Eating Well Dept.

My colleague J. dropped off a cooler full of frozen venison this afternoon. He and his sons hunt deer in Minnesota in a "high-intensity" area. Usually, hunters get to bag one deer apiece, but in a high-intensity area, where state officials are really trying to get rid of a lot of extra deer, hunters are allowed five deer apiece.

"Absolutely not," said J.'s wife, who is still emptying her freezer from last year. This came up in conversation one day about a month ago at the courthouse, and I offered to take a deer's worth of meat off J.'s hands if he needed the help. His eyes lit up. He and his boys ended up shooting a few extra deer (not 15), and we are the beneficiaries.

J. promised some meat to another friend, and so we ended up with 8 loin chops, 3 tenderloins, and 13 packages of ground meat (venison mixed with some beef, because venison is so lean):

"What kind of meat is this?" Joey asked when it arrived, and looked a little too quickly at the labels. "Lion meat!"

The sausage and jerky is still being worked on; I'll get the final processing bill from J. once it's done.

A few weeks ago, J. also, very kindly, brought two pheasants into work for us. We cooked them up while Jen's parents were here. Mom browned them and cooked them up in a wine sauce. Totally delicious.

I failed to get pictures either of the frozen birds in the courthouse freezer (the thought of which tickled me every time it wandered through my brain), or of the prepared dish. Jen's dad Ken asked if J. had any extra pheasant tail feathers around (to stick in a hat), and J. brought in some fine ones.