Down Home Stories: Heading Home

Down Home Stories: Heading Home:    Seems that no matter how long you've been gone, once an Okie, always an Okie. I'll be going down to visit Stanley the last two we...

Heading Home

   Seems that no matter how long you've been gone, once an Okie, always an Okie. I'll be going down to visit Stanley the last two weeks of May anf the first week of June. The first thing out of my mouth when I tell folks about the trip is that "I'm going back home".
   We won't be doing any prospecting down there aal though I am thinkin about taking the metal detector along just in case. We are going to be doing a lot of fishing and maybe even a little noodling. Really looking forwar to that. I may even get the chance to do a little squirrel hunting.
   The big event will be a pot luck dinner at Schulter School. We had a great turn out the last time I was there and I'm really looking forward to this one. My oldest Daughter will be coming down and if things work out right I'll get to meet my grandsons, finally! If everyone makes it that seems to want to there should be lots of family some of which I haven't seen in close to 40 years and a lot more that I have never meet.
   Keep ya posted.

Down Home Stories: Quail

Down Home Stories: Quail:     Quail    Here's one that I happen to really like. You can do this at home but to make it really special you need to be ...

Quail

 

 

Quail

   Here's one that I happen to really like. You can do this at home but to make it really special you need to be out in the sagebrush country of eastern Oregon or northern Nevada. 

   First off you need to get some Quail. How many will depend on how many folks you're going to feed. I think Quail is a pretty rich meat so I only need a couple for myself. How you get them is up to you. Since I'm not talking store bought here, make sure you know what the game laws are for which ever area you're in. To me the best way is to trap them. You can make a bird trap using small limbs fro the sagebrush as the frame and the bark as string to tie it together. You can also snare them using anything from fishing line, shoelaces or cordage you can make from sagebrush bark. Yes, shooting them will work but you really need to use a rifle and go for the head shot. There's just not enought meat to be wasteing with a shotgun.

   Any time I build a campfire I always dig a shallow pit and line it with rocks and build my fire n top of the rocks. This gives me a nice fire inside an enclosed area so I don't have to worry about it spreading, an oven if I do find something like a Quail that I want to bake and hot stones that I can use in a boiling bag in case I find something to make a stew with.

   Keep in mind that Quail, like most other wild game, are very lean meat. You can pluck them just like a chicken and save the skin. I try to do that if I'm going to roast them but for baking or stew it's not worth the trouble most of the time. I guess that would depend on how hungry you are.

   For this idea I just rippend the fethers off, skin and all. Cleaned tem good, saving the heart and  kindneys which I left in the body.  I added salt and pepper then stripped the end leaves off some sagebrush. Crush the leaves and rub over the outside the add more to the body cavity. I also stuffed  three fruits from a prickleypear catus in to the body. (you don't need these but I just happened to run across a patch that morning and pick quite a few of them)

   Wrap the birds in cat tail leaves (soak the leaves in water first) Strip a few pieces from the leaves to use to tie them.

   Scrape the stones from your fire pit and sprinkle a thin layer of dirt over the coals. Place the birds in the bottom and cover with the stones. Replace any hot coals yo have scraped out and re-build your fire.

   I keep a small steady fire going for about three to four hours. Doesn't have to be a hugh bonfire. Just enough to keep the stones hot.

   Pull them out, unwrap them, sit back and watch the sunset as you enjoy a great meal!

Oak Flour

 

   Sometimes when you're out prowling the woods for something to eat you can spend so much time looking that you tend to overlook the food that's right under your feet.

   Stanley and I knew every patch of oak trees within walking distance of Schulter and quite a few that weren't. Groves of oak tress are the best places to hunt squirrels and they are the best places to find den trees for coon and possum. Needless to say we tromped around on acorns just about every time we went to the woods.

