hit. I can hit quail, and a duck is a lot bigger. But I think ducks are also faster, farther away, and require more shot to fall.
Going into waterfowl hunting, it seemed you needed to know a lot. My first day, it seemed you had to have a lot of gear. Day two, it became obvious that there was a lot of skill involved at several different points.
It takes skill to spot the ducks. The veterans in my hunting party saw the ducks coming in before me about every time. It takes skill to know when to shoot, not too soon or too late. Even when you get that down, it takes skill to hit one, that might be going 60 - 70 miles per hour. And when you do hit one and it splashes down in the water, it takes skill to find it.
When I got my first duck, a Green Wing Teal, I received a hearty round of congratulations from everyone in my hunting party. I was officially part of the club. My second and third ducks I got at the same time, a Ring Neck drake and hen. They were flying very close together, clearly they were in love. Not a bad way to go, really, for a duck. They never knew what hit them. My fourth was a Gadwall that was in a group that buzzed right over the top of us. He was close when I shot him, and he nearly fell on us. That one was pretty easy to find.
The rain tappered off early Tuesday morning, and although the sun never came out, Eagle Bluffs is still a beautiful place to see the day wake up, with fog rising off of Perche Creek on one side and the Missouri River on the other. The bluffs had a smokey fog hanging over them all morning, and when we weren't seeing ducks we were watching pelicans, gulls and even an eagle.
I think I had my four by about 9 a.m. I was beginning to think I might reach my limit of six, but the rest of my morning wasn't as productive, although my hunting partners did get some later in the morning. Bill got a mallard hen in about the last five minutes of the day.
Tomorrow I go back. And I've got another number 9.

Lovely Weather for a Duck

The mood at the Quick Draw at 4:30 a.m. on Monday morning seemed more somber than Saturday’s opening day. This may be because some of those present had already shown up for two mornings and hadn’t drawn an opportunity to hunt yet. It might have been the rainy weather. Or maybe by day three, people were starting to get tired. Maybe it was all three things combined. People were still optimistic - you had to be optimistic to be there - but not quite as exuberant as two days prior.
I was holding number 14, which meant my party was guaranteed a hunt, but our remaining choices of sites was going to be pretty limited this far down on the list. But my mentor Bill said he’s seen some strange things happen, and thought we might end up with a good chance of getting into some ducks.
It was raining pretty hard when we went out at 5 a.m. Bill took the boat around to meet us, and Joe and I took a garden cart around to a rendezvous point. A side note: Of all the hunts I’ve been on, the split up and meet at point x later only works as planned about one percent of the time.
This morning it did work, more or less. At least we were close enough to Bill to figure out where he was, and then we got together. I helped Bill place the decoys, and immediately learned I had paid exactly $2.49 cents too much for my $2.50 waders on the garage sale, because they weren’t worth two cents. Both legs leaked - a lot. Fortunately it was probably about 55 degrees, a fluke for a November morning, so I just dealt with being filled with water all morning.
We got set up and took our seats. During the first hour or so Eagle Bluffs sounds a little like a war zone, but with a lot more quacking. But none of those eruptions of gunfire were coming from my hunting party. Bill and Joe thought we were doing what we could with what we were given, and weren’t complaining.
"This is a lot better than having to get back in your car and go home after the draw," Joe said. "Hmm," I thought. "I’m glad he told me that, because I kind of like my home, and I wasn’t so sure I still felt as lucky about drawing three hunts this week."
As I sat in my water-filled waders, a vaguely recalled being surprised at the temperature in which hypothermia can set in when you're soaked in water. I'd heard it on a news story about swimming in the ocean. Wasn't it something like 50 degrees, maybe even 60? These are the things you think about when you're not seeing ducks. 
Although I must admit, even though I left the calling up to my experienced partners, time went by quickly. I can grow pretty impatient deer hunting, and never stay in one spot for seven hours like we did on this duck hunt.
We ended the day without anyone in our party ever firing a shot, and about as wet as I would be if I had jumped in the water head-first. When I returned home I put everything in the dryer except my shotgun (it wouldn't fit), and gave it a good drying and oiling. The next day I had a 9.

