It is an interesting phenomenon when the definition and location of “home” changes. As a kid, “home” was where I lived with my parents. During college, the lines got blurred. Was home college or “home-home”, as in my parents’ house? I left the mid-west fifteen years ago, and consider Colorado home now. But a part of me certainly considers Indiana home-home, although it is a home that I do not often visit.

My grandmother passed away and her memorial was held in southern Indiana. Southern Indiana was not  a part of my life anymore and the thought of returning there brought up a lot of memories.

My mom comes from a very large Catholic family, rooted in southern Indiana. As a child, I spent time there almost every year. There were always too many of my mom’s cousins for me to remember or even be able to identify what cousin belonged with what family. Honestly, going to southern Indiana was not one of my favorite activities, especially once I became a teen.

My grandmother, Betty, was born and raised in southern Indiana on a farm. She was one of many strong women in our family. As was common with many families in the 60s and 70s, once she married and had children, she left the farm, moved to the state capital, and no longer lived the rural lifestyle on a daily basis.

Growing up, I would go to southern Indiana to visit Betty’s mother (my great-grandmother).  During those visits, the garden was pumping out vegetables, I was expected to snap green beans, and I would go into the treacherous root cellar to retrieve food from glass jars that great-grandma Healy had canned. You must remember that I was a kid of the 90s raised on Capri Suns and lunchables. Gardens, snapping beans, and root cellars were not the norm for me.

Back then, going down the wooden stairs into a cavity of the house that had dirt walls (aka the root cellar) was a truly terrifying experience. I did not know what it meant to can and was always worried that grandma Healy was going to poison us with some old green bean in a glass jar. That obviously never happened.

Once the memorial location for Betty's funeral was announced, the thought of driving across a substantial portion of the country to return to southern Indiana brought on mixed emotions. I was sad that Betty had passed away and not looking forward to the long drive through Kansas. I also did not know what to expect in southern Indiana. I had not been to the town where my mom’s family was from for probably close to twenty years.

My sister and I drove from southwest Colorado to southern Indiana over a span of two days.

The weekend in Washington, Indiana was really rewarding. It felt like I met my mom’s cousins for the first time. Although I had known the family for years, I was able to actually talk to them and felt like I had some things in common. We discussed hunting, the west, and the family. I made a connection with family members that I had known for my entire life but felt like I had just met.

Colorado was experiencing a serious drought that fall and I was not able to get the 80 pounds of tomatoes that I needed to can. One of my mom’s cousins came through in a huge way. He hooked me up with his Amish neighbor and I bought 120 pounds of fresh, Indiana tomatoes. I was in heaven.

My sister and I visited the vegetable stands throughout the community and filled our SUV to the brim with vegetables to can once we got back to Colorado. I wanted to buy some seriously huge pumpkins, but the CRV was too full.

Yet another cousin invited us over to the farm. We visited and they showed us around. I was stoked to see an unbelievable amount of eggs, raised on the farm. Bill and Pat let my sister and I take eggs back to Colorado. I started to think that my food-hoarding tendencies may actually be  an important genetic trait that led to my family’s survival over the years. Or, I am just a food hoarder.

During that weekend, many of the cousins met at a local pub to toast Betty and catch up. My sister and I walked back to the rental house in the dark (it was only two blocks), and realized one of my mom’s cousin was worried about us and followed us to make sure we were okay. I am not sure that I have ever had a relative follow me to make sure I was okay? It was an amazingly welcoming feeling to know there were people looking out for us.

Going back to southern Indiana stirred a lot of deeply-rooted emotions. By the end of the weekend, I was grateful for my family, for that place, and proud of where I came from. For me, going back to Washington, Indiana for Betty’s funeral felt like going “home-home-home.”

So, what is Mexican puchero? Fair question. It is a delicious, hearty, Mexican stew that utilizes shank, neck, or ox tail.

