I love irony... and bear

So, last weekend was Rick's hunt club's annual holiday party...always an interesting event. We decided to bring a venison roast crostini; meat and bread always goes over well with guys. I found a nice horseradish sauce recipe and cooked my little heart out.

The roast came out perfect. It was very rare, just this side of still raw. The way it should be. Rick sliced it thin and it was gorgeous. We tested the crostinis, and deemed them very yummy indeed.

Where is the irony you ask? Well, I had decided to assemble the little sandwiches at the party. So I laid everything out on the counter, where people were milling about. The roast was wrapped in paper, and I had unwrapped it to start assembling. Two men (brothers, I learned) where standing next to me and as I pulled out a piece of meat, one said to me: "aren't you going to cook that?" He was serious.

I said it was cooked, just rare. Both men were horrified. "Oh, we only eat well done meat. We don't like it live."

Okay, these are men who have been shooting deer for probably 40 years ~ more importantly, field dressing the deer. And they're grossed out by pink meat? Are you kidding?

It turned out there were several people who wouldn't touch the rare meat. I was astounded, especially since venison is best rare. Weird.

That may explain what the bear, mountain lion, antelope, carribou, and other venison roasts were all well, well done (although, apparently bear and mountain lion are like pork and chicken...they must be cooked through so you don't get sick).

For the record, bear remains my favorite game meat. The antelope and mountain lion were okay; I'd probably like them better prepared differently.

Enter a Recipe and Win a Cookbook!

I'm so excited to be working on the Hunting Widow's Guide to Great Venison Cooking. I want this cookbook to be valuable and have tons of recipes. However, if I wait until I cook all of them, this book will never get published. so I'm hoping my venison loving readers will submit recipes on the web site. As an enticement, I will randomly draw ten names of people who submit recipes and give them each a copy of the cookbook.

If you don't have venison recipes, any good beef or lamb recipe will work too!
Thanks.

Very Cool Calorie and Activity Calculator

In the last 2 months I've pretty much eaten anything that has come within 10 feet of my mouth. As a result, I've gained a few pounds. I came to my breaking point Friday night when I had to unbutton my fat jeans. It wasn't a pretty sight.

This morning, Rick and I stumbled upon Calorie Count while trying to find out how venison compares to other meats in terms of nutritional value (it's significantly better, by the way). I've been having fun logging my food and activity. I have high hopes that this tool will help me get this crazy eating under control.

Have fun if you choose to use this. When it makes sense, I'll use it to calculate nutritional information for the recipes I post.

Happy New Year!

Florida Key Deer...aren't they cute?

I call myself a hunting widow, but that's only partially true. Rick is really very reasonable; if we're home, he'll be hunting. But he is willing to do things like have dinner with friends or go on vacation during hunting season.

The vacation thing is fortunate since our anniversary falls at the beginning of the season (in fact, we got married on opening day! He picked that day, not me.)

We went to the Florida Keys to celebrate our first anniversary. We went for the diving, and were pleased to learn that the Florida Key Deer reserve was only miles away from us. So, Rick got to spend our anniversary looking for deer. There is no hunting of these little cuties...we did all our shooting with the camera.

Happy Dawg

Rick and I fell in love today. Can you blame us? She's gorgeous. And sweet. And doesn't bark. And loves children and cats.

Here's what happened. I asked Rick if he wanted to go to the grocery store with me so I could get the ingredients for a venison pot pie and some venison breakfast biscuits. Since he had spent Friday night and all day yesterday hunting, he turned off the Dolphins game and came with me.

Boy, did I learn my lesson. (Just kidding...he can go to the store with me any time.)

We were cutting through the PetSmart parking lot, and saw that it was adoption day (actually, every Sunday is adoption day). Rick has been wanting a hunting dawg so he can find his deer on those rare occasions that he can't track them. We'd been looking at Bassettdoodles (because Rick has horrible dog allergies) with the thought of getting one next summer. He innocently said "let's just see if they have one." Niether of thought they would because the breed is not all that common. And sure enough, they didn't. But they had Happy, a bassett/beage mix, and she immiately stole both our hearts.

Rick has never spent time with a beagle, so he wasn't really sure whether he was allergic. So he played with her, then rubbed his eyes and we went to the grocery store to wait and see if his face would swell up. Twenty minutes later, his face was fine and we were filling out the paper work.

Happy Dawg adapted to her new home in about ten minutes, and now is acting like she's lived here forever. As expected, the two cats aren't thrilled. Oscar has been hiding in a closet all afternoon, but she did venture down to eat so she'll be fine. Sid is much braver, although still not sure about the dog. Happy likes the cats and would like to be friends. I think they'll all be fine with each other within the week.

Rick's going to take Happy Dawg hunting on Saturday. She is definitely a scent dog, but at least today she thought all scents were good ones. She'll need some training on that.

Thanks to the Lost Dog & Cat Rescue Foundation for their work. The volunteers were great and there were so many wonderful animals, and if weren't for Rick's allergies, we may have brought home more than one!

The pot pie was yummy too, altough the recipe needs a little tweaking before I'll call it ready for public consumption. I'm making the biscuits tomorrow.