Why did you write Game for All Seasons?
These stories of my life were not initially intended to be written and published as a monograph. They were originally published as individual weekly newspaper columns during a two year period of time between my retirement from the world of daily toil and the time that I became weary of being retired and before I began my lifelong dream of working towards an advanced degree in archaeology.
These weekly columns provided me with the occasion and the time to reflect upon my years and to place these years and memories into perspective and onto paper before they vanished. These memories give me a deep sense of personal fulfillment and satisfaction that nourishes me as I look forward to my remaining years and a life that has been about turning the things that I want to do — into things that I have done.
Which story is your favorite?
That is a very difficult question. It is sort of like being asked, "Which one of your children is your favorite?" Most of these stories are specific markers in my memory and in my life. Collectively, that make me the person that I am today. If one were to consider the first stories that were written as having the most prominent places in my memory, then I would have to say that the first six stories that I wrote would meet this criteria. These first six stories were: Poochie was a Feist Dog, The Accidental Trophy, Sausage Rate, Broach was a Hermit Man & One Fine Coon Hunter, Shrimping With Shorty, and Blue Crabs in the Moonlight.
Where did you get the recipes?
I suppose that I am an intuitive cook. When I eat something that is very good, I enjoy experimenting to see if I can replicate the ingredients. Sometimes I find a domestic recipe and experiment with venison until I get it right. People give me recipes. I was fortunate to have grown-up in the country where my mom and my grandmother cooked from scratch. I learned what would go together and what would not. If they did not have the prescribed ingredient, they would substitute something different and the results would be a new creation.
In my travels, I have enjoyed experiencing different ingredients and cooking techniques. I frequently use these culinary experiences to create new dishes. A good chicken recipe might be adjusted and modified for wild duck. A domestic turkey recipe might be adjusted and modified for wild goose. A restaurant pompano dish might be adjusted, experimented with, and modified for tilapia. A wild squirrel recipe might be worked with until it makes a wild rabbit recipe. Sometimes I just start cooking from the pantry and freezer and what comes out -- is what comes out. Miss Anne has a terminology for a new dish that is good tasting, but not a 'company dish.' She calls it a 'smash flop.'
Is this book similar to your The Complete Venison Cookbook or The Venison Sausage Cookbook?
No, it could not be. Both of these books were game and cut specific. The Compete Venison Cookbook has been called the definitive book on the subject of cooking all cuts of venison and in every manner that can be imagined. The Venison Sausage Cookbook was written because I tired of making sausage for a friend. I wanted to write a pamplet so he could learn how to make venison sausage and stop bothering me. I must have succeed, because once this 283-page book came out, he ceased calling. The sausage book was written in three sections (1) How to make sausage, (2) Venison sausages recipes made using the methodology discussed in section one, and (3) Dishes that use the venison sausages that can be made in section two. Game for All Seasons differs from both The Complete Venison Cookbook and The Venison Sausage Cookbook in that it covers a variety of types of game, fish, and fowl – 30 different kinds to be exact. The book is divided into sections – Spring, Summer, Winter, Fall – and features stories for the seasons along with seasonal recipes.
What makes Game for All Seasons a great cookbook?
I think that what makes Game for All Seasons a great cookbook is the wide variation in game, fish, and fowl recipes. For me, it was the fun that I had in developing the recipes. For my family and friends, it was the surprises that they had at the dining table and the smiles on their faces.
What is the most unusual recipe in the book?
Well, the answer to that question depends on your definition of 'unusual.' For some, just the thought of eating frog legs is unusual and, therefore, they may find Stewed Frog Legs unusual. Some might say that a Venison Dip is unusual. And still others might have to think twice about eating a Wild Goose Cheese Burger. If you grew-up eating cornbread and collard greens, then you might consider Puffed Oysters or Poached Fillets of Cobia unusual. I enjoy eating anything that tastes really good. If it tastes really good, I don't think that it is unusual -- just new and different.