   I'm not sure where the idea came from but for some reason we thought acorns were poison to people. I don't know why because we knew that squirrels, rabbits and deer ate them and normally we were willing to at least take a bite of any plant those three ate just to see if it tasted good. Anyway, it wasn't until I was about 15 that I decided to test that theory. Mr. Ritter had explained to me that the way to test woods food was to take a small piece and see if it was really bitter or made you mouth feel numb or anything. If it didn't then take a small bite and wait a few hours to see if there was and effect. Believe me, there were some that definitely had an effect!

   I finally started trying a few acorns just to see what they'd and no that wasn't very smart but most things I did back then would fit that description. I found out after a few trials that you can eat the acorns for the White Oak tree just like you would any other nut. They taste kind of like a hickory nut. I tried some of the others we have growing down home and found that red, black and post oak all make you tongue and lips feel a little numb. Black Oak even made me a little sick to my stomach but since I had taken such a small bite it wasn't too bad.

   Anyway, on to the recipes. The first time I tried this I just cut up the acorns and added them to cold water then put the water on the fire to boil it and see if I could get the bitterness out. Need to add one thing here. Getting the nuts out of the shells can be a real pain in the you know what. Acorn shells are soft, not hard like pecans or walnuts so they are really hard to crack. I started out just smashing them with a rock, that works but it's messy, I ended up splitting them with my pocket knife. Since those days I have heard of other ways including using a garlic press and I'm sure there are others that are a lot easier. Also, make sure you don't waste your time gathering any acorns with small holes in them unless you want to try some oak worms to add a little extra protein. You might need to boil the acorns mutable times to get all the tannin out. Just keep dumping the water out and adding more until the water is clear. After the water is clear you can drain them and set aside to let dry. They don't need to get completely dry, just enough to cut without sticking to the knife blade. Chop them into pieces, you can skip this step but it seems to me like the next step works better if they are chopped. Next you mash them into a paste. I used a mortar and pestle for this. Next spread them in a thin layer on a pan and let them dry. You could spread them on a piece of hide and let them dry in the sun, or a flat rock and dry them over a slow fire. I cheated and used a cookie sheet and the oven set at the lowest tempiture. However you want to do it TAKE YOUR TIME! You can't hurry this step, they have to be perfectly dry.

   Another way you can fix them is by cold water leaching. Chop them up after shelling and put them in a bowl filled with water. Set this in the frig for a day. The water should turn a tan color. Keep replacing the water until it is clear then process the acorns the same as the first method.

   Once you have them dry you can use a flour sifter to removed any larger pieces. You can store the flour the same as any other as long as you're sure it is DRY. I found out the hard way that if you don't get it dry you're not going to be able to store it for more than a few days without it becoming moldy so not matter how you dry it, open fire, oven or dehydrator make sure you finish the job.

   I've only used acorn flour for making bread but I have heard of honey cakes  and even a pizza crust being made. What ever you want to try keep in mind that acorn flour won't rise like regular flour, or at least I never could get it to so I mainly just made soda bread. Since I don't live in an area where we have oak trees I haven't been able to try it for anything else.

 

Critter on the Half Shell

 

   I saw my first Armadillo in Oklahoma when I was 13. I had seen and even caught one in Texas before, but even then they were moving north and by 62 they had finally made it to Deep fork Bottoms.

   The first one I caught in Oklahoma was at the golf course in Okmulgee. My Uncle Floyd new the guy who was the grounds keeper there and we stopped by to talk to him one day. While we were there he was complaining to Uncle Floyd about Armadillos digging up the course. As we were walking across the course he yelled "there's one of the little SOB's" I looked where he was pointing ands sure enough there went one hopping across the lawn. I didn't even think twice, just took off chasing after it. For such a small animal them little dudes can really move. They do a kind of half jump, half run that really covers the ground but I finally got close enough to jump on him. I was really proud of catching that thing and went running back to Uncle Floyd and his friend to show him off. The golf course gave me a quarter for catching him which made my day a lot brighter but then Uncle Floyd took him and lay him on the ground and then took his pocket knife and stabbed him in the back of the head. That kind of took the fun out of catching him cause I kind of thought I'd take him home for a pet.

