Venison backstrap recipes

Now that we have a backstrap, how shall I cook it?

Sure, cutting it into medallions and wrapping them with bacon is always wonderful.  Put those babies on the grill... Yum, yum.

I could cook it in the pressure cooker, adding potatoes & carrots for the last 10 minutes is another good old standby.

I could cook it in the dutch oven.  I'd have to build a fire first to do it really old style.

Here's a few recipes from Wide Open Spaces

Another good source for recipes & meat (should you be an urban dweller or non-hunter) can be found at Broken Arrow Ranch.

Pinterest is also a good resource for recipe ideas.  I have a board for Fresh Yummy Food.  There's also  Cooking Tonight.

Butchering a deer

Our neighbor, Jennifer, loves to hunt.  Bow hunting, muzzle loader, or with a modern rifle.  She is part of the River View Farms hunting club, which adjoins our property to the south and west.

She arrived yesterday afternoon and went out to sit in her tree stand soon after arriving.  She  sent me a text at 5:30.  She'd gotten a deer, and would be back at her cabin after dark.  I offered to help her butcher the deer.

Growing up in NE Pennsylvania, the men in our family all went deer hunting.  I was never involve in the butchering.  I remember loving to eat venison, but I don't recall how my mom cooked it...

Our first winter together, John went hunting with his brother Jim.  They both got a deer.  The meat was divided among all the family.  I cooked our portion, but didn't participate in the butchering.

Once we got settled in here, John helped Jennifer butcher a deer.  I learned how to butcher along with her.  It's not difficult work, just messy. The deer we butchered last night took us about 30 minutes...

Our favorite cut, of course, is the back strap.  Any venison is good venison, in my opinion.  Steaks, roasts, stew... We've made deer sausage links in the past.  Yummy, Yummy, Yummy!  Check out my previous post on dutch oven  cooking.

I strongly believe that any animal you kill should be eaten.  Trophy hunting is just wasting good meat!  Rabbit, squirrel, quail, duck, turkey, venison - we've eaten them all.  Waste not, want not is our motto.  Arkansas has a program, Hunters feeding the hungry, the uses donated deer to provided ground meat to local food banks.  They have a website & a Facebook page.  Check them out.

Arkansas hunters feeding the hungry

Hardy Homesteader's quilting project

The Hardy Homesteader's group has been hosting an educational event every year for over 20 years.  It's an all-volunteer organization made up of many people in our community.  Some were raised here, some re-located here long ago, we got here 6 years ago... And some who get involved are area newcomers.

Here's a few pictures from last year's event.

Blacksmith's tent

Our group focuses on keeping the "old timey" skills alive.  One way we can do that is to have a public demonstration focusing on all the trades and crafts we can.  All the displays are set up by the volunteers.  The food being made is available to all - with only a donation box in evidence.

Biscuts baking

There's biscuts and gravy.  Freshly churned butter... Jam... beans.













 Lye soap making is always interesting to the people who come to visit.

Lye soap making

There is hot water in that big kettle.   And lye is made from wood ashes.

The recipe is available for anyone who wants more information.  People are encouraged to take a sample.






Dutch over cooking is always a favorite pastime at the Homesteader's.  Some of the Bushwackers set up their wagons, get they're fire started and put their dutch ovens to work.  Dang, it smells good!

Dutch oven cooking

 My husband Johnnie, friend Gena, son Joshua and I have a display for spinning and weaving.  We have a good time.  My husband and son make drop spindles.  And then he usually manages to give them away while we're there.  We both love the smile it brings to someone's face when they've learned how to spin their own yarn!

Gena weaving on a triangular loom

Gena made that shawl she has on.

It's woven from a merino/cashmere bulky yarn.  I crocheted the edging around it to give it a more finished look.

The fabric on this cool loom is warped AND woven at the same time.

I've woven a lot of shawls on there!

John and Josh

John and Josh get the spinning wheel set up.  The laundry rack is what we use for our display.  Both blankets displayed in this picture were hand spun, hand dyed and hand woven by me.  I love those blankets.







A group of the ladies get together during the winter and work on a quilt.  This quilt is raffled off as seed money for the following year's event.

2012 Quilt

Here's the ladies who worked on last year's quilt.  I'm 2nd from the right.

We have a great time making the quilt.  Lots of talking, laughing and sewing.  And not much swearing at the sewing machines either!  That's amazing, in itself!






We had our first quilting meeting last Thursday night and decided to make a more modern looking quilt.  It took a lot of time to piece all those 5-inches squares together last year.  So we thought we'd use 12-inch squares this year.  But, how many squares do we need for a queen sized quilt if we use 12-inch squares?  I found this handy chart this morning.


The picture of the quilt we had in mind had about 6 blocks across.  So, we need to make 16-inch squares.  Geeze, that was easy.  I wish I'd had this handy little card last week!

Soup for a cold day

When I got up this morning, it was 31 degrees.  I have to go teach a spinning class this afternoon... so I started thinking about what I wanted to cook for our main meal today.

Let's see, what's in the freezer?

Frozen ground turkey      


And we had this too...

Frozen broccoli, peppers and corn

I also had some dried procini mushrooms...  Yummy.

So, here my "top of my head" recipe for today's soup.