Which recipe do you make the most?
I like Blue Cheese Venison Loin Steaks because this recipe is quick and easy to prepare, uses few ingredients, tastes great, and most of us (who hunt large game) usually have venison loin (i.e. backstrap) in the freezer. Miss Anne and I like to serve this recipe when there are only the two of us. Since it is almost fool-proof and very elegant, I also serve it when we have guests for dinner that have never eaten venison. In the summer, when Anne and I eat dinner on the back porch, we like to start with West Indies Crab Salad followed with Red Snapper Caribbean. On a cold Saturday night, we might try Squirrel Mulligan Stew or Wild Hog Chili.
Are all the stories true?
Well, you have to understand that there is a reason there are more Nobel Laureates in literature from Mississippi than from any other state. The reason for this is in our ancestry and in our history of telling the story. We just like to tell a good story. I come by it honestly. Yes, all the stories are true -- at least the thread of the theme, the location, the people, and most of the details are true. Some of the small details have faded in my memory and have been re-created.
Like Abraham Lincoln, I like to tell a story and use these stories to make a subtle point. Whenever I start with, "My granddad once told me a story," Miss Anne knows to sit down because the ball of yarn is about the unroll. Granddad passed away in 1962, but he still 'talks' to me every now and then. With that being said, I understand that William Faulkner was once asked the same question. He replied, "You cannot write about something that you do not know." I would answer, "My Granddad once told me that you cannot write about something that you do not know, any more than you can come back from someplace you have never been."
What qualifies you to write this book?
What qualifies anyone to write a book? I believe there are no qualifiers to writing, just as there are no qualifiers to doing most things in life. What qualifies a child to use a blue crayon to color a house and yellow crayon to draw a sun? What qualified a Neanderthal to draw on the walls of French caves? In my opinion, there are no qualifiers -- other than the joy and the need for one to place their thoughts, feelings, opinions, experiences, and observations onto a piece of paper. I am a fairly good archival researcher and an almost good anthropologist and historical archaeologist, but I am not a particularly brilliant writer -- few of us are and few of us will ever be. Those of us who have had a measurable amount of success in placing a few words in print must be giving pleasure because those who read our words tell us not to stop.
You've been called "a romantic, 20th century hunter-gatherer." Why?
I agree with whomever said that about me. It is true. I am a long suffering romantic, I was born and lived most of my life in the 20th-century, and I am a hunter-gatherer. First, I am a country boy -- born and bred in the country -- although I am not quite sure where I was buttered. I am thankful of having the opportunity to have lived my youth in the country and I would not trade it for anything. Growing up in the country from the mid 1940s to early 1960s was a joy. My dad was a professional Civil Engineer who was born in a house that had a dirt floor and was located at the end of the longest dirt road in the state of Mississippi. He worked his way through elementary and high school and milked cows to pay for college.
I grew up having the best of both worlds: being born into the quintessential two-car, upper-middle-class family who could afford to travel and dine in the best restaurants and to a father who wanted me to learn about and to enjoy good ol' country living. He wanted me to learn about simple living and simple people. He hoped this would shape and mold my world view. I think he succeeded — beyond his expectations.
When the late 1960s rolled around (as was the case with many of my generation), I turned into a wanna-be flower child as was the case with many of my generation. We were questioning everything and rejecting some things. I purchased every book on the subject of homesteading and living a life of self-sufficiency that I could find. Forty Acres and a Mule was one of my favorites. I could have scraped-up enough money for a mule, but these prescriptive manuals never told you how much the land would cost. I spent the 1960s traveling in my old black Volkswagen and lived anywhere I could find to hang my hat — sometimes my cot was on the folding-down back seat on some secluded Mexican beach or deep in a Guatemalan coconut plantation. I rebuilt a small (ca. 1900) wooden sailboat and sailed around the coast of Yucatan. When I saw smoke rising from the land, I would beach the little boat and live a few weeks with the 'natives.' Most only spoke Lacadone and I spoke no Spanish — not that it mattered. I helped them hunt, plant and harvest vegetables, and cook whatever was available before sailing on to the next bay or rise of smoke.
