Good news for California huntresses

Last month when I wrote about the First Lady of Waterfowling, Ellie Sharp, I mentioned that the California Waterfowl Association was starting a Women's Outdoor Connections initiative.

This week, I found out what exactly this group will be doing in the coming year: a women's shooting clinic in August, a photography contest this fall and one of the coolest things of all, a daddy-daughter dinner and dance sometime around Valentine's Day.

The reason I know about all this is that I have an inside source: me. I was invited to join the WOC committee earlier this month, so now I actually get to be involved in developing these programs. This of course means that I'm gonna be pretty biased about the virtue of the WOC initiative, but hello! What's not to love?

I think all three events will be fun, and I'll be involved one way or another in each of them. But I'm really excited about the daddy-daughter dinner in particular. Why? I've heard a lot in the hunting forums about dads (and granddads) taking their girls hunting, and I know that this represents the true future of women in hunting.

Plus, it will just be adorable seeing all those proud papas with their little huntresses.

© Holly A. Heyser 2008

Colorado huntress: the case for pink camo

I have to start this by saying I've always hated the color pink. It is the enemy of all tomboys.

Or so I thought. A story by Charlie Meyers in the Denver Post (click here to read it) may give me reason to grudgingly accept pink.

Meyers writes about Keli Van Cleave, a goddess of bowhunting whose entire persona is infused with pink. If you click on the link or the photo here, you'll see that even her arrows are pink.

An excerpt from the story: "It may sound crazy," she says of the seeming incongruity of pink camouflage, "but it works because animals are colorblind. Camo is just a breakup."

I'm guessing she's not a waterfowler - ducks see colors perfectly well. But that's fine. The point is, here's another huntress showing that women don't have to sacrifice their particular affinities to become hunters. "I've shown you can be in the outdoors and still look good," she tells Meyers.

Meyers reports that Van Cleave has a company, Pink Outdoors, that has a pink camo clothing line. I searched for it online and found a website that says "coming soon," so I can't see what she's got to offer. But I'll be sure to check it out and report back once she goes live.

© Holly A. Heyser 2008

Hunters don't eat what they kill? Oh my.

Oh boy.

San Francisco Chronicle film critic Mick LaSalle posted a blog item Saturday about the fact that Barack Obama doesn't kill ducks. (In case you missed it, Hillary Clinton recently told Dems in the blaze-orange state of Wisconsin that she killed a duck once.) LaSalle criticizes politicians who pander to the hunting community, and declares that hunting is "at best, weird."

To each his own - I don't really expect any pro-hunting commentary out of San Francisco (though my friends who live there accept and respect what I do).

But some of the comments that followed were just crazy:

Who's eating those ducks? Nobody. It's not about food. It's about bonding through slaughter. Why pretend this is a good thing?

and

"Sport" hunting and slaughterhouses are two ends of the same moral cesspool. My credo is: Don't kill what you're not willing to clean and eat; don't eat what you're not prepared to kill.

and

What percentage of hunters actually eat what they kill?

Oh really?

You really think I'm going to spend tons of money on gun, camo, ammunition, target practice, licenses and fees, then get up at 2 a.m., spend eight hours in a marsh freezing my butt off, working like crazy to get some ducks in range, only to throw away the ducks at the end of the day? Puh-lease!

I agree with LaSalle's point that the political pandering is irritating and silly. It makes me giggle.

And I don't mind that there are people out there who oppose killing and eating animals. We all have the right to consider the facts, make our choices and live by those choices.

But people who make stuff up to make their case against hunting are just ridiculous. If only they knew how silly they've made themselves look.

© Holly A. Heyser 2008

Best guacamole recipe - by special request

I'm generally not given to bragging about my cooking, but if there's one thing I'm pretty proud of, it's my guacamole.

I mentioned it the other day when I wrote about how I am (or used to be) scared to death of cooking wild ducks, and that prompted my friend Albert at The Rasch Outdoor Chronicles to request the recipe. While I don't, as a rule, write about non-hunting subjects, I figured this would be a good exception to the rule. Who doesn't love guacamole?

