So, I was mightily annoyed with myself when the last of my frozen venison was cooked up last week --no more until next year due to my own fault.
Enter my culinary guardian angel.
A friend called last night to offer up a freshly killed buck that he thought was too damaged to be worth sending to the processor's. I left work at Mach 1 and shoved a big deer into the back seat of the car. Rigor hadn't yet set in making him wiggly and totally uncooperative. For ten long minutes, I tried to keep the messiness of his demise from getting on me or my upholstery. My brain finally kicked in and I slipped my sweatshirt on him and cinched it down, providing me with a handle and a way to keep his gangly legs from clobbering me again. Sad that a dead creature proves to be more coordinated than myself.
He was loaded into my wheelbarrow and rolled up onto the deck at home. Double stroke of good luck: with proper light, I ascertained that much more meat was intact than my friend had assumed. I pieced the carcass out on the deck and processed it all night long.
I mean all night.
All the good parts are for me. Indeed, the poor dude was messed up on one side, I felt more like a forensic investigator than a butcher, but those pieces all went into the pot for dog food. What I saved for the dogs is definitely better than the mechanically separated chicken in commercial dog food.
I quit an hour before I was supposed to be getting up for work and there was still more meat on the neck, but fatigue won.
Third stroke of good luck: 6:30 AM client calls to reschedule our appointment, I can sleep in and take my time feeding the livestock. Glorious day!
Gets better...
What will be tonight's supper: roasted leg of venison.
Oh, happy days!
