Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Food, Cooking, and Game Preparation starting to assemble my American cook book

after years of collecting recipes, pictures and stories I feel it is time to try and put together this work. I have a lot of recipies around 2000 and a few pictures and even fewer stories to go with the recipies but it's time to get some of the things into catagories, so if you folks wish to help a bit how about a list of catagories becides :wild game, fruits, breads, pies, etc. different is good. i am currently working on recipies for endangered , protected and extinct animals, bet you have not seen any of these before. I have a dozen for whale, seven or eight for walrus and seal and a few for sea bird eggs as well as some song bird such as robin. All real but there is the issue of testing them. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" />

Bullwnkl

Glad you are starting up again on this Winky. Did I send you my g-grandmothers recipe for jugged pigeons?

That is passenger pigeons of course.

I remember I sent her cornbread recipe.


BCR

No Boggy I did not recieve that recipe from Emily America Nash, gotta love that name. what a historical name to have in your family. please send if you would. this is a long slow process but well worth the effort. Thanks Again.

Bullwnkl (Jim)

Ok Jim, first the story. My grandmother who would become Miss 'Merikee's ( as the hands called her) daughter in law told me that as a child she remembered that in the spring after corn planting the pigeons would come.

All the men and their tennants, ex-slaves, would be in the corn fields shooting pigeons to keep the flocks away from the newly sprouted corn. Also shot the roosts when they could be located.

These were Passenger Pigeons.

So she told me most were fed to the hogs but people ate some pigeons too.

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The only recipe, and I am sure there were other ways to cook them, I have is from a hand written recipe book that is dated sometime in the 1870's. Miz America's penmanship is not the best, the ink is faded and the whole book disreputable.

Therefore I am not responsible if you use this recipe and your passenger pigeons don't turn out right. I did the best I could to decipher the writing.

Seems like a lot of trouble to go to for a mess of pigeons but here goes:

Truss up and season the pigeons with pepper and salt. Stuff them with a mix of their own livers-shred beef tallow bread crumbs parsley marjoram and two eggs. So (sic) sew? them up at both ends with cotton thread. Put them in the jug the breast down. Put in a half pound of sweet butter. Stop up the jug so that no steam can get out. Set them in a pot of water to cook. They will take two hours or more and must boil all the time. When stwd (sic) (stewed?) enough take them out of the gravy skin off (skim?) the fat clean. Put in a sponfull (sic) (spoonfull?) of cream a little lemon peel and anchovy shred a few mustroms (sic) (mushrooms?) and a little white wine to the gravy. Thick (sic) (thicken?) it with butter and flour. Dish up the pigeons, pour the sauce over them.



There it is. Next time you get a mess of passenger pigeons you will know how to fix them.


BCR

edited to add: I assume where it says "... must boil all the time" that she means the water must boil all the time and not the pigeons in the jug. Boiling a pigeon for two hours would pretty well reduce it to nothing I would think.

Boggy, if the pigeons are boiling in the stoppered jug there is the possibility of some one hearing a rather loud "Bang" thus I suspect through the process of logical deduction that the water surrounding the jug is to remain boiling.
therefore someone has to tend the fire if it is to cook for two hours. ain't modern stoves just wonderful!!

Bullwnkl. (Jim)

I can supply some great recipes for possum, coon, and bear.

Thanks , go for it


Bullwnkl.

Here's a receipe that has roots in colonial VA/NC/TN. Original meat ingredients were squirrel and venison, but alternatives are included. http://www.marlinowners.com/board/viewtopic.php?t=16415

Don

I wish our friend had been able to complete this, would be a fitting legacy.

Perhaps if people get behind the present cookbook being considered by Mr. Bin, it could be suggested that this book be dedicated to the memory of this gentleman Bullwnkl, who gave of himself to the Campfire and who was a good Friend.

With the idea behind this cookbook being the monies could be given to charity, would Bullwnkl have thought that this would be a worthy project ? I am sure he would have, but there are those like Mannlicher who would know better than I about this gentleman.

What a fitting tribute, mull over the idea, and think, who would like to participate based on this premise. I did not know the gentleman, my loss from what I read, but I would contribute, and work toward this goal.

Lynn

I believe the same way we can not loose our Ameican traditions
especially those that feed and nurish our stomaches and our souls.
ADK

Your initial post reminds me of the LL Bean wild game cookbook where you'll find proper recipes for roasting beaver tails and pickling mountain lion fetuses and the like. Novelty recipes like those are entertaining, but I buy a cookbook every couple of weeks. I go to the big book stores and hit the bargain aisle. I look for pictures that look good, and stories opposite describing the history of the dish. I see the black and white books and or books with no pics, I move on. I bought a couple of forty dollar books the last couple weeks too and it was because I liked the pics and stories. Mario Batali and Jacques Pepin's books were expensive, but the how to stories, and the histories of the dishes were real sellers for me.

I want to do a cook book on my Italian family recipes. I've got a ton of good ones, but I don't know where to start. If I should write them when I make each one and pose a plate full of whatever and take a nice picture. It's daunting.

Rob,
I have been looking at making one with my grandmother's recipes, but just a small one, with lots of photos. I have done books with one of the on-line book companies, and I find them very easy to do, and a very nice final product. You might want to look into it for your cookbook, it allows you to write, add photos and edit, save it, come back to it and add some more. It's rather fun, actually.

M

I miss Jim...