You may wonder why I've chosen the photo above to illustrate this post. Wouldn't an avocado be better? But it is this bizarre little item that is most essential for good guacamole.

It's called a molcajete, pronounced mole-cah-HAY-tay. Say it a couple times with a fierce Samurai growl - you'll be surprised how much you like it. It is carved from basalt, endowed with the charming face of a pig and painted for good measure. Totally cheesy.

It is a mortar and pestle, but its particular features make it better than the marble version you might find at Pier 1, or the the clay suribachi used in Japanese cooking - the one with scratch marks in the clay that make it look like a permanent zen garden.

Here's a closeup of the important part of the molcajete:

The rough pitting of the bowl is the magic behind good guacamole. It grinds ingredients without pureeing them, so they still have texture, and it brings out the juices of each ingredient, infusing them together far better than you would using a blender, or my mom's old method, two forks.

So how do you find a molcajete? If you live anyplace with any substantial Mexican population at all, you probably have a Mexican market near you. (I bought this one in Richmond, Virginia - not a city known for its Mexican population - so it's easier than you may think to find them.) Most Mexican markets carry molcajetes of varying quality. The one shown here is one of the best and usually goes for $20; others with a rougher grain aren't as good, but will suffice. Read to the end if you plan to buy one of these, because you need to know how to "cure" it.

One final note before I get to the good part: I didn't invent this recipe. It's pure Diana Kennedy, the goddess of Mexican cooking, who developed it by traveling extensively throughout Mexico.

THE BEST GUACAMOLE RECIPE EVER

Ingredients:

> Three ripe avocados
> One-half onion, chopped
> One ripe Roma tomato, chopped
> 2-3 serrano chilis, or jalapenos if you prefer something milder, chopped
> A small handful of cilantro, chopped (about 2 tablespoons)
> 2-3 ripe limes
> Salt to taste (I prefer kosher salt, or margarita salt - anything with a large grain)

Process:

Place chopped onions and chilis into the molcajete and grind them until they've been reduced to pulpy bits and released much of their juices. Add cilantro and do the same. Add tomato and do the same (it doesn't take much).

Now, slice the avocados in half and remove the pits. Don't worry about pulling the pit out carefully to preserve the flesh of the fruit - that's how guacamole accidents happen. Using a spoon, scoop out a few spoonsful of avocado flesh at a time and grind it into the mixture in the molcajete. Don't do all your avocados at once or it'll be difficult, and you'll miss big chunks. As each batch gets thoroughly mushed, add another few spoonsful.

Now, add lime and salt to taste. There truly is no single acceptable measurement for this. I come from a long line of people genetically predisposed to crave salts and acids, so in my family, we use a lot. The amount of lime you'll need also depends on the particular alkalinity of your avocados. So just squeeze in some juice and sprinkle in some salt and keep testing it on a tortilla chip until you're happy with it.

Kennedy will tell you to save the pit and put it into the dip to keep it from going brown. In my experience, the dip never lasts long enough to go brown, so I don't bother.

That's it!

MOLCAJETE FAQ

Q: I noticed your molcajete looks stained. Don't you ever wash it?

A: Yep, I do, but avocados contain a lot of fat. Healthy fat, but fat nonetheless, and it stains the stone. Nothing to worry about.

Q: So how do you clean it?

A: Easy: I put it in the sink, run hot water in it and add a little dish soap, then use a scrub brush to get into all the pits and pores. You won't be able to get out all the green bits - they really stick in there. But it's OK. No one has died from eating guac out of my molcajete. After scrubbing, rinse thoroughly to get out all the soap, then turn it upside down to drain. It takes a while to dry out completely, because it's a big stone sponge.

Alternate method: Rinse it out and stick it in the dishwasher.

Q: You mentioned something about curing the molcajete. What's up with that?

A: The molcajete is made of stone, and if you just start using it straight off the shelf, you're going to get bits of stone in your food. Not so good for your teeth!

To cure it, you dump in a handful of uncooked rice, grind it down, rinse it out, and repeat 3-5 times until the rice no longer looks gray at the end of the grinding. I won't lie - this process is a total pain in the butt. But it's worth it when you make your guac and all the people who eat it tell you it's the best guac they've ever had. Your big fat head will make you forget all about the torture you endured.