Persimmon Bundt Cakes with maple bourbon glaze, pages 166-167




Oliver (Thing 1) and his cousin Molly on Halloween

  Well, the persimmons we picked a few weeks ago that were mostly not ripe--they were harder to get ripe than I thought. We froze and thawed them twice on the theory that frosts are what cause persimmons to ripen. That actually didn't work. The tannic aspect of the unripe persimmons was still going strong. We ended up setting them outside for about a week which worked pretty well.  Only the persimmons got a bit dry with all the abuse we were giving them. I ran them through the Foley food mill anyway and got about seven cups of pulp out of the deal. Counting it up, I think we need 11 cups of pulp for all the recipes in the book. My mom sent up up a couple cups of pulp she still had in the freezer from last year, so we are getting close. Persimmons are long gone off the trees by now, though.

My first persimmon recipe I made was for a party to celebrate my neice and son's recent accomplishments in school. They are in the same class and found out this week that they qualified for a special program at school they were really wanting to get into go. So, my cousin made a great seafood dinner and I brought a persimmon bundt cake for dessert. The cake is heavily spiced with cinnamon, ginger, cloves, allspice and has golden raisins and black walnuts in it. The glaze is made with maple syrup and bourbon. So there are two or potentially three wild ingredients in the cake: persimmons, black walnuts we picked from Fred's farm, and  maple syrup (if you could tap maple trees. Ours was store bought). Also, the eggs were from out backyard chickens.

We finished up the cake this morning for breakfast dessert. Cake and coffee-ooo, la la. I think Henry, our 10 year old, was the most infatuated about the cake. He thought it might be the best cake he'd ever had. We all thought it was very tasty, however, and I would definitely make it again.

Quick Draw

Having previously only associated the term "Quick Draw" with gunsligners of the old west, I was anxious to get into the Quick Draw system for waterfowl hunting on Eagle Bluffs. I soon found that, like many unfamiliar things, the draw system sounds complicated when you read about it, but when you put yourself into the process, it's really pretty straightforward.
And I won! I'm putting in for Eagle Bluffs Consevervation Area, only about 20 minutes from my home. I applied to hunt the first three days of season (Saturday through Monday), and was randomly selected as number 14 for Monday. After those days were drawn, I applied for Tuesday through Thursday, and was selected as number 9 for both Tuesday and Thursday. I was told you only have about a 2 percent chance of being drawn on the Quick Draw, so for me to be drawn three times in the first week is beyond lucky.
On Saturday, opening morning, I reported to Eagle Bluffs for the 5:15 a.m. draw. My mentor, Bill Ward, introduced me to the two other people in our hunting party. This was a dream team of mentors, with over 150 years of duck hunting experience between the four of us (counting my zero years).
Since none of us had a quick draw number to hunt in the limited number of spots on Saturday morning, we each had a chance to draw for the "poor line" and still get a chance to hunt. Since my luck had been running hot, I drawed all four numbers for the group. But here my luck ran out. I probably had close to a 50-50 shot (I'm guessing) of pulling a low enough number to get in, but I didn't do it. One of my partners just shrugged and said, "Well, I guess I'll go deer hunting." They all were in to come back the next day and try for the poor line again, but since I had three hunts guaranteed the next week, I decided to stay home Sunday to catch up on on jobs around the house, and sleep, and wait until Monday to go out. Bill assured me that he would be there everyday, ready to go.
The duck report on Monday morning was about 7,000 birds, only a fraction of last year's 21,000, but much better than the 1,800 that had been there only a few days before. Apparently how many ducks are present is mostly dependent on the weather, and since they are migrating, the weather in other places is just as relatvant as the weather here.
I'm excited about what this next week holds. More than the prospect of bringing home some ducks for the cookbook quest, I'm excited about learning what waterfowl hunting is all about.

Bonny's Sweet Potato-Pecan Drop Biscuits, page 136

Here's a tradition that my momma started that I tend to do, too. I remember Mom looking at our dinner in the summer and listing all the things that they had grown in the garden. On a good evening we might have tomatoes, cucumbers, beets, green beans, something on that order.  I like to do that, too, only I tend to list all the things that have been raised or made locally, not just from the garden. And, tonight was a pretty good night.

