Venison, Yum!

My wife's uncle is a deer hunter, and a pretty good one at that. One Friday morning in November he shot a deer, skinned it, gutted it, and gave it to us. We made jerky from some of it, froze several nice roasts, and made sausage from the rest.

For Thanksgiving Day dinner my father-in-law had requested the neck roast, which he grilled, along with a turkey and half a hog on his new grill. This is no ordinary back yard grill; it's made from an old home heating oil drum and mounted on a trailer. He built the entire thing himself over the last several months, and the Turkey Day meal was the shake down cruise so to speak. Everything went well and there was so much meat we could have hosted thirty people and had leftovers.

We brought home many pounds of turkey and pork, most of which we froze to slowly use over the next few months. We boiled the turkey carcass to make soup stock, the remaining meat to be used in turkey salad which I took to work as lunch over the next few weeks.

As if we didn't already have plenty, Uncle M. shot another deer Friday morning after Thanksgiving Day, this one a huge ten-point buck. We kept a shoulder, a butt, and the tenderloin. Diane cut lots of sausage meat off the shoulder and I got several two or three pound roasts out of the butt. The tenderloin makes another three or four pounds.

We sometimes forget how fortunate we are, living out here beyond the sidewalks, but seeing all that meat piling up in the freezer makes me thankful on many levels. I'm grateful for my wife's uncle, a generous soul and a pretty good hunter too, and I'm also mindful of the wildlife which was harvested to fill my family's bellies. 'Tis the season of the deer indeed.