Deer Stir Fry

I just finished stir-frying some deer that family cooked on the grill at a picnic this weekend. I absconded with about a pound of deer, sliced, and still a little too rare to eat, as well as some raw veggies: broccoli, cauliflower, green pepper, radish - the usual suspects.

For the stir fry, I mostly improvised. I started with a tablespoon of vegetable oil in the skillet, and added one small minced onion and a little kosher salt. After letting that get soft, I added the deer, cut up into small pieces. After a few more minutes, I added about 2 tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce and 1 tablespoon of soy sauce, and some veggies: the raw veggies from the picnic, along with two cloves of garlic thinly sliced and one small cubed green tomato (red will work too, but the green one stays firmer). I lightly salted the veggies and stir fried the whole mess for another five minutes. The deer was nice and tender and the veggies just crunchy enough. I could've made some rice, but instead I sliced up a sweet potato and am baking that in the oven with some rosemary and kosher salt.

I need a working camera again to take photos of this stuff.

Slow-Cooker Venison Stew

It's good to have family, however extended it may be, that hunts on a regular basis. Cathy's father-in-law offered me a few nice pieces of venison that he had stocked away in the freezer. I got three pieces. I've already used one. I still have one roast and another piece, I admit I'm not sure what cut it is, in my freezer.

What I did the other day with the first piece was a slow cooker stew. I bought some barbecue sauce and some veggies, admittedly planning to wing whatever I was going to make. But I wanted some guidelines, so I looked in my copy of Beth Hensperger and Julie Kaufmann's Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook. I thought I'd find a recipe for a beef roast, and lo and behold, out of the index pops up this recipe for Venison Stew. On a hunch, I turned to the recipe and it turned out that I had all the ingredients for it.

As is always the case with recipes from cookbooks, I can't reprint it here. I will say that I cut the venison up into chunks, browned it in bacon drippings and threw it in the slow cooker. After adding various other veggies - carrots, onions, potatoes (these aren't in the recipe), etc, I dumped in some chicken stock (not beef) and white wine (not red, as the recipe suggests). I used chicken stock instead of beef because that's what I had. I used white wine instead of red because Cathy's father-in-law suggests using white wine when you cook venison, in order to remove its gamey taste.


Well, eight hours of slow cooking it in white wine and chicken stock (adding bacon and mushrooms five hours in) certainly did that! It also made it nice and soft. Plus, the balsamic vinegar I added at the end gave it a nice little tang.

Now I have enough venison stew to last me the rest of the week! Oh boy, deer meat for dinner, lunch - even breakfast!

Um, you can't drive from London to Sydney

Ever tried to do three impossible things before breakfast?

I saw this on the Daily Dish blog just now. This is weird. The OzBus company, owned and operated in the UK, gives overland bus trips from London to Sydney. The one in New South Wales. That's in Australia.

You can't drive from London to Sydney!!!

The most irritating thing is that absolutely nowhere on their website do they explain how they get from Southeast Asia to Indonesia to Australia. Unless the caravan converts into a boat or something.

And it appears to be one of those deals where you make your own food and pitch tent for the night, unless your stop is at a hotel, in which case you can stop for delicious local food. Me, I'd want some kangaroo burgers. Kangaroo meat is pretty tasty.

Don't get me wrong, it sounds lovely. And at £3,750 (AU$9,000), it's probably cheap.

But it's still not possible to drive - in a car, or a bus, or a land vehicle - from London to Sydney!!! Do you know how deep the Arafura Sea is that divides Indonesia and New Guinea from Australia? Downwards of 80 meters. You're not going to get a bus across that.

Here's something worth avoiding...

Ever wonder what American elk tastes like? Well, so do I. Even with my purchase today of "Hickory Smoked/Kippered" elk jerky that I bought for $2.95 at Outdoor World in Arundel Mills.

I think the brand name is "Premium Midwestern," but I'm not sure. It was forgettable at any rate. I thought elk would taste all different and interesting. But they hickory smoked and kippered the hell out of it, so it just tasted like your average boring-assed beef jerky. I'll pass on it the next time.

Mmmm. Ground squirrel.

I'm sitting here finding new stream-of-consciousness topics to write about. And as I sit here vegging on the medium rare burger with gravy fries I had for dinner, I'm reminded that I have far more food at my fingertips than many people. Case in point: Les Stroud, the "Survivorman" of Discovery Channel's Survivorman series.

"Chef Les," as he is never called, is dropped off for a week in some inhospitable environment where he must survive off the land, all while logging 50 lb (okay, 25 kg since he's Canadian) of camera equipment around with him. Just imagine having to lug 25 kg of camera equipment with you around the Mojave Desert or the frozen forests of northern Ontario. All while you are starving and slowly dehydrating. But he manages to do it! If there is anyone with whom I'd want to be lost in the harshest environments of our planet a week, it is Les Stroud. Take that however you want to.

Les is quite good at finding food, just not finding a lot of it. And he doesn't really need a whole lot to survive. It's amazing how your body re-adapts to a minimum calorie situation. I'm currently watching an episode where he was dropped off in the Altamaha River Basin in Georgia for a week. He's eating a swamp turtle - it looks like some weird terrapin horror film, little turtle legs on sticks roasting on an open fire. This is not the type of show a vegan would enjoy, especially when you watch Les break open a conch shell, like on the last episode they aired, when he was stranded on a desert island off the coast of Belize for a week. He just ate that puppy raw (Mmmm. Conch sushi).

He also has the most ingenious ways to catch water. On this Georgia swamp episode, where drinking the water is just not a possibility, he finds a "water vine" that he slices open, puts an end into a can he brought, and lets the water collect. And I learned that if the water is not drinkable but otherwise safe to consume (like slightly brackish water that could make you sick if you drank it), you can always consume it by putting it in the other end.

Yes, a survival enema.

And this show has given me one of my all-time favorite quotes from any television show: the title of this post ("Mmmm. Ground squirrel.") This while he was lost in Utah's Canyonlands for a week. But cook that ground squirrel very well, as they can easily make you sicker than most animals' raw meat.

Oh snap! He just clobbered an Eastern diamondback rattlesnake! He'll be eating off of that for a while.

Photo linked from the "Science on TV" page form "Survivorman - Alaska".

How Do You Use Up Leftover Deer Meat?

Make deer quesadillas! Oh, dear.

Seriously, there was some deer meat in the fridge ready to be used up (a gift), and I had tortillas in the fridge, too. So I thought, "What the hell, why not?"

Quesadillas are a wonderful way to use up leftovers. Here's the recipe, which is not set in stone:

Two 9" corn or flour tortillas (I used flour, but only because I had no corn tortillas on hand)
Plentiful pinches of shredded cheese (about 1/2 to 1 cup, or to taste; I used Trader Joe's three cheese Monterrey Jack - Mozzerella - Cheddar blend)
Several pieces shredded deer meat (about 1/3 to 1/2 cup)
Several pieces shredded pork (form a pork roast from last week, same amount)
1 slice onion (mine was cooked with the deer)
Several slices of red bell pepper
Sprinkles of Trader Joe's chili oil (God, I am just finding more and more uses for this stuff)

Layer most of the cheese on one of the tortillas, followed by the meat, cheese and veggies, chili oil, and the rest of the cheese. Put the other tortilla on top, and bake for 350º F for 10 minutes, or until the cheese is melted. Sprinkle with more chili oil once out of the oven.