FAQ: Where is the antelope tail now?

STILL IN THE DANG CAR.

Overheard: In the parking lot

Me: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Guy: What is it? What's wrong??

Me: THERE'S AN ANTELOPE TAIL IN THE BACK OF MY CAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Guy: How did it get there?

Me: STEPHAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Preface

As I was growing up, every summer for a while our family would vacation at a fish hatchery/fishing resort. After more than a dozen years of catching seaweed-fish, at 23 years old, I was determined to catch a trout. Up at 6:00am, waiting for the siren to signal time to fish... My first cast I caught one, nice sized. I reeled it up to the shore, then dropped the fishing pole.

I refused to touch the fish. I didn't have gloves on, and I was afraid I was going to hurt it. The hook was still in its mouth, but I freaked out. I started crying. Eventually, the fish flopped its way off the hook, but I still couldn't get near enough to it to throw it back in the water. There was much yelling. Once the fish was back in the stream (and probably caught by someone else later that day) I had to walk past my uncles to go back to bed. They wouldn't even look at me.

I haven't fished since.

Paparazzi NOT Invited (GRAPHIC)

4:15am Stephan wakes up like a kid on Christmas, gets dressed in his new camo gear (thanks to his dad) and heads out the door.

12:30pm Stephan calls to tell me that he's got a Doe. Not a Deer, an antelope. His friend wants to shoot a few birds before they come home, so they stay out for a little while longer.

3:00pm I hear the car pull up, Stephan walks out from the garage, bloody from the knees down. Tired- sweaty- wet- muddy- and full of cow poop. He tells me the antelope (or, 'meat for the winter' as she's being called now) is strapped to the roof of the car. He counsels me NOT to go outside. But I grab the camera, a jacket, and a deep breath before heading out.

I had asked him to make sure he didn't bring home anything that could look at me. Unfortunately, legally, the game warden needs to see if it's a male or female. Deep inhales. It's ok. Focus on logistics. There's a dead animal on the roof of the car- how's it going to get down from there, and WHERE is it going now??

Just in time, Karla and Gary show up, excited to see what the great hunter-gatherer has brought home. Karla distracts me as Gary and Stephan get it down, and hang it up in the garage (something about cooling it off and draining fluid). The garage door is closed before I can look at it again. One photo, just of a hoof hanging over the windshield. I don't think I'm going to post it. Thinking about this for a while I'm finally okay with hunting for a few reasons:

1. It's MUCH cheaper than buying meat at the grocery store all winter.
2. We're going to be using everything, not wasting parts.
3. We know that, up until the moment she died, she ate fresh grass, hay and alfalfa, she ran around the plains, she was free. No cages, no overcrowded pens, no eating the mash made of other animals. Ew.
4. We both thanked the doe, and for the first time, I am truly grateful for the animals who give up their lives.

Being closer to the "animal = food" process has made me much more respectful of what I eat. Having a large hoofed animal hanging in my garage does make me nauseous, and trying to explain why to people who live here just takes way to long.

Sausage Supper is FINALLY here!!!!

I've posted the full set of photos from the night of sausage making on the Flickr site. There's too many photos to put them all here. Here is the text, and trust me, the photos are well worth clicking on the link. WARNING: PHOTOS MAY OFFEND SOME PEOPLE WHO DON'T LIKE MEAT. DON'T CLICK IF YOU ARE SENSITIVE TO RAW PORK PRODUCTS.

Making 2,500lbs of sausage in one night - from cutting the meat to grinding, flavoring, stuffing, and smokin'...

Stephan and friends took out veins, glands, hair, etc. from the pork shoulders, being careful to leave in as much yummy fat as possible...

One plastic tub holds 80lbs of pork...

Each tub on the left is 80lbs of pork. Each tub on the right is 20lbs of beef. What you see here is 800lbs of would-be sausage...

All that meat gets ground by this one grinder, by this one man. Thankfully, it's electric. Can't hand-crank 2,500lbs of meat!

Totally reminds me of the Play-Doh "Fun Factory"...

What I can't show you is the little man with the white hair who holds the secret recipe for the seasoning. He makes it by the tub-full and sloshes it into this mixer (a 100lb mixer). The ground meat mixes here for about 10 minutes before moving on...

This is a store bought sausage stuffer (it later crapped out on us). It holds 100lbs of sausage at a time in the tank. It has a water tank, water pump, and the metal cylander is really just a big piston. When the water pressure builds up, it forces the sausage mixture out through the tube and into the sausage casing (pig gut). When all the machines crapped out, it was up to the rookie (aka Stephan) to hand-crank out the last 180lbs of sausage...

As the casing is being filled it's easiest to roll the sausage into a coil before cutting it into smaller links. If you look down the table you can see someone untangling some pig gut to load onto another stuffer...

Here's Anna cutting the sausage into more-or-less uniform lengths. Since most of them were less uniform, she changed jobs soon after this photo...

With all this raw meat flying around, some of it happened to land on the grill. Sausage patties and links- MMMMMM...

We smoke about 1/2 the sausage at a time on Friday, with the high school kids helping to rotate the batches...

Delicious Dish

I recently went to a Soup and Salad Luncheon. It was very well attended, and it was actually REALLY nice to go somewhere are know a lot of people. The food was out of this world. The long line was well worth it. I ate way too much, and got to try a few foods that I'd never even heard of.

Here's the interesting part. Salad... no lettuce was in the building that day. Salad = mayonaise. Or Cool-whip. Or Italian dressing. Now, don't get offended if you live here, I've spoken to the organizers and they told me that usually there is at least one salad with lettuce- usually a Taco Salad.

Today's lesson: Salad does not = lettuce. Maybe that's why the last time I made "That Damn Salad," no one ate it.

Souvenirs

(Souvenir is NOT an English word. How would YOU spell it??)

Mom sent us two religious medals from Santa Fe, which we received in the mail today, St. Anne and St. Stephen. We read all about them on the enclosed cards.

Then we got home, to find that one of the dogs had also left us a souvenir: it seems that a long day of stick chewing and office-paper gnawing culminated in an eruption of stomach acid and wood pulp IN OUR BED. It soaked through the throw blanket, the comforter, and the bed sheets to stain our mattress. As we were blotting dry the puke-strained mattress Stephan asked in his best bedroom voice, "Feeling frisky yet?"

On our part, there was much pulling of hair and gnashing of teeth. As Stephan trudged out to the garage to find more blankets he yelled over his shoulder, "Call your mom and ask her who the patron saint of puking dogs is!"

Mom, who is the patron saint of puking dogs?