If you hunt or purchase an entire animal (a side of beef, for example) you will inevitably find yourself with bizarre cuts of meat that you do not know how to use. In my house, we hunt big game and waterfowl, we fish (maybe too much) and we purchase whole animals. So, needless to say, we end up with strange cuts.

That is where Hank Shaw comes in. Hank Shaw is a hunter, angler, and chef. He is a James Beard award winner and truly amazing. Although I have never met him, I might have a crush on him, just sayin’. But, I digress. He has a series of cookbooks which are lifesaving, runs a fantastic blog, and has an email list where he sends out recipes.

A few months ago, I realized we had a lot of soup bones and ox tail. I turned to Hank Shaw and discovered a recipe for Mexican Puchero. I honestly did not even know what that was, but the picture looked appetizing, and I love soup. It is a hearty stew that uses cuts of meat that I had.

Hank’s recipes can be involved, but they never disappoint. For example, this is what my kitchen looked like while making puchero:

This recipe called for shank, shoulder, or neck meat. I had some of that, along with soup bones and ox tail. It uses hearty vegetables and makes enough for a small army.

You start by putting the meat into a large pot and allowing it to simmer for 3 (!) hours. I told you it can be involved! But it is worth it.

Then you have to remove the meat from the bone, which can be a scalding experience if you are impatient like I am.

Next, you add the vegetables and continue to cook. The end product is a delicious, savory stew that uses part of the animal that can be tricky to incorporate into an everyday meal. Although this recipe takes time, it makes so much stew that I froze it and ate it for months.

You really should buy his cookbooks, or at least check out his website.

Here is the link to his amazing recipe for Puchero:
https://honest-food.net/puchero-recipe/#recipe

As a kid, I went “mushroom hunting” in Indiana; as an adult I am learning to “forage.” It’s the same thing.

Until last summer, I had not been mushroom hunting in close to 20 years. My neighbor reached out and told me she had been going quite a lot and asked if I wanted to join her. I was incredibly stressed at work and really did not have time to go traipsing around the mountains in the middle of the week, but I agreed to go with her. It was a pretty life changing experience.

I walked to her house and she drove the 45 minutes up to her spot. It was a beautiful day and we had an unseasonably wet summer. The mountains were lush, green, and alive.

I had only ever hunted morels in Indiana and had no idea what to look for in the Rocky Mountains. We set off into the National Forest and the scenery was truly stunning. I immediately felt my heart rate decrease and my shoulders drop. I was able to take deep breaths and stopped thinking about work.

Right away, I saw hundreds of mushrooms all around me. There were brown, red, polka-dotted, and white mushrooms everywhere that I looked. I was like a kid in a candy shop.

I started pestering my friend about what each mushroom was and whether we could pick them. She told me that she could safely identify 3-4 mushrooms, so we stuck with those. Within a few minutes, I was on my hands and knees carefully cutting mushrooms out of the soil. I filled my bag with chanterelles, Hawk’s wings, porcinis and a few blue chanterelles (which are pretty hard to find!).

After a few hours in the forest foraging for mushrooms, I felt at peace and calmer. We returned home and then the real work started. I had to clean the mushrooms and figure out how to store them.

Throughout the mushroom season, my cleaning protocol evolved. My friend carefully brushes the soil off the mushrooms in the forest, whereas my husband does not. This is an important distinction once you return home to clean the mushrooms.

The best procedure for me was to fill a turkey pan with water and put the mushrooms in the water. I would brush off the dirt and debris and then spin the mushrooms in a salad spinner. This can be a very time-consuming process, depending on how many mushrooms you find!

After the mushroom were clean, I would dehydrate them. I had the dehydrator humming almost constantly throughout the late summer and early fall.

Once the mushrooms were dehydrated, my husband and I packaged them in a vacuum sealer in 2 cup quantities. Now we have fresh mushrooms for the entire winter.
 
