A Different Kind of Hunt

During the last week of April to about mid-May, depending on the altitude, is prime morel mushroom hunting time in North Idaho. We get so excited about morel season. If you're a mushroomer too, you are probably out there right now walking around in the woods scanning the ground for these little treasures.

We do most of our morel hunting on our 20 acres and our neighbor's adjacent 60 acres. We do have some favorite local public hunting grounds, too. But of course they are a secret! Here's my hubby and daughter after being caught "poaching" morels from our neighbors acreage last night. Actually we all jumped into the Kubota and he drove us to another great picking site on his land. What a great neighbor!
We get to see a lot of nature when we are out scouring the land for morels. Some of the flowers that are out at the same time are triliums, dog-tooth lilies, shooting stars and lady slipper orchids.
Another type of mushroom that we like to pick in the spring are coral mushrooms. They look a lot like a cauliflower and it's easy to harvest literally pounds of coral mushrooms if you find a good area for them. They are big and much easier to see that morels. Can you spot the morels in this picture? Sneaky little buggers!
Here's what we ended up harvesting last evening and we will be going out again tonight to see if we can find more. In a later post I will share my Cream of Morel Soup recipe but for now I will recommend slicing some morels rolling the slices in a little flour, salt and pepper then frying them in melted butter...YUM!
But remember, never ever eat any wild mushroom that you have deemed edible just from identifying from a picture in a book or on the internet! You need a knowledgeable living, breathing human being that has harvested mushrooms for a while to take you out mushroom hunting and show you what is safe to harvest and eat. I took classes at the local community college that included field trips where the instructor showed us what was safe in our local forest.

Jalapeno + Cheddar + Deer + Smoke = Yum!

I got a chance to smoke up a batch of our favorite deer sausage last weekend...Smoked Jalapeno Cheddar Deer Sausage. This sausage I hold near and dear to my heart because in my quest to learn how to make it I stumbled upon the Bradley Smoker Forum where I not only learned how to smoke sausage and meat but also met a group of some of the nicest folks in the world. I highly recommend the forum to anyone interested in smoking their own food if you own a Bradley smoker or not. There is an incredible wealth of knowledge to be found there.

This a great recipe that I guess could probably be used with elk or beef, too. The venison that I work with is already ground with 15% beef suet when I receive it from the processor. Since the recipe calls for 3 pounds of ground venison make any additions of fat to it before you weigh out the 3 pounds.

I have used both the 38mm edible collagen casings and the natural hog casings. They both work well but prefer the natural hog casing because they are less likely to tear if you accidentally over stuff them. Also, they make a nicer finished product by adhering to the sausage contents when cooked. The collagen casing are edible but they tend not to stick to sausage during the cooking process and you instinctively want to peel them off when you eat the sausage. I do not have this result when making snack sticks using the 19mm collagen casings but I'm not sure why this is the case because I am buying both sizes of the collagen casings from the same source. Maybe someone who knows the reason can post it in the "comments" section at the bottom of this post.
Ingredients:
3 pounds of ground venson already mixed with fat
1 cup of distilled water
3 TBS of Morton Tender Quick, (make sure to level each tablespoon but do not pack it)
3 finely diced large jalapeno chiles
1/2 tsp of garlic powder
1 tsp freshly ground pepper
2 tsp of whole yellow mustard seeds
1 1/2 cup cheddar cheese at about a 1/4" dice
6 to 7 feet of hog casings or 38mm collagen casings

I purchase a product called high melt temperature cheese which can be found at meat processing supply companies like Butcher & Packers. You can use regular cheese from the local grocery store but some of it will melt into the meat due to the temperatures reached during the cooking process. The high melt temperature cheese is wonderful to work with because it will keep its form during the entire process and it is lovely to see all the chunks of cheese in each slice of the sausage.

If you are using natural hog casings soak them for about an hour in cold water and set aside while you make your sausage mixture. In a large mixing bowl place the Morton Tender Quick, garlic powder, yellow mustard seeds, ground pepper and distilled water. Stir this mixture until the Morton Tender Quick dissolves completely. Once the Morton Tender Quick is completely dissolved you are ready to add the meat, cheese and diced jalapenos. Mix this very thoroughly in a big mixer or with your hands (preferably wearing disposable gloves).
Now you are ready to stuff the sausages. Rinse out the hog casings well after soaking and use whatever stuffing device you prefer, you can see my Kitchen Aid Mixer setup at the top of this post. I personally like to have some pre-cut butcher twine at the ready before I get my hands into stuffing.
Stuff to the lengths that you want and whatever fits your smoker best. I have a 4-shelf Bradley smoker and if I am smoking the sausages on the rack I usually make the sausages 16" to 18" in length. Once stuffed place them on a cookie sheet uncovered in the fridge overnight to cure.
The next morning, preheat the smoker to 130F and place the sausages in the smoker. Let the sausages sit at this temperature (with no smoke) for an hour or until the casings are dry to the touch. Once dry bring the temperature up to 165-170F and apply smoke for 2 to 4 hours depending on taste, I apply 3 hours of hickory smoke to mine. Leave in the smoker until the sausage reaches an internal temperature of 160F. Be careful not to let the smoker get above 170F or the fat will start to render out of the sausages. Once they reach the desired temperature, shock them in a large pot of ice-cold water. Now they are ready to eat and enjoy.

