Disappointment and ... a new huntress?

Boyfriend and I just spent a long weekend in New York City to learn the answer to the question we'd been asking for seven weeks: Would Boyfriend's blog, Hunter Angler Gardener Cook, win a prestigious James Beard Foundation Award for best food blog, or would "finalist" be as far as he got this year?

For those who aren't as immersed in the food world as we are, let me explain: The JBF awards are a big deal in the food world. The Oscars. Not just for foodies, but for chefs and restaurants and food writers. Go to a bookstore and look at the cookbooks - if you see a James Beard seal on one, you know it's good stuff. Having a blog that deals with wild game among the finalists meant a lot.

If you follow his blog, you know by now that he did not win. But our trip to the city brought a pleasant surprise I never would have expected. Read more...
OK, there were plenty of predictable moments. I saw more freakin' famous chefs and television personalities in the space of 24 hours than in the previous 43 1/2 years of my life. And - I kid you not - world-renowned chef Jacques Pepin's left elbow brushed up against my right breast at an after party.

OK, really, it was an accident, almost not worthy of the tawdry name-dropping. Trust me - he wasn't copping a feel. He didn't even look at me. Or my breast. It was just crowded.

So, moving on, here's the thing that really got me revved up: I don't know if it was by accident or by design, but the night of the media awards, Boyfriend and I ended up at the same dinner table with his competitors, a team of bloggers from Sunset magazine's "Our One-Block Diet". They were the ones who would win.

But we liked each other right off the bat. Our food ethic was the same; the only difference was that Boyfriend and I don't just garden for food - we hunt for it.

We chatted and drank and ate together as the ceremony progressed, and by the end of it, we were all quite friendly. I don't remember exactly how it came up (forgive me - cocktails consumed: Manhattan, champagne, Stella Artois, innumerable glasses of wine and sherry), but one of the bloggers, Johanna Silver, announced that she'd totally be into hunting.

Boing!

It reminded me of the day my English PhD buddy Hellen found out I was a duck hunter and immediately declared that she, too, wanted to hunt ducks.

Johanna is in the center. Boyfriend's on the right.

You know me. I love spreading the faith. Hunting has brought me closer to what it really means to be an omnivore on this planet, fully aware of the cycle of life and my place in it, long-submerged instincts awakened...

So we began making plans. Take hunter safety. Get a gun. Let's get you to a women's shoot - doesn't have to be a women's shoot, but they're just fun. Practice. Then come fall, Girlfriend, I will take you hunting! It will change your life...

Johanna's more into pheasants than ducks - the hunting passion that consumes me 100 days a year and then some - but who cares. She's a foodie from the San Francisco Bay Area who eats meat, understands where it comes from and wants to participate more deeply in the process of putting food on the table.

What's not to love about that?

Photo credits: Main photo: Hank's mom. Second photo: Me? I think. With one of the Sunset girls' cameras...

© Holly A. Heyser 2009