We made sweet potato pecan biscuits from the cook book to start with. The sweet potatoes we grew in an old pig lot close to the  chicken house at my in-laws farm this summer along with a bunch of white potatoes. The pecans were from the orchard next to Rockbridge Elementary School here it town. My cousin and I shelled enough for the recipe this afternoon. And, the honey in the biscuits is from the nice couple with the end stall at the Columbia Farmer's Market that sell honey ice cream. With the biscuits I made pork sausage from a pig Fred's sister had butchered and shared with us. And, then in the salad there was dill and spinach from the farmer's market and tomatoes from the plants just outiside the kitchen.

It's a bit late and I may be getting a tad out on a limb here but it strikes me that all the little thoughts and stories with the ingredients of a dinner are like Picasso's theory on art. If I have it right, Picasso thought when you saw something, you actually saw more than your eyes were taking in at that instant. Your imagination folds in what you know to be part of that image but cannot see. For instance, his paintings would depict a head in which you could see both eyes, the face and part of the back of the head because in your mind you might see only the front of the head but imagine the rest of it, too. Anyway, our connection to the things in our dinner are kind of like that. We are seeing only dinner at first, but then I encourporate the stories about growing the sweet potatoes, and sharing the pork, and picking the late season tomatoes, etc. and that all wraps up into our thoughts about the meal, too.

Whatever, eh??? Anyhow, to put it more generically, I enjoy knowing where our food comes from. And, the biscuits were gobbled up by us all.

Ducks?

I grew up in a place in rural Missouri where waterfowl hunting is a strange and foreign activity that no one understands, nor is particularly interested in, similar to Tai-Chi or football. If we saw a duck while boating down on the Gasconade River, we’d say, “Hey look, guys. There’s a duck!” and that’s about as far as it went.

But duck is on the menu, so duck I will pursue. The first thing to know about waterfowl hunting is that there is a lot you need to know. Consider this unedited excerpt from the waterfowl hunting procedure page on the Missouri Department of Conservation website:

“The Quick Draw System will allocate 80% of the available hunting spots; and the remaining 20% of the hunting spots will be allocated through the “poor line” drawing system. Hunters selected through the Quick Draw System are guaranteed an opportunity to go afield, but are not guaranteed the best locations. Hunters drawn through the Quick Draw system will know their “pill number” prior to arriving at the waterfowl area. Waiting list hunters trying their luck in the “poor line” drawing at Bob Brown, Columbia Bottom, Eagle Bluffs, Grand Pass, Marais Temps Clair, Otter Slough, and Ten Mile Pond Conservation Areas will be using the Every Member Draws (EMD) procedure…”

I would need a mentor. To establish this I once again tapped into Ann’s vast network of contacts, and was connected to Bill Ward. Apparently Bill is to ducks what Chris Morrow is to catfish (see my blog post from August 31, Big Fish on the Mighty Mississipp http://www.woodstofood.com/2011_08_01_archive.html.)

Bill told me what I need to bring (I’m glad he reminded me of the lead prohibition), and said he would see me at the draw on opening morning. The draw is at 5:15 a.m. on opening morning, and Bill said he always gets there at least an hour early. The time he actually gets up to go to the draw is irrelevant to his sleep.

“I can never sleep the night before opening day anyway; I’m too excited,” he said.

This excitement has not faded in Bill not missing a single duck season in the last 50 years. Fifty years! He’s not even 60 years old.

Ann’s Dad scored a pair of waders for me on a garage sale for $2.50, not bad considering new ones cost about $100 and go up (way up) from there. The boot size fits me perfectly, and the body size gives me ample room to pack something about the size of a couple bales of hay in my back pockets.

Considering that my previous waterfowl identification experience is limited to distinguishing between Donald and Daffy, I’m studying information about the fowl that I’m about to pursue. I have a fresh box of #3 steel shot (I didn’t know there was a #3 shot size), and I’m looking forward to what the next weekend has in store.