   I caught about three more before the idea of eating one popped into my pea brain. I knew that people in Texas ate them but when I started asking around I couldn't find anyone around home that had ever eaten one or even had any idea of how to fix one. I have learned several recipes since then but for the first one I thought I'd try it just like you would roast a turtle.

   I dug a small fire pit and lined it with rocks. Then I built a good size fire and kept adding wood till the rocks were good and hot. I removed the head, tail, and cut the entire belly off the armadillo and removed the guts. After rinsing him off good in Salt Creek I put some cat tail roots, wild onions and wild garlic in the chest cavity along with salt and pepper. I soaked some cat tail leaves in the creek and wrapped the body completely. After the fire had burned down I scraped most of the ashes out of the pit and lay him on his back on the rocks. I added more wet leaves to cover him and a layer of dirt on top. I left him there for about four hours while I wondered around and did a little squirrel hunting.

   I will admit that the meat was not what I expected. It wasn't gamey at all and but letting it cook as long as I did it was falling off the bone tender. The wild onions and garlic  added a lot of flavor but I'm not sure the cat tail roots added anything. They weren't bad by themselves but they are never going to take the place of potatoes.

   You can do the same thing if you happen to get a hold of a Dillo. You can cut the body completely away from the shell if you want then just lay it back in the shell, add salt, pepper and whatever veggies you want. Wrap the whole thing loosely in tin foil and put it on the grill. I think it comes out the best if you cook it with the lid closed at about 250' for about four hours. If you have a gas grill add a pan of wet wood chips to add a little smoky flavor (I like hickory chips).

Cat Tail Bread

   It's not all that hard to find something to eat out in the wild, it depends mainly on the season and how picky you are. Around Oklahoma there's always squirrels, rabbits, fish, snakes and if you can't managed to catch at least one of those and you're hungry enough there's always bugs and worms (don't knock em till ya try em). The hardest thing to come up with, to me anyway, has always been bread. Course now, I like bread and enjoy having it with pretty well every meal so I set out to try and learn how to make it.

   When I first started trying this I didn't know anyone that knew how to do it so I had to fall back on  on my trusty mountain man books to see if I get any ideas. Now, as usual, the books have a lot of over-view but very few details. About the only thing I was able to find out was that native Americans used to pound cattail roots into a paste and made a kind off an unleavened bread (and No, I didn't have any have any idea what that meant until much later in life).

   The first time I tried this I gathered a bunch of cattail roots from McKenna's pond early in the season. My camping area was up stream from Skyrocket (the local swimming hole) and the pond was close to the creek. There is a lot of black shale around there so I stacked up a couple of pieces on each side of the fire pit and put one long one across the top to use as a griddle. I got a good fire going to heat the rock while I mashed the roots. I peeled the roots and lay them on another piece of shale and tried mashing them with a branch from an Oak tree. It looked like it should have worked, but didn't. Seemed like every time I tried to hit the root I would just catch the side and shoot it of the stone. I finally found a piece of granite that I could use and was finally able to get everything smashed into a paste. The first time you try this you will surprised at how much mositure are in those roots. The resulting paste comes ends up looking just a little on the slimy side but in for a penny.

   Once your griddle is hot (rock in my case) pour the paste on, kind of like a pancake. Flip it once the bottom side has browned.

   Now I'm not going to lie to you. Was it hot, yes. Was it filling, yes. Did it taste good, let's just stick with hot and filling. It's hard to judge some things with our moadern tastes, Maybe if we had grown up never tasting any other bread we would really like the taste but for me, I ate it and if it was all I had I'd eat it for every meal but it would not be my first choice.

   After a few more tries I did find ways to make it a little better. If you happen to catch the cattails when the heads are full of pollen you can knock the pollen out and mix it in with the paste. It will thicken it and adds more flavor. It even adds a yellow color which looks more like pancakes when it's coked.

   The best way I've found to add flavor is to mash some berrys into the paste. The first time i tried this it was using dewberries. I've also tried black berries, possum grapes and sand hill pumbs any of these will turn it into something that you can actually look forward to.