Bread, soup, cookies on a cold day

When the wind is blowing cold from the NW and the snow is horizontal and the temperature is dropping it is a good day to bake bread and cook soup.

The bread is a hearty peasant style w/ white and whole wheat and rye flour and it is a many bean soup.

A venison roast is thawing and will rest in a marinade to be roasted tomorrow.

Cookies too. It is a good day to bake cookies. Chocolate chip w/ half whole wheat flour and hazelnuts.

Deer Tenderloins

If I would've thrown my steel thermos at the early buck 20 yds from my stand on opening morning and stunned him and then shot him, I would have gotten my buck. But I didn't, of course, and I didn't get him.

Others did, tho', and got does, and I just ate the best deer tenderloins I have ever eaten.

Onions cooked till translucent, mushrooms till soft, spread to the perimeter of the pan, and the 1/ 4 inch sliced tenderloins seasoned w/ salt, pepper, and garlic and sauteed to med rare, splashed w/ cognac, tossed, and finished w/ butter and served w/ a baguette and a cheap Pinot Noir( Mondavi or Sutter Home @ $6 or $7 a bottle ) can't be beat.

I will talk more of deer tenderloins tomorrow.

More Pre-eating - Cookies, this time

Cookies for the hunt.

Use the "vanishing oatmeal raisin cookie" recipe under the lid on the Quakers" Old Fashioned Oatmeal"lid, but add a cup of walnuts and a cup of dark chocolate chips. Use half whole wheat flour and replace sugar w/ honey and tablespoon or so of molasses to taste( it is ok to taste the cookie dough) if you want them really healthy and good tasting.

These cookies are like a meal in the woods/stand, as well as a real sweet treat. Stash enough for yourself so the other hunters don't short you. Of the many things I have learned while cooking on fishing and hunting trips is that your chums will not think of you while piling their plates full. Ya gotta keep enough for yourself. Some of those partners are bottomless when it comes to food and appetite.

The cookies will qualify as pre-eating too, because you will want to practise on a batch and then you will eat them. Start soon.

Pre- Eating for Deer Season

You know how "pre-fishing" before a fishing tournament makes sense and that scouting the woods and fields and fixing your deer stand before season and sighting in your rifle and stuff(pre-hunting) also makes sense, well then wouldn't it also make sense to pre-eat some deer season food before season?

Like scrambled eggs with chili and cheese on top and toast. Just had it and thought what a great breakfast or brunch on deer openers. Many of us plan on chili at camp anyways. This makes it a two-fer - another great chili meal that ain't just chili.

Pre-eat the last of your venison from last season too, and you'll be tuned up for this one.

Pre-fishing. Pre-hunting. Pre-eating. They all make sense.

On The Sunny Side of The Street

Wild Alaskan Kings have intruded in a good way like an unexpected yesterday( sunny, 60 degrees). Slow roasted in a cast iron pan, seasoned w/ dill and parsley and sage and butter and cooked to medium, this salmon ( a gift from School Principal Dennis of Onamia, caught by his own hand) was clean tasting, deep red, luscious with therapeutic oils that have apparently healed a recently aching hip joint, redolent of swift water, fresh, and the salty sea.

Overnight, no less. Will I walk as the King swims? Perhaps. What I do know is that I will eat more. Dennis?

If you are lucky enough to have leftover salmon, stir some maple syrup into mustard, douse your salmon, and eat it on rye krisp for breakfast, along w/ cottage cheese and a glass of apple juice. There is a little curry flavor in yellow mustard due to the turmeric, which is what gives it the yellow color. I used Plochman's mustard. $ 1.09 at the store.

I will be doing some deer tenderloin recipes for Outdoor News, which is traditionally the first eaten meat of the deer at deer camp. Onions, mushrooms, and the valuable medallions simply sauteed w/ salt, pepper and garlic and finished off w/ a splash of brandy. Done medium rare and served on toast. Or a stroganoff( medium rare, also) served over noodles. Others, too, I'll let you know.

And remember. You gotta get a deer to eat a deer.

Stir Fly

I taught an Asian Cooking class last night at Onamia High School on the behest of Onamia Community Education.

For starters I did a "mother sauce" for stir fry with chicken broth and plenty of garlic and ginger - thickened w/ cornstarch and water. It works for chow mein, too. It is called a mother sauce because it is adaptable to many different dishes - add crushed red pepper( and catsup!), and or Thai chili sauce to get a spicy Thai stir fry, more garlic to do garlic chicken and broccoli, fish or oyster sauce for others and so on.

We did a curry, too, w/ heavy cream and carmelized onions and chicken( and curry powder, of course), lime juice and cilantro that was excellent. A guest at the class said she made a similar curry utilizing grouse and coconut milk and it was great. Good idea. Pheasant would be exceptional.

In the past as an appetizer I have sautee'd bite sized pheasant portions and glazed/finished them off w/ a sweet hot Thai chili sauce. It is like eating candy it is so good.

Missed Again!

You can't eat a deer if you don't get him.

Thirty years ago or more I was sneaking and peeking for deer in a soft late season snow; heavy, wet flakes the size of miniature poodles adhered to every branch of the alders, dogwoods, and conifers. Visibility was about 10 feet.

It was a fairytail land of silence. I was approaching a stand of balsam and as I stepped into a bouquet of small ones a tree exploded with white. It was a doe busting loose just 10 feet from me, maybe 8. It was too close to shoulder my rifle( 30-30 lever action Winchester), so I negotiated a quick hip shot and in the blink of an eye the deer was past me and gone, though not before I fenced forward with the rifle barrel and stabbed her in the ribs w/ the muzzle.

I had been unable to lever out my spent shell because the rifle was down at hip level so I could not shoot my 2nd shot. All that remained was a few deer hairs stuck to the end of the barrel.

A short time later, after I had crossed the 40 acre field to the farmhouse, Clifford looked at me sideways as I told him the story.

It wasn't the only time over the years that I have missed a deer. When you miss one, you don't have one to eat. The photo is of a roast of another deer in another year.