In 1970, I got a "real" job and lived in a suburban area of North Little Rock. In this little semi-rural apartment, I created my own quasi-suburban homestead. I found an antique wood-burning kitchen cook stove and installed it in my workshop. I could not afford a freezer, so I learned pressure canning and baking on this old wood-burning stove. For wood, I used the scraps from the dulcimers and wood-frame airplane that I built. Once, while walking in the fields behind my apartment, I stumbled onto a patch of wild asparagus. This patch yielded little produce, but I harvested the spindly stalks for several seasons. I taught my self to cane chairs and to cross-stitch. While driving around Arkansas, I would ask people if they knew of any hand-built weaving looms in town. I would make drawings and take photographs. When I thought I knew enough about how a floor loom could be made with hand tools and from raw wood, I built a loom and taught myself to weave. I would lead canoeing trips on small creeks in the Ozarks and would fish for smallmouth bass. Occasionally, I would find a slow-moving pool containing crawfish and I would enjoy an evening feast on a gravel bar. The biggest mistake I ever made on one of these trips was when I climbed up a bluff to rob honey from a bee hive in a prehistoric dry shelter. That one still hurts to think about.
Over the years, my job carried me to many places on this planet. I was always looking for that unusual dining experience -- where the locals ate. In Samoa it was a cast-iron pot bubbling in a hole in the ground. In Louisiana, it was walking in knee-deep water in the Bon Carre spillway lifting crawfish nets. In Nevada, it was midnight frog-gigging trips with another Southern boy from 'southern' Manitoba. In Puerto Rico, I found a small local restaurant (The White House) that always had fresh rabbit ready to be skinned and grilled. The 'beach chef' in Ocho Rios, Jamaica was always ready to cook his fresh-caught Parrot Fish and Jerked Chicken on the wood grill outside of the 'kitchen.' While on a twenty-five hour flight to a small Pacific island in Micronesia, I met a Japenese couple that was returning home. They asked if I had a long wait for my connecting flight in Tokyo. I did and they insisted that I go with them to visit the new sushi restaurant that their youngest son had just opened. The young chef and I agreed to swap culinary skills—he would teach me to roll sushi and I would write out for him a recipe for baked banana pudding. In Mons, Belgium, I almost made a big mistake. I volunteered to cook a venison dinner for the family Anne and I were visiting. I made a trip to the local butcher market to purchase a venison loin. An acquaintance, back in the states, had once advised me that the French word for Deer was Cheval and that was what asked for — 'Cheval.' The meat the butcher pointed out was too purple-red and the cuts were too large to have come from a deer. When I questioned him about it, he said it was 'Horse Meatus'. "Monsieur, that is what YOU asked for — Cheval." I placed my hands on my head like antlers and he said, "Ah, you mean Venaison? That is over there. Next time, you should ask for Deer Meatus."
These themes of seeking out unusual cuisine, of homesteading and self-sufficiency have followed me all my life -- I have never outgrown them and for this I am truly grateful. Just before I retired, Anne and I lucked onto a repossessed pre-Civil War homestead out in the country. Finally, in the December of my life, I found the place that I had wanted to live in the April of my life. I found my twenty acres -- instead of five. And instead of a mule, I have an ATV. I have vegetable and herb gardens. Instead of canning, I have three freezers. I have a bream pond and a dove field. In the back woods I have deer and turkey. In the evening, I sometimes walk the trails with the shotgun my dad gave me and catch a few rabbits sneaking out to nibble on the grass.
I never became a homesteader and I could never become self-sufficient. However, I believe that whoever called me a “romantic, 20th-century hunter-gatherer” was correct and I enjoy every minute it.
