And now the party is over...

...but it sure was a good one.  I had much anticipation for the holidays this year.  I knew they would be focused around the celebration of family and a wonderfully stocked larder.  Sausage making and duck hunting with Pop Pop, helping the Mini-HHMM reel little perch through an icy hole at his feet, and even some duck hunting.  We had a joyous new year party where we shared a multitude of laughs and hugs with extended family in Missoula, which I do consider to be the center of the Western Universe.

This time of year is always a little tough for me.  Days are short and the weather is often dreary.  If I am going to get out on more duck hunts, I know at this point how many there will be and I know it isn't more than one.  The end of duck season signals the end of the hunting year for me, and I can't help but be a little melancholy about it.  My bride is in charge of the vegetable portion of our locavore diet, and I am in charge of the meat portion. My job is done for a while.  While I am highly satisfied that our freezers are full of wild meat, I will miss chasing those critters in the canyons, mountains, farms, and rivers of my beloved Idaho... at least for a few months :)

To celebrate the pending end of the hunting year, I will tell a story in pictures of what has to be the best sporting fall of my life.  There were many firsts... First spey cast, first steelhead on a spey cast, first Idaho mule deer buck, first elk with a muzzleloader.  Emily killed her first Idaho deer and first deer while hunting solo.  Jocko retrieved his first goose.  I do try to avoid turning HHMM into a brag board, and I try to remember to write a guide of sorts for others to follow, but, hey, I have a beautiful family, live in a spectacular place, and do unbelievably cool things.  Once in a while you gotta let go... and crow....

Have a Wild Feast this Holiday Season

I am lucky that Pop Pop and I started hunting elk together in my youth.  There are lots and lots of reasons why this makes me lucky, but one of those reasons is that it helped our Christmas traditions take on a much wilder flavor as we found success in the breaks country of Idaho.  The Christmas Feast was always a highlight of the season, as we are a family of foodies, but once we started packing our holiday roasts out of the mountains on our backs, the meal satisfied in more ways that it had previously.  At first unsure, extended family soon warmed to the idea of consuming game at the holiday meal, once they realized we could cook.

Elk has been the most common wild beast served at our holiday gatherings, but whitetail deer, mule deer, turkey, and antelope have made appearances.  Perhaps my favorite is when we have set aside an entire hind quarter of a doe antelope, from the knee to the hip, with the bone in.  This cut is known as a Steamship Round (a real butcher out there can feel free to correct me if I am wrong).  This is a pretty impressive hank of meat to set down in front of your loved ones and start carving like you are the head chef at the Waldorf.

This is about how your "Steamship Round" should look before you prep it for a holiday table.  Trim it up and serve the whole kit and caboodle.

Here is how we like to prepare it:  Rub the whole thing down with olive oil or butter, salt, and pepper.  It is always a good move to cram a bunch of cloves of garlic into little slits cut in the meat too.  Usually, I will have the oven turned up as high as it will go while I am prepping the meat, then I will turn it down to 375-425 as soon as the meat goes in (on a rack in a roasting pan).  Occasionally while it is cooking, take the meat out of the oven and baste it with more olive oil or melted butter mixed with salt and pepper.  I think this really helps build up a savory crust on the outside of the meat that otherwise wouldn't occur with game meat, because it doesn't have enough of its own fat.  It also helps keep the meat inside the crust deliciously moist.  We usually take the meat out of the oven when it has reached an internal temperature of 125 and let it rest.  We like rare meat, and frankly, I think game meat is amazingly delicious when rare and dog food when overcooked.  USDA recommends 145 degrees for rare beef, but I have never had a problem with our game meat.  I suppose it is one of those "at your own risk" things, but ruining your dinner is a much bigger risk, in my book, than getting a nasty bug from rare game meat...  Don't worry, if Uncle Whimpy doesn't like his meat rare, there will be some medium and well done pieces on the edges of the roast.

The second best thing about serving elk, deer, or antelope for Christmas dinner is serving Yorkshire Pudding with it!  If you have never had Yorkshire Pudding, you have never truly enjoyed the ultimate starch and meat pairing.  Hopefully you have saved all of the drippings from your game roast.  Joy of Cooking tells us we should have all of the following ingredients at room temperature before we begin...

Pre-heat oven to 400

3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons all purpose flower
1/2 teaspoon salt
(sift these into a bowl and make a well in the center)
Into the well pour 1/2 cup milk and stir it in
Beat 2 eggs into the mix
add 1/2 cup of water

Beat the batter until you get nice, big bubbles, then pour the mixture into the hot roasting pan with the meat drippings.

Bake for 20 minutes, then reduce heat to 350 and bake for an additional 10-15 minutes.

It is done when it is puffy, golden brown, crispy on the outside, chewy in the center.

So good with rare game meat, good gravy, and a robust red wine.

Grammy shows off a fine specimen of a Yorkshire pudding... good as it gets, she is a master. 

This particular Christmas dinner didn't include a steamship round, but elk roast is awfully darn nice too.

Have a Merry and Wild Christmas!!!

