Wood Stove Cooking

Every once in a while I get a wild hair and have to try something new.  Cooking on a wood stove is something I have thought about plenty and even watched a bunch of YouTube videos about.  This morning we got our first real cold temperatures.  When I woke up it was 30 degrees.  OK, that may not be "real" cold to folks in Minot or Anchorage, but here in the Old Dominion that qualifies as cold.  Cold enough to spend the time to get the wood stove going so I could cut the chill in the house.  Our wood stove is a simple little Vogelsang Boxwood stove, nothing spectacular.  The only real modern innovation is the electric heat reclaimer that blows hot air captured from the stovepipe back into the room.  Its a pretty nifty gadget and it works like nobody's business.  I got the stove rocking this morning!  It is toasty in the living room, where the wood stove is located.  As long as I keep feeding it wood it keeps kickin' out the warmth.  So, I was thinking about the slow cooker and my thoughts turned to the wood stove.  I have never cooked on it before and I thought I would try something simple.  I pulled out a blue enameled camp style dutch oven, rinsed out some dried red beans and put that puppy on the stove.  I removed one of the little, round cooking-burner covers and set the beans over it.  It heated up to boiling MUCH faster than I expected, which was encouraging.  I cut up an onion and some dried Anaheim chili peppers from the garden, found that special, big, meaty ham bone I've been saving for some special pot of something, added some water and let her go.  It's been cooking since about 0900 and its about mid-day now.  The smell is tremendous. I took the lid off of the dutch oven to help cook down some of the water I added to cover the ham bone, and the smell of the boiling beans and ham is being circulated around the house by the heat reclaimer.  I'm ready to eat right now!  The good part is this is my proof of concept that if we lose power we can still cook and feed ourselves.  We've been blessed so far that every winter when the storms come we have not lost power long enough to cause a problem.  But now we know, if it happens we can boil some dried beans and veggies from the garden.  Maybe next I'll try that dutch oven bread recipe I saw on YouTube.  I'll let you know how the beans turn out.

Countdown to Firearms Season

Deer season for hunters using modern firearms in Stafford County, Virginia, opens on the 13th of November. I am hopeful that we can put at least one well fed doe in the freezer this season. Turkey season is open right now and there is an abundance of wild turkey around here. Not being properly equipped for wild turkey season, in my own opinion, keeps me from spending any time waiting for a turkey to cross my sights. It is archery season now but I do not own a bow and have never tried bow hunting. I have nothing against bow hunting, but I prefer not to launch an arrow, stick it into a deer and then have to follow a blood trail hoping that it does not leave my little patch of woods and cross onto someone else's property before it drops dead. I prefer to stick to my plan to ambush a deer with my .12ga slug gun and not have to worry about the deer running much at all. I went on-line and bought a DVD on how to butcher deer for maximum meat. I also bought a really good 5" boning knife. I recommend a website called "Ask The Meatman" for anyone serious about learning more about butchering deer, beef, and pork. They have great videos, they sell knives, have recipes and basically everything you need to know about processing your own meat. I think the average American has completely lost a connection to where meat comes from. The closest we come to understanding is possibly seeing a cut chart on the wall of our grocery store butcher counter showing a cow with lines that map out the cuts of meat. Plenty of deer hunters take their deer to a processor/butcher who cut it and wrap it for them. I want a better understanding of the process and I want to control how my meat animals are raised, how they are treated during their lives and how they are killed and butchered for my family's consumption. It only takes a few minutes on YouTube to get a good understanding of how our grocery store meat is raised, (over) inoculated, treated like something less than a fellow created being during their lives, often over crowded, hardly ever given anything approaching a natural life, and then terrorized in their final moments of life, killed by uncaring, low paid employees of industrial meat processing plants and butchered in less than sanitary conditions that barely meet the low standards of the US Drug and Food Administration. Our answer is to raise our own poultry, ensure they have good lives, are treated humanely throughout their lives, not given unnecessary drugs or poor feed and then killed in a humane way and processed in a sanitary way by me, not "some guy" who couldn't care less about the health of my family. There are a number of farms around here that offer pasture raised beef that is slaughtered and processed on the farm by the farmer. That tends to be what we prefer.

Fall is here - at last!

Fall is one of my favorite seasons. I love when the long, hot days turn into cool evenings and mornings. Fall always reminds me of Europe, for some reason. I remember the cool days and the Volksmarches in Germany, the walks through immaculately maintained woodlands, the breezes that carried brightly colored leaves to the ground, the smell of the Earth, the warmth of the Sun. We have a great fall season here in Virginia. Halloween is normally a blast because the temperature is just right. Fall is apple harvest season and I cannot wait for our apple trees to begin bearing fruit. It is also pumpkin season. We only got a few small pumpkins this year. Next year I'll plant them later and pay more attention to them than I did this year. One thing that fall always reminds me of is hunting season. I've never been a big hunter but, having worked in the firearms industry for years, I always look forward to fall because the American hunter takes his sport seriously. This year I've decided that, since we have the land and the deer, I'll try to fill my limit. I'm not a trophy hunter. I want meat. So, I took my Remington 870, which was originally intended for home defense, and bought myself a great, used, 24" rifled slug barrel with a cantilever scope mount. Thank God for the Second Amendment and Gunbroker.com. After researching a bit I decided to try the Winchester Supreme .12 gauge, 3", 385 grain, partition Gold sabot slug. I stole the little red dot scope off of my tricked out Kalashnikov and put it on my slug barrel. To make a long story short, I sighted that puppy in at 25 yards, based on my planned kill zone, in only two rounds. I can't wait. The plan is to put a couple of big, healthy does in the freezer as roasts, steaks and ground meat. I LOVE me some deer chili!