Q: Any more advice?

A: Yes, when you find your molcajete on the store's shelf, you'll often find the pestle missing. It's not really missing - they often store them behind the counter to keep people from stealing them. Just ask for one. And if the store carries more than one kind of molcajete, make sure to get a pestle that matches - sometimes they'll accidentally hand you the lesser large-grained pestle, and you definitely want matching quality mortar and pestle.

One more thing: Be careful with it - if you drop it, it'll break. But if you handle it carefully, it'll be fine. Mine has survived a move from Virginia to Minnesota, and then from Minnesota to California, and one I got for a friend survived a move to Afhanistan. The biggest problem she has is finding avocados to put into it.

© Holly A. Heyser 2008

Kitchen confessions of a huntress

Have I mentioned that I’m terrified of cooking ducks?

You wouldn’t know it when you read here how much I love the great food that hunting puts on the dinner table. But here’s the deal: Boyfriend’s the one doing the cooking. And his game cookery is immaculate, so I eat well (see photo above).

It’s not that I can’t cook. Before Boyfriend started feeding me, I cooked all the time. And I can make some mean Mexican food, baby – homemade tortillas, fresh-ground spice mixes, intricate moles (that’s MOW-lay – the chili sauce with chocolate in it) and pretty much the best guacamole anyone has ever had.

But that’s stuff you make with storebought ingredients. Now I have this sacred bond with my meat. I saw it fly, I took it down, I watched it die, I plucked it and gutted it and I am terrified that I will dishonor it with incompetence in the kitchen.

Boyfriend has been gentle about this. He never nags me. He just informs me when there’s a teal I could cook, or lets me know when the kitchen will be free for a few hours here or there on a weekend. It reminds me of the time when I was a freshman in high school and my Mom came into my room to let me know the new Reader’s Digest was in, her index finger coincidentally underlining a headline about the dangers of marijuana. Hint hint hint.

And I usually respond to him the same way I responded to Mom: “Thanks.”

But this week I was forced to cook a duck.

We had some leftovers from our big duck hunters dinner earlier this month – some teal brought by one of our guests. We were going to eat them during the week, but we just got too busy, so Boyfriend put them in a brine to preserve them. Then we were supposed to eat them Sunday, but we were all pooped after sturgeon fishing.

On Wednesday, we were approaching a dangerous point: If it's wicked to dishonor a duck by cooking it badly, then it's undoubtedly a mortal sin to let it go to waste. Something had to be done.

So I did it. I set out to cook the duck, following Boyfriend's very simple, very foolproof recipe for roasted whole duck:

> Preheat oven to 450 or 500 degrees.
> Pat dry and salt a whole duck with skin on.
> Brown the duck in a cast iron pan, preferably using duck fat, but oil will do.
> Turn off the burner, then set two celery stalks in the pan and rest the duck on them, breast side up.
> Pop the whole shebang into the oven for at least 10 minutes (more for bigger birds, but we're talking teal here)
> Start checking it with a meat thermometer at 10 minutes. When it hits 135 degrees, pull it out of the oven.
> Serve, ideally with yummy green things. Or whatever.

I followed the recipe, except for the salt part. This duck didn't need any more of that. After the bird had been in the oven for 10 minutes, I dutifully poked it with the meat thermometer and watched it hit 165 degrees. Yikes! I pulled it out, let it rest for a few minutes, then plunked it on a plate to see how I'd done.

It sure wasn't as rare as I like it. And after all that time in brine, it was saltier than bacon. But it was actually good! I like salt anyway. And I was so emboldened by the experience that I cooked two more of them tonight, and they came out even better.

I'm feeling good about this!

OK, I'm feeling guilty that I couldn't work up the guts to cook a duck until it was someone else's duck that I might screw up, and there was a high likelihood it would taste funky anyway from its long soak in the brine. Talk about playing it safe!

But I did it. And I'm no longer afraid.

© Holly A. Heyser 2008