I have since purchased a book specific to my region to help me identify the mushrooms.  I never eat a mushroom unless I am 100% positive that I know what it is. I have also signed up for a 5 day mushroom festival with guided hikes, lectures, and a staffed identification tent.

Needless to say,  I am hooked and plan to spend a lot of time hunting for mushrooms as soon as the snow melts! Stay tuned!

A wild goose chase is defined by Meriam Webster’s dictionary as “a complicated or lengthy and usually fruitless pursuit or search.” Jump shooting Canadian geese in the Rocky Mountains is absolutely complicated, lengthy, and usually fruitless.

It is surprising how difficult it is to kill a Canadian goose. Yes, I mean those large birds that attack children in parks and men on golf courses. The same birds that saunter across the street in city parks, without any regard for people in cars, are elusive in the forest.
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Maybe all species change in nature: I become calmer and more at peace; geese become skittish and unpredictable. It is easy to approach a goose in a park, where their mere presence is often annoying.  In nature, approaching a goose takes strategy, planning, and quite a bit of luck. 

I have been hunting geese for two years now and have not yet killed one. It is  a lot harder than I thought!

​Frequently, if one goose spots you, they start sending out an alarm. An entire flock of one hundred geese can lift and fly out of sight before I can even load my gun. Sadly, this happens more often than I would like to admit. 

​Luckily, my husband has killed quite a few geese during our hunting quests. 

But, once the goose is down, a whole new dilemma is presented: what should we do with it?

We do not kill animals unless we eat them. So, we have been learning how to cook geese. We have made quite a few mistakes – for example, do not marinate the geese in citrus. It tastes absolutely terrible. We were fortunate  to find a Hank Shaw recipe for French Goose Stew. This was a complete game changer. Here is a link: https://honest-food.net/duck-stew/

The ingredients are not complicated or fancy. I was able to purchase everything at my local grocery store. 

​The recipe calls for duck fat, which shows why it is important to use all parts of an animal. For Christmas, we roasted a duck and saved the fat. I froze the fat and had a pint of duck fat for cooking. You can see the duck fat melting in the cast iron pan below on the left.

Although Hank Shaw’s recipe requires quite a long cook time, it is on the stove and not active cooking. The recipe is great because it uses the goose legs, which are very difficult to cook.
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The end product was a delicious, savory, French goose stew. Although jump shooting a Canadian goose in the Rockies is difficult, it is absolutely worth the chase when it ends in French goose stew!

Trying to find an elk during hunting season is the most difficult game of hide and seek that I have ever played. For years, I have been going with my husband on his elk hunts in the Rocky Mountains and I cannot recall even seeing an elk. He has shot plenty of elk, but never when I have been with him.

We have hiked for hours each day for days on end without seeing any elk at all. Sometimes, we do not even see any sign (poop, etc). And, without a doubt, as soon as elk season is over, they pop their heads out and are all over the place.

My college roommate, who lives in a major metropolitan area, came to visit me a few years ago in the remote mountain town where I now live. My husband and I were driving her around and explaining the area. We started talking about elk hunting and assured her that it was nearly impossible to find an elk. Not a half an hour later, she saw a huge herd of elk right on the side of the road!
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Seeing elk in nature is truly mesmerizing. A few months ago, my husband and I were driving on a dirt road high in the mountains and we spotted a mother and baby elk in the river. It was truly magical.

​Within the past year, I have routinely seen elk on the side of the road while driving or in meadows high above the highway.

I can assure you that as soon as elk season begins, all of the beautiful, majestic elk that I have seen meandering in fields and streams will begin the most aggressive game of “hide” of their lives.

I hope that I am wrong as today is the eve of opening day of second season. My husband and I have the camper loaded and will be heading to the high country in a few hours to search for the elusive elk. It is going to be a great weekend consisting of an epic game of hide and seek! Wish us luck!

