Thursday, November 19, 2009

Grouse present

Last year a Northern Pike gave itself to us as we were canoeing on Johnson Pond. This year, as I was walking down my driveway to my garden, I gave rise to two Ruffed Grouse. One flew safely off to the side into the woods. The other flew directly away from me and careened into my garden fence and lay fluttering on the ground. I gave it a chance to see if it would recover, but when it didn't, I took out my pocket knife and bled it out. I've just been through butchering about 30 chickens, so I proceeded to process this grouse. Another present from the wild! I wished I'd taken a picture like I did with the Pike. We ate the bird a yesterday. Basically followed a recipe in the One Pot & Clay-Pot cooking book. Stuffed the bird with chopped apple and shallot spiced with cinnamon and allspice and wrapped it in fresh chard and kale leaves and cooked in a tightly covered pot in a wine and butter liquid. It was great.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Talk about nature's gifts! Happy Hannukah and love to you, Naomi, and the whole family.

Mark

ps At risk of being awkward, your blog was bookmarked and I clicked it instead of the Oak Park Weather forecast by mistake. I do think about you guys and hope all is well. I suppose I should clean up my computer....