Signs of Spring in North Idaho

After the last two longer-than-normal winters we have experienced here, it does not take one long to really appreciate the first signs of spring. The woods come alive with the thumping of ruffed grouse, the crowing of pheasants and the gobbling of turkeys. The chipmunks reappear from their long hibernation searching and scurrying about on the ground looking for food.

For us humans it's time to start planning our veggie garden, mend fences for the arrival of our beef steers and one of my favorite spring diversions, morel hunting. We found some of our first morels of the season just last weekend. Coral mushrooms come out during the second half of morel season and will post some picture of those then we find one.
I have to admit that I am running a little behind on the veggie garden but the weather is so cool this spring I think it will be okay. We will be planting this weekend sugar snap peas and lettuce. I have started my tomato plants on the first day of spring and they seem so tiny compared to the ones I see at the stores which are available right now. I seem to always cave in and buy a couple tomato plants because mine seem so small by the time I plant them the first week of June. But the funny thing is that small they may be the always end up as big as the store bought plants and produce more. I'm going to stay strong this year and resist the urge to buy any tomato plants. I have 20 started plants right now all along our south-facing window sills. Hopefully seeing the big trees out there will inspire them to grow big!

A One Pound Plus Moskvich

My two favorite types to grow here are Moskvich which is a Siberian beefsteak type hybrid and Red Agate which is a determinate saucing variety. I plant a lot of the other favorites, too, like Sungolds and Brandywines which also produce well during our short season.

Emma with a Red Agate

All the tomatos pictures on this post are from our 2007 season. We had tomatos last year but only few fully ripened to color in the garden and a majority of them had to be bagged until ripe. I attended the North Idaho Fair that year and did not see one red tomato! It made me feel so much better to see the blue ribbon winners were big green tomatos. Not that misery enjoys company but I figured if these folks that really know what they are doing still have green tomatos in August then I must not be too much of a failure after all!

Mega Tom and Micro Jake

My dad and mom came up for turkey season this month. We had a great visit and my dad had wonderful hunting success! I had success too, but on a MUCH smaller scale.

Our area has a high turkey population. High enough for Idaho Fish and Game to issue depredation permits for out particular game unit. All during the winter the turkeys hang around our chickens stealing their food but when their mating season begins in early spring the jakes and toms disband from the mixed group and cruise around the forest looking for hens.

The tom that my dad got weighed 23 pounds and had a beard that was almost 10 inches long. When he was dressed out he hit 18 pounds on the scale. We did not know the significance of his weight until my husband checked it out on the computer. This was a big turkey that could of ranked high in the Idaho records if we had him officially weighed before preparing him for the table.

I cooked him the same way I do a domesticated bird and he came out wonderfully moist and tender. The only thing that I would say was "tough" were the drumsticks but those legs had to carry a lot of weight probably a mile or so each day so we will forgive the big guy for that. I cook all turkeys covered until the last 30 minutes to brown the skin. The internal temperature reached 170F. A few years back we shot a couple of jakes that cooked up beautifully and suspected that the older toms would not be nearly as tender but this big tom did not disappoint!

Now my little turkey was the polar opposite of my dad's mega tom! When I shot my jake he tumbled into a nearby spring and got himself soaked so he wasn't a very pretty picture when my husband photographed him. He was in a group with 3 other jakes and he had the longest beard (4 inches) in the group so I thought he would be of decent size. Boy, was I wrong! I easily picked him up with one arm he was so little. I didn't weigh him before I cleaned him because he was so wet and dirty I didn't want to put him on my scale. When he was all dressed out he only weighed 9 1/2 pounds.

He's going to make a great eating bird to be sure. Almost all of the bird shot was concentrated on his head and he had only two body shots: one in the neck and one in his back between his wings. Because of his youth he was extremely easy to pick, too. He's in the freezer right now while I decide if I want to bake him or put him in the Bradley smoker.

I purchased a second turkey tag that I can start using beginning May 1st. Maybe I'll have another hunting story to share soon. Wish me luck!

Planting Fruit Trees...At Last!

Boy does time go by fast! We have owned our place in Northern Idaho for 12 years now and have never planted a fruit tree. Oh, we've talked about it many times but just never acted upon it. It just seemed kind of daunting to try to figure out what and where to plant. Also, we haven't had the greatest of luck on the few trees that we tried planting here due to the depredations of mice, gophers and deer.