The differences between the Rocky Mountains and the mid-west present themselves again when it comes to wild duck hunting. In the Rockies, the ducks are typically diver ducks, which means that they eat fish. In the mid-west, the ducks eat grain and corn from the fields. This produces a very different tasting duck.

Over the past year, my husband and I have made a lot of terrible tasting duck. I mean absolutely not suitable for human consumption. We want you to benefit from our mistakes so here are some cooking techniques that you should never use for Rocky Mountain fowl:

Smoking an entire duck. We carefully prepared our charcoal smoker and lovingly smoked the duck for hours. We thought that we would get a crispy, delightful duck after all of our hard work. Instead, it tasted like we dipped old socks in the lake and left it out by a campfire for hours. It was, by all accounts, inedible.

Cooking the duck rare. We eat a lot of meat rare, so why would wild duck be an exception? We pan seared the duck breasts and cooked it rare. Then, we put the duck breasts on top of a delicious ramen bowl. This method was edible but not good, at all. By cooking the duck rare, the minerality in the blood was very strong. We certainly do not recommend this method.
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Orange juice marinade for goose. There are few recipes online for wild goose, but one that we found recommended marinating the goose in orange juice and then cooking it with Asian spices. The orange juice permeated the meat and with every bite a blast of orange citrus filled your mouth. It was as if we were eating a meat filet filled with orange gushers. This was truly terrible. 

Luckily, we are finally dialing in some great ways to prepare wild fowl. Our current technique is the absolute best that we have found. Here are the key components:
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Breast out the bird. Do not try to cook the entire animal. Simply save the breasts and legs, if possible.

Salt bath. Soak the meat in cold water and kosher salt overnight. This pulls all of the blood out of the meat and produces a significantly better tasting product. Once the meat has soaked in the salt water overnight, thoroughly rinse the ducks.
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This last weekend, which was opening day of duck season, my husband got a Blue Teal and a Drake Mallard. I shot a Merganser, but I will post about that another day. 

Using his Blue Teal and Drake Mallard, we decided to make Wild Duck Thai Curry and it was absolutely delicious. 

Learn from our mistakes and try this amazing recipe. You will not be disappointed and I promise, it is completely edible!
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Wild Duck Thai Curry
Ingredients:
1-2 wild ducks (breasts and legs)
1 pint stock
2 cans coconut milk
1 medium onion - diced
2-3 cubed potatoes
1 green pepper
1 teaspoon fish sauce
4 ounces of hot green curry paste
Salt
Pepper
Garlic
Curry powder

1. In a crock pot, combine the duck with 1 pint of stock. Cook on low for 4 hours.
2. Add coconut milk, diced onion, cubed potatoes, cubed green pepper, fish sauce, and curry paste to the crock pot. Cook on low for an additional 4 hours.
3. Prior to serving, add salt, pepper, garlic, and curry powder to taste.
4. Serve over rice.

Apricots are plentiful in my area of the Rocky Mountains. Last year, a friend of mine graciously gave me what can only be described as a copious amount of apricots. I would guess that she gave me at least thirty pounds!

Here is the tricky thing: my household consists of my husband and myself. Thirty pounds of apricots is at least a year’s worth of fruit for us. So, naturally, I decided to can the apricots. I did not have a recipe, which is always risky business. I decided to make an apricot ice cream topping.

My husband graciously agreed to help me pit the apricots. Luckily, the fruit was very soft so we were able to gently squeeze the pit out of each piece of fruit. 

​After the pits were removed, I put the 30 pounds of apricots into a large pot on the stove. I turned the heat to low and added half a bottle of brandy and a few tablespoons of honey. In hindsight, I would probably suggest a cup or two of honey. I brought the mixture to a low boil and prepared the jars.

I decided to can the apricots in pint jars because a quart is a large quantity of ice cream topping. I added boiling water to top off the mixture. I pressure canned the mixture at 15 PSI for 35 minutes.
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I was a little overwhelmed when I received an unexpected thirty pounds of apricots. And, honestly, I do not love apricots anyway.

