Vince and Venison

Apparently Vince’s parents bought their groceries at the grocery store. My parents and grandparents grew it, raised it, butchered it, hunted it . . we ate what we had. I love fried squirrel with gravy and Vince would probably evacuate the State of Texas if I cooked squirrel in our kitchen. My dad raised rabbits, quail, pheasant and I can’t remember what else. My grandparents raised a pig or two, chickens and everything they raised was meant for human consumption.

Chad hunted and Vince never would try venison, duck, goose . . he didn’t even want to see it in the kitchen.

Something about living out in the wilds of Texas made Vince decide he should hunt deer. The first one he shot, we called a neighbor and said “What do we do now?” They came over and helped clean it and butcher it. The second one . . same thing . . called the neighbor, took it over to their place and they helped us. After that, we were on our own. Last year, I had absolutely no room in any of our freezer so other than backstrap and tenderloins, I canned every bit of the deer we got. No matter how I fix it . . even when I grill the backstrap or tenderloin, Vince will stir it, pretend to eat it but he really struggles. I think it’s a mental thing and not that he doesn’t like the taste. 

Honestly, the way I think about it – meat that was raised right around here, never fed hormones or antibiotics. I would take that over storebought meat any day. And for us, it’s pretty much free meat. No fancy hunting clothes, no hunting camp or lease . . just walk outside and . . done!

This has been going on for 5 years now . .  me trying sneak venison into our meals. No matter how I cook it, he knows it’s venison . . til today!

That’s venison from the back yard, sweet potatoes and okra from the garden. 

I had been knitting and playing outside and realized I only had an hour til lunch so I grabbed canned venison and sweet potatoes.

For the venison, I caramelized some onions, chopped a Hatch chile pepper, added a little garlic, sauteed that. Dumped in the jar of venison and stirred it til the chunks of meat were kinda shredded. Added a packet of pork gravy mix (all I had), a roasted hot Hatch chile pepper, a little Slap Ya Mama, then stirred in a couple of tablespoons of sour cream and that was it.

We sat down to eat and Vince said “This is really delicious!” I said “VENISON”? I said it so loud that I scared Rita! It was like I’ve been trying to fix venison in some way you would not notice it was venison for FIVE years!”

I totally missed a Kodak moment because the look on his face was priceless! He said “THIS is venison?” Yep! I’m not sure he liked it so much after knowing but we are making progress with Vince learning to eat it. I asked him . . now will you be more willing to go out on the front porch and get more deer this year? He said yes so I guess I’d better be emptying out some jars.