Our home came with three fruit trees: a greenish/yellow apple of some sort that we thought might be a Granny Smith, a tiny plum tree that makes tiny plums and an apricot tree that bloomed so early that it generally got its blossoms froze off. The apple tree usually makes enough fruit some seasons to make a few pies and a batch apple butter.This year, with the encouragement of my brother-in-law Doug, we decided that none of us were getting any younger and it was silly to keep putting off planting fruit trees. Most fruit trees will take at least 2 years to be mature enough to produce any fruit so that even delays the wait for your reward even longer.
We ordered four trees from Stark Brothers: a Honeycrisp semi-dwarf apple tree, a Jonathon dwarf apple tree, an Intrepid standard peach tree and a Harglow standard apricot tree. Honeycrisp is our favorite apple and the Jonathon is a baking apple that blossoms at the same time so they can pollenate each other.
The apricot and peach trees were both described as late blooming varieties which will hopefully work well here. We are at USDA Zone 6 so our winters are not that cold compared to most northern states. But the springs here take a long time to get rolling. It is normal to experience frosty nights here well into the first week of June. I don't dare put our tomato plants in the garden until June.
The sight we picked for our "orchard" was the backyard. It slopes downhill towards the west and to the east is our house which we hope will help divert cold air around it as it travels downhill. The slope continues past the border of the backyard so there is no risk of cold air pooling there either.
Since these trees were bare root we soaked them in water for about 4 hours before planting. Each hole was dug about 2 feet wide and a 1 1/2 feet deep. We mixed the soil from each hole with Eco Organic Compost (1 part compost to 2 parts soil) and 6 TBS of Vigoro Timed-Release All-Purpose Plant Food which feeds up to 6 months. I never use non-organic fertilizers on my vegetables or raspberries but we made the exception this time because we wanted a time-released product to help get these trees well-established. The fertilizer will surely be gone by the time these trees produce fruit...I hope!
To address all of our predation problems we put a layer of defenses (or should I say fences!) around each tree. Before we back filled the the holes, we surrounded them with 2 foot wide hardware cloth to hopefully prevent an attack from the gophers. Then we cut the tops and bottoms off of 2 liter Coke bottles and wrapped the remaining part of the bottle around the base of each tree to deter mice from chewing on the trees at their base. To keep the deer and Greg's geese from nibbling the trees we placed a cylinder of welded 5 foot wire farm fence around each tree. These were stabllized by T post, too.
I'll keep everyone posted on how these trees do. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they make it!

What All the Well-dressed Chickens are Wearing.

From the first batch of chicks that we hatched, Emma has picked out her favorite. It's a little blonde pullet that she has named "Cooner" because she has a beard like an Ameracuna chicken. Actually she is a cross between a Buff Orpington rooster and an Easter Egger hen.

Emma has been bringing Cooner into the house and dressing her up and the chicken seems to tolerate it, too. At first I started to worry if the bird was maybe sick or something and I told Emma to stop bringing her in but after a few days I noticed nothing wrong with her. She's just a laid back chicken!

Want More Room in Your Freezer? Bake a Pie!!

Well, it's attempting to be Spring here. This is when I look in the freezer and say to myself "We have got to use up some of these things up!" We grow a lot of strawberries and raspberries and there were still about 3 gallons of 2008 raspberries in our freezer. So, I decided to bake myself a raspberry pie.

I took a rhubarb pie recipe that I just love and switched the filling on it to one of raspberries. One reason I like this recipe is that it is a little lower on the fat being a one-crust pie. Also, it uses a no-roll pie crust where canola oil is used instead of shortening. But believe me this is no Weight Watchers recipe by any stretch! Here's what you'll need:

Crusty Raspberry Pie

No-Roll Pie Crust:
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp salt
1 Tbs sugar
1/2 cup canola oil(or other vegetable oil)
2 Tbs milk

Filling:
4 cups raspberries (fresh or defrosted frozen berries)
1 cup sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
5 Tbs Clear Jell or 1/3 cup flour
2 Tbs chilled butter cut into pieces

Topping:
1/4 cup chilled butter, cut into pieces
1/4 sugar
1/2 cup flour

Preheat oven to 350F.

To make the crust, mix flour with salt and sugar then pour in oil and milk. You can mix it with well with a fork or put it in a food processor and give it a few pulses until it is crumbly in texture.

Transfer the mixture to a deep-dish pie pan and press with your fingers to spread it over the bottom and up the sides of the pan.

In a large bowl, mix the sugar, cinnamon and Clear Jel (or flour) together. Add the berries and gently toss to cover with the sugar mixture. Pour this into the prepared pie crust. Dot with the butter pieces.To make the topping, mix the butter, sugar and flour with a pastry blender until crumbly or place it in the food processor and give it a few pulses until crumbly. Sprinkle over the berry mixture.

Place your pie in the oven and bake for one hour or until the filling is bubbling and the topping is browned. It's great topped with ice cream or whipped cream. Enjoy!