But, the apricot ice cream topping was absolutely delicious. Throughout the winter, I warmed up the apricot mixture and served it on vanilla ice cream. It was a complete success.

​Canning thirty pounds of apricots when they were ripe was well worth it and it was super delicious throughout the cold winter! ​

Although COVID turned me into a food hoarder, my canning habit pre-dates COVID. And I have been canning homemade stock for years. When I say “stock,” I am referring to the liquid produced after slow cooking/simmering bones in water for days.

I started making stock for a few reasons. First, and most importantly, I can never remember to buy it at the grocery store. Inevitably, I will be in the kitchen, 30 minutes into dinner prep, and realize that the recipe calls for stock. I guess that I am not great at reading the entire recipe before I begin!

While I am very blessed to live in the mountains (pictured below), that also means that there is no Target five minutes away where I could quickly pick up the forgotten stock that I need. Living in the mountains,  if I realize that I am missing an ingredient in the middle of dinner preparations, there are major implications.

So, having a stock pile of homemade bone broth is extremely useful.

I also make stock because I do not like to waste food or resources if there is a practical use available. I often make stock from a chicken carcass or other bones from meals that we have prepared.

My method for cooking stock is incredibly simple. I place bones or a carcass in the crock pot and add water. I keep the crock pot on low for at least 4 days and continue to add water each day. By the end of the process, the stock is thick and dark in color.

After the stock is prepared, I can it using the pressure cooking method. If you are new to canning, check out my Canning 101 post here: https://www.kettleandcanyon.com/blog/canning-101

I prepare the pressure canner by filling it with 2-3 inches of water and turning on the burner to begin warming the water. I fill the jars with the hot stock, wipe the rim with a vinegar-soaked rag, and seal the lids. I place the jars into the canner with the water that is already boiling. I close the lid to the pressure canner and allow the steam to clear the vent for a few minutes. Then I seal up the canner and wait for the pressure to build.

At my elevation, I almost always can at 15 PSI. For quarts of stock, you must can the jars for 25 minutes and pints require 20 minutes at my elevation. You can find more information about what is required where you live by clicking on this link:

​nchfp.uga.edu/how/can_05/stock_broth.html

I make beef, chicken, elk, lamb, lobster, turkey, and venison stock. I always have at least ten quarts of homemade bone broth/stock on hand in the cabinet, just in case I forget to read a recipe all the way through before I begin cooking dinner. 

Similar to most topics on this blog, I never thought that I would want to go fly fishing. My husband has been a fly fisherman the entire time that I have known him. To me, fly fishing meant standing in a freezing cold river and getting endlessly stuck in trees and reeds. My initial interpretation is not far from my actual experience.

In the fall of 2018, I started to become slightly interested in fly fishing. While in Estes Park, Colorado for a conference, my husband started teaching me a little about how to fly fish. I mostly stood in the river and watched him.

Throughout COVID, I started to fly fish a little more often. We would drive to a river about fifteen minutes from our house and fish in the evenings. I would stand in the freezing cold river and lasso the fishing line over my head. I would spend the hour or so that we were in the river “fishing” generally aiming at some random rock or spot in the river. I had no clear plan as to what I would do if I actually caught a fish. I was really just focusing on lassoing the line in the same general area.
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But, somehow, I actually did catch a fish! Unfortunately, I did not realize that it was on the line (it clearly was quite small). I continued with my aggressive lasso-technique, whipping the fishing line and the poor fish around in the air and plopped it back into the river. Only after the fly (and fish) hit the river did I realize that I had a catch. The poor thing survived (I think) and I was slightly traumatized. 