Emily's Mule Deer Chili Verde

Recently, my bride pulled together one of the more delicious preparations of stewing cuts of venison, chili verde.  About a month ago, we pulled the rest of the tomatillos off the plants in our gardens.  We would have had more of the green "husk tomatoes," but the variety we grew was popular with the toddlers in our social circle.  They would grab the fruit, which looked like little hot air balloons, rip off the husk, take one sweet juicy bite, then throw the rest in the bean patch.

If you are going to stew chunks of venison, I think neck and shank make the best cuts to use.  The connective tissues, which are prevalent in those parts of a deer or elk, are tough until they are cooked low and slow.  Two hundred seventy five degrees, two or three hours, and some kind of cooking liquid is the recipe to turn tough tissue in to tender, gelatinized, flavorful morsels.

Emily's approach for the chili verde was as follows (This is simple and wicked good):

• Brown about 1lb of stew meat seasoned with salt, pepper, and garlic powder, put it in crock pot with about enough tomatillos to equal roughly the same volume of the meat
• Brown 1 large onion and 6 small poblano, coarsely chopped
• When onions are translucent add them to the crock pot.
• Deglaze the skillet with half a can of beer and pour all the goodies and the rest of the beer into the crock pot.  If you don't want to use beer, use game stock, beef stock, vegetable stock, etc.
• Turn on the crock pot and try to forget about it for a few hours.  Soon enough, the dish will smell so good, you won't be able to forget about it anymore.  This is a good time to start sampling the broth.
• Serve with warmed tortillas.

MB2013 (AKA the 24th Annual Talk Like a Mountain Man Week)

I sloshed into camp, still wearing my waders.  The aromas of coffee mixed with ash and smoke from a campfire without enough wood weren't the same cure for a hangover as the fresh air and mist on a river musty with life.  A dozen men all (but one) a generation older than me sat around, laughing, and throwing hilarious and ridiculous insults at each other.  I stopped by the propane camp stove and lifted the lid on the stock pot.  Fat from bacon grease formed a thin cap on a leftover fish chowder.  I fired up the propane under the pot and gave the chowder a stir.  A hot cup of this stuff would ease that hangover better than anything.  We had done better than most years at filling our fish chowder pot with rainbow trout meat.  On the South Fork of the Snake, it is darn near unethical to release a rainbow back where it might hybridize with the local population of Native Cutthroat trout.  Our group is ruthless, both to the rainbows and to each other.  Of course we love to catch the rainbows, and we love each other's company too.  As I sat down, with ice on my waders and a cup of hot chowder in my hand, I heard a phrase that has been uttered annually on the last morning on the river, as if part of a rite, "Hey!  Where are the fucking biscuits!"

Many men like to fish.  Many men also like the company of other men while they are fishing.  I happen to enjoy an annual trip of many men enjoying the company of many other men while fishing.  Twenty-four years ago, Pop Pop, along with his brother, Uncle Chrissy, and Uncle Chrissy's friend, Jimbo, embarked on a week long fly fishing sojourn of southeastern Idaho and Yellowstone National Park.  They were trout bumming, but there was something in the chemistry of unpredictable October weather, golden cottonwood leaves, the hope of heavy trout, and the company of family and friends that made this particular annual adventure so special that Pop Pop hasn't missed a single trip in all of those years.  Uncle Chrissy and Jimbo haven't missed many more.

The trip has grown, no bloated, to the point where five boats and 14 attendees isn't out of the ordinary.  Several other regulars now make the adventure without fail.  Uncle Predator, Uncle Don, Uncle Crotts, Virg, Elle Belly, Uncle Bill the Pill, Sam Sam the Whitefish Man, and a smattering of cameos and newcomers.  You'll notice a common thread.  Most of these people, whether or not they are full siblings of my father, are 'uncles' to me.  One other claims me as his godson, and the rest I would claim as very close friends... family friends.  I think we all have a great deal of affection for each other, which is why we all spend a week floating rivers and berating each other with cruel barbs and insults (Pop Pop warned me on my first trip, that no quarter was given... ever).

Why is Male Bonding (as this annual week-long holiday is now known) so important to its attendees?  What keeps this tradition strong and getting stronger?  There are two primary and intertwined reasons: Peter Pan and unscripted therapy.  This trip is a week in Neverneverland for a group of motivated and successful professionals and entrepreneurs.  Grown men get to act like teenage boys and fish and, for one week, shed the stress of day to day life, letting the pursuit of that next big fish or hatch of blue winged olives be the most serious endeavor of the day.  This trip also serves valuable therapeutic purposes.  It has helped men heal from divorces, make life changing decisions... hell, I studied for my comprehensive exams on this trip.  It also helps us develop a deeper appreciation for the women in our lives.  Absence, and the opportunity to say whatever is on your mind, without fear of reprisal, does indeed make the heart grow stronger.

I left the trip a few days early this year in order to have a long weekend with my young family on another river.  As I jetted out with my godfather, we raced past all the gravel bars, runs, and riffles that have produced such memorable moments in Male Bondings past.  A flickering reel of thrilling fish and snapshots of male antics ran through my mind like the sun shimmering on the river rocks only a few inches below the aluminum hull.