Red or gray? I’m willing to learn. I heard gray is okay.
I remember eating them in high school. Crock pot. Don’t eat the big fox squirrels. It wasn’t great. You could sell the furs. They used them in fishing lures. Around here its all grey/black squirrels and the occasional one will have a streak of red.
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Gray and Fox. I’ve not eaten a red (pine) squirrel, but I’d guess they’re tasty too.
Mepp’s (fishing spinner company) always used to run ads in outdoor sporting magazines for buying squirrel tails.
Nothing wrong with fox squirrels as long as they’re young. Same with grays.
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I used to eat squirrel many years ago when I would visit relatives. Lots of different ways to fix it.
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My mom would dip quartered sections in egg wash, then crushed corn flakes and fry in lard. That didn’t suck
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lots of stands here sell it for cheap so i dont bother growing it. i just buy a bunch, blanch it then cut it and freeze. its really good this year with our dry sunny conditions. super sweet!
One of my favorite meals growing up was grandma’s squirrel gravy over sweet potatoes
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You like duck? My nephew pheasant hunts in Wisconsin but the birds i believe are all released by the DNR. Not sure if any survive winter. They are so pretty if you see one in the winter on the side of a country road. They really stick out. Good eating too.
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Finally getting around to digging potatoes in NW Iowa. One new family favorite are all blues. Taste like regular potatoes, but more fun!
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im right behind ya. gona harvest my norland, russian banna and caribou russet next week. the local farmers start harvesting early varities next week as well. the schools up here close for 2 weeks for potato harvest. picked a plenty as a kid. i can go in the fields after harvest and pick up the leftovers for free . many do but i find they tatse better in your own garden. mine are all in 20 gal pots so easy harvest.
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Pots may be a good idea… it certainly is a lot of work digging them up. Either way, I’m thrilled to have a dectn crop this year after having my entire crop eaten to the ground by grasshoppers the past 2 years. (Thank you to my ducks for eating some this year).
Duck is not my favorite. I likely just have never had it prepared correctly.
Pheasant is excellent. There are a lot more of them here than in WI.
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I grew up on duck/goose (you can’t tell the difference for the vast majority of ducks) probably ate more duck and goose meat than meat from the store
For those who don’t know the meat is incredibly dark
For wild ones almost everyone just fillets the breast out and discards the rest
Trim the fat/sinew and cut lengthwise into strips 1/4" in width
Soak in milk
Coat in a mixture of flour, paprika, salt, cayenne, lemon pepper, any additional spices of your choosing (you can do a single or double coat)
Cook in a hot oiled/buttered pan until golden brown
We always called them Mcduckets
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Was there a species of duck you preferred? Is there a difference between a mallard and a wood duck?
My yellow raspberries are blooming/setting fruit again. They already had a summer crop.
Those are two very very middle of the road species in terms of flavor. We didn’t typically target ducks and it was just the species that would come into corn fields the most like geese (typically mallards, wood ducks, and teal)
The two duck species most consistently lauded for their taste are northern pintails and canvasbacks, both extremely beautiful, both not super common because they were specifically targeted for their tasty meat
Considering pintails and canvasbacks are on either side of the big duck divide (dabbling ducks vs diver ducks) I would say that doesn’t matter a ton even though I don’t have a ton of experience with eating diver ducks
The one type you DON’T want to eat are mergansers (common, red breasted, and hooded)
They are a very cool subset of diver ducks with serrated bills that specialize in eating fish (unlike the mostly invertebrates and shellfish of typical diver ducks) and as a result have a horrible rotten fish taste and are the subject of many a cautionary tale amongst hunters
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Picked Honeycrisp
…and Sweet 16 today
Honeycrisp brix tested at 14, so did the one and only Spice Sweet (Fedco) that I had. Spice Sweet was not a favorite of my wife or mine. It likely would be great in baked goods. I didn’t brix test a Sweet 16 yet, but will after a week or so in the fridge.
Edited to add…I’ve got Prairie Spy and Frostbite dropping. I grabbed a Frostbite off the tree to see it tasted ripe and the seeds were brown. Yep and yep. Neither of these varieties should be ripe for another month or more. Warm fall weather accelerating ripening?
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Ripening here has been about a week late.
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everything was late this year, wondering if it was from all the canadian smoke we got all summer. Im starting to get really pissy about that. My HC arent the red type, I might need to get a twig of that sometime, just for fun.
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I think it’s more likely that dry spell in early summer. Just enough dryness for the plants to hit the pause button
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