Turkey tomato bisque

1 pound frozen ground turkey
1 pound frozen broccoli, corn and peppers
1 8oz container of sour cream
1 2oz container of dried procini mushrooms
2 8 oz cans petitte tomatoes with garlic and olive oil
basil, oregano, rosemary, thyme, salt and black pepper to taste

I browned the turkey in a dutch oven.  Meanwhile, I soaked the dried mushrooms in warm water.  Once the turkey was completely cooked, I added all the remaining ingredients except the sour cream.  I brought all this to a boil.  Once it had boiled, I lower the temperature to a simmer and added the sour cream.

Of course, I had to have a small bowl to make sure it was seasoned correctly.  It was.

It was served with garlic bread.  And we had a happy lunch!

Bad weather!

Yesterday, I touched on the bad weather that can hit our part of Arkansas.  And when I say bad weather, I mean REALLY bad weather.

Now, let me explain.  I grew up in Northeastern Pennsylvania in the woods.  It was not uncommon to get 36 inches of snow at one time.  Sure, we had floods and thunderstorms.  But during the time I lived there (1959 - 1979), I only remember one HUGE flood.  And that was caused by Hurricane Agnes.  It washed damn near everything away.  My great-grandparent's house got knocked off it's foundation and swept away when it was hit by someone's BARN!

But, the Ice Storm of 2009 was really something else!  I mean it was Biblical!  Here's some pictures from our place.

We had snapped off trees.












The power junction on the side of the house was torn off by a falling branch.  This pulled the soffett off, exposing our bedroom closet to the elements.  We were without power for 10 days.













It took us 3 days just to cut all the debris from the driveway so we could make it to the road.

My step son Joshua was living in Ellijay, GA at the time and was working at Lowe's.  He got us a generator.  My brother-in-law Joey and his family (Lisa, Jacob and Jareb) drove the 517 miles from Ellijay to bring us that generator.  Their friend Randy came along also.





That was a very hazardous drive in awful conditions.  They risked their lives to help us out.  I'll never be able to express my true thanks for their help.  And then,  Jake & Jareb stayed an additional 6 weeks to help us out.

And we sure needed their help.

The one good thing about ice is that it melts into water.  So, we had plenty of water to melt so we could flush the toilet.  We used John's grandma's laundry kettle to boil water over a fire outside.  That made about 40 gallons of boiling water all day every day.  Thanks Grandma!

We had 2 small generators to keep the freezer & fridge cold.  And the big generator from GA was strong enough to pull our well pump.  Our well is at least 400 feet deep.  That's how much pipe there is to the submerged pump... we know because we had to replace it.  So it takes a bigger generator to get that water up from the ground.

Shelter Insurance was great!  Their adjuster came out & took pictures.  And we got a check within a few days.  That sure helped pay for the repairs we needed to have done.

Here's a picture of what the trees did to John's workshop.

And to the barn roof.

We've met some other wonderful people who helped us out after that storm.  Joe Barnett came walking out of the woods with his chainsaw one morning.  And what a gift he & his wife Jackie have been.  They've been wonderful to us.  Their son Matt has become a friend, as well as their grandson Payton.

We also got to meet Rex and Jennifer Bouldin.  What wonderful people!  Rex has since passed on and we really miss him.  We still get to see Jennifer.  We've also got to know their daughter Ashley and sons Eric and Chris (and their families).  Eric's been great to us, and his son Seth is quite a wonder young man.

And let's not forget our wonderful friend Gena Stout and her husband Kevin.  We've been so blessed to meet them & have them in our lives! 

We've also had help from our friends Julie and Perry Morgan.  Their sons Tanner and Logan have been over to help cut up deadfall and make piles.  And piles there are.  Still after almost 4 years.

I can't express the wonder I feel when I think of all the people we've met and become friends with since we moved here.  Many people thought we were crazy moving off into the woods by ourselves.  Our house had holes in the walls & there was junk everywhere.  But, it's been the right move for us.

Moving to the country makes you learn to plan ahead.  If we hadn't had the time and resources to prepare for bad weather and power outages, we wouldn't have faired as well as we did during that ice storm.  We have propane heat which requires no electricity.  We also have a freestanding fireplace in our den/guest bedroom.

We had the 2 small generators to keep the fridge and freezer cold - not that the freezer was a problem during an ice storm!  Damn, it was cold!

We had a way to boil large amounts of water.  And we had a way to cook for 7 while we were doing repairs and cleaning up.  Dutch ovens over an open fire.  And it worked great.  We weren't going hungry, that's for sure.

And we had canned food in advance.  My family had done hotwater canning my whole childhood.  My husband John taught me to cook with a pressure cooker and to can using one.  And I've really been canning these past 7 years.   And now we've taught Jennifer how.

I'd always lived in the North (Rhode Island and Washington State), so I was no stranger to cold, snow, ice and power outages.  I was a stickler for having commercially canned food in the pantry just in case.  And I love to cook and bake, so we always have our pantry full.

These all helped get us through that bad storm.  If we hadn't been "country kids" and learned these lessons from our parents, this storm would have been deadly.  Instead, it was an adventure.  We had a great time with our family - eating, talking, playing board games, working outside together.  It's one of my fondest memories.