​This summer, we went on a camping trip on the Green River in Wyoming. The water was absolutely frigid and the mosquitos were out of control. My husband came in from fly fishing on the first night and it looked like he had chicken pox. Bugs are my absolute least favorite thing on the planet; unfortunately, bugs are extremely critical for fly fishing. In order to be mildly effective at fly fishing, you wait until the hatch occurs generally around dusk, about 1 million bugs are born (okay, maybe a few less), and then you try to find a fly that matches the copious number of new bugs that have arrived in your fishing area. Here is a sample of the bug situation on the Green River:

​Not surprisingly, I decided to sit out the first night of mosquito-infested fly fishing. But the next day I decided to give it a try. I proudly zipped up my wind and water proof jacket and trudged into the extremely cold Green River to start fly fishing. 

​I confidently began my lasso-technique (note: I know that this casting system has a name and is very complicated, but I prefer “lasso” as that is what I envision that I am doing) and immediately got stuck in the reeds. I untangled my mess and tried again. I then promptly hooked my 9-year-old Boxer in the back. The dogs were standing near the edge of the river and apparently, I got a little over-zealous in my cast. We quickly removed the hook from the dog and I tried again. 
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Literally, on the next cast, I caught my Boxer-American Johnson Bulldog in the spine. This one was deep and the hook was firmly planted in her back. I immediately began panicking and thinking about whether there were any emergency vet clinics open in this part of Wyoming. My husband calmly worked on getting the hook out of the dog. It was really deep in her fur and took many minutes to remove.

Thankfully, he removed the hook from the dog (again) and we did not need an emergency vet. I was so shaken that I did not fly fish again on the Green River.

But I know that I will fly fish again. I find the process of standing in the freezing water extremely calming. The cold water flowing through my legs can almost be numbing at times. Although I spend a lot of time getting my line out of trees, reeds, and dogs, there is a calmness in the middle of a river that I do not experience from the banks.

​I have a lot to learn about technique, terminology, how to set up the pole, etc. People take lessons, read books, and go on guided tours to master this art. But for me, fly fishing is really just about standing in a freezing river with a lasso in my hand.

I admit it: I absolutely love soups (and stews)! When my husband started hunting, it produced many unknown pieces of meat in the kitchen. When you kill an animal and process it yourself, you do not get exclusively New York strips and ground meat. You end up with a lot of “pieces” of meat that become stew meat.

Growing up, we bought our meat from the grocery store and my parents would buy a side of beef from a local farmer. But, we never had wild game and we certainly never had elk stew meat. I have learned that there are many uses for stew meat: stew (obviously), tacos, and Shepard’s pie, to name a few. When we are fortunate enough to kill an elk, we end up with copious amounts of stew meat.
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Throughout the years, I have made canned stews using the pressure canner. I combine all of the raw ingredients, add boiling water, and pressure can the contents. I usually pressure can the stew meat, potatoes, carrots, onions, and spices (garlic, salt, pepper). Having the canned stew makes for an amazing option for a quick dinner after a long day. Typically, I have to add additional broth or water to the stew when I warm it up as it almost becomes a stew concentrate. I have also used the stew concentrate to pour over egg noodles to make a stroganoff. 
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But, my go-to stew is made in the crock pot. In the morning, I combine the raw elk stew meat, carrots, potatoes, onions, poblanos, and any other vegetables that I have on hand, with spices. I sometimes pour a can of my pressure canned tomatoes on top as the acid helps break down the meat. I also add red wine if I have it available. I pour in the water, set the crock pot to low, and leave for the day. When I return after work, the house smells absolutely amazing and dinner is 100% finished. 

Crock pot stew is not fancy and it is extremely easy. But, if we threw away all of the little “pieces” of the elk meat, we would never have elk stew. By saving all of the animal and using as much as we can, we create at least 20 dinners a year out of the pieces of elk meat.
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For us, we only kill animals that we are going to eat. And, we eat as much of every animal as we can. We think that it is the only ethical way to hunt. We have put in for our elk tags for this year, so hopefully there will be a lot more elk stew in our future!