doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com How long can you freeze a spruce grouse?

Sometimes it’s just having a selection of recipes that you look forward to near at hand.

I like chili Colorado made with venison.

Air fried walleye with lemon sauce

Pheasant Marsala, pheasant brats, smoked pheasant pea soup.

Irish venison stew, Goulash, Bigosz,

Pan seared duck w/ raspberry sauce,

And sausages. Every kind.

Always something enjoyable showing up.

I just did a nice Pheasant in a garlic, white wine and cremini mushroom sauce, served over orzo with a side of steamed then lightly sautéed green beans and garlic. It was very good.

Hunters truly do set a better table.

The urbanization of the world around my home here has been ongoing for some time now. What started out as mostly quiet, empty, and rural (back in 1991) has become filled with poorly planned developments and way too-much more traffic. Most of the time I'm barely tolerant of these changes because very little of it is generally perceived as "positive" (progress, right?).

Recently however I have actually found a small way to benefit from all the madness. Whole Foods (locally referred to as "whole paycheck") opened a store near to our resident Costco. Hip and trendy doesn't begin to describe this edifice and it is something of an experience every time you enter it. For the wildly extravagant prices you will encounter there, you can occasionally find some fairly wonderful foodstuffs. In my case, the particular food of interest is live oysters.

Now...while I know that oysters aren't universally loved (it is clearly an acquired taste for many) I have been a fan for most all of my life. On Fridays there now, live oysters are on sale for $1 each (thanks to Jeff Bezos and Amazon...long story) and if any are of actual size (most of the variants offered are pretty dinky, we prefer Blue Points!) I then secure 2 dozen of these briny beauties and haul them home where my bride then makes an awesome tray of Oysters Rockefeller out of each and every one of them (I shuck, she cooks).

Affordable opulence!

Best oyster, or at least not bad, throw them on the grill. As soon as they open they are ready to eat, as is or a dash of a favorite hot sauce. The Whole Foods I've been to are hit and miss for sea food, actually poor as far as fresh goes. Lol, know your store. If it's a good one, patronize them.

Back in the early 1980s, I went through a couple of bouts of getting food poisoning from oysters that came from a diseased bed of some sort. The time frame between being ill and discovering the cause might have been a year or two. It actually happened with fresh and canned oysters.
Haven’t eaten them since. I like ‘em, but, I sure hate getting sick from them.

Best,
Ted

Finished-up a number of creations in the kitchen yesterday, Duck Gumbo, Kentucky Burgoo and even a wonderful spicy duck chilli (yet another great Hank Shaw recipe!). We did have some mild concerns about the age of several of the ingredients being considered (some frozen chicken stock had gone bad, along with some older venison chorizo) but after trimming off a few small freezer-burned sections most all of the waterfowl and gamebirds used were just fine. What was a bit of a surprise was the number of spruce grouse we had to deal with. Instead of 2 or 3 birds I found more like 5 or 6 (I kill the hens by accident while hunting ruffed grouse and they slowly accumulate in our freezer).



Our own Brent here has mentioned several times (in previous posts) that he thinks that they are better tablefare than their reputation would have you believe. Since several of them were 4-5 years old (& after brining them for several hours) I took some breast tenders and fried them up in a pan to confirm their usefulness. These are a darker meat bird but...they were surprisingly mild and tender. Since we didn't have any rabbit or squirrel this year, they were included quite sucessfully in the burgoo (and even the gumbo).

Our freezer(s) are current and tidy now, and full of a wonderful selection of game-based options. If winter ever returns here (60 degrees yet again today) we are more than ready for it now.