I mentioned several months ago how Matt and I had hiked up to their hunting spot to register it with the state, but haven't really mentioned it since. In a stroke of luck, they actually ended up being successful two weeks ago and suddenly we had a bunch of bear meat to deal with. (That's about as mundane as I can get for the process of hunting. I am sure Matt is super disappointed by my description!)
When the guys did their deer hunt last year, they took all of the meat to the nearby Indian Valley for processing and they did an amazing job. But they also charge quite a bit of money... So this time, Matt and Sam decided to process the meat on their own. Of course, Sam was out of town for two weeks the day after they got the bear, so it had to go in the freezer until we had the time and help to deal with it.
So Memorial weekend, we finally got after it. The first night, Matt and I tried to grind the meat in our super old hand crank grinder and it was a disaster. It was slow, temperamental (or maybe that was me) and we didn't get through hardly any of it. So we called Sam for help the next day.
The little guys have absolutely no clue why we were all in the garage working, but they wanted to hang out anyhow while they ate lunch. And check out their new camp chairs I bought! A very large sporting goods retailer is going out of business, so I got them these and sleeping bags for this summer's planned camping trips. I can't wait to use them!
Matt went off to Cabela's this morning to buy a better grinder after the ordeal last night with the hand cranked one. But his slightly better grinder he was going to buy turned out to be the Rolls Royce of grinders by the time he made a decision. I think he is claiming it still worked out being cheaper than processing in the end, but I'm not 100% convinced. The plan was to have all of this done before a bunch of people showed up for a BBQ at our house, but that didn't quite work out, so people just hung out to watch the show until they were done. Ha - at least we were entertaining!
Also, they were in the garage to do this because we were doing our best to avoid any contamination from the raw meat in the kitchen. Read up on trichinosis and bear meat if you want to know why we were so worried... And why the bear kabobs we made that night were very well seared!
Since Matt bought the super fancy machine, I thought we should get our money's worth and made deer bratwurst with the grinder & sausage attachments. They ended up looking & tasting totally awesome in the end, but man were they a headache! Turns out that sausage stuffing is really a two person job, but Matt was trying to get everything ready for his bike trip the next day. And I really wanted to get these done so he could take some for the first dinner on the trip.
Next time, we'll try it with the bear meat and there will be two of us working on it!
The thing we were most excited to try though was Corned Bear! We had heard that it was the best thing to make and we love Corned Beef, so I was totally on board with trying it and doing the corning from scratch. I definitely hovered over them while they were cutting the meat to claim what I thought were the best shaped pieces. Not that I am an expert, but I have made my fair share of (pre)corned beef!
It needs a 6 day soak in the corning brine, so I mixed it all up and got it soaking while they were off on their bike trip. I figured since it was such a novel thing to have the bear meat, I got some beef to corn as well so we could do a taste comparison. You can see it hiding behind the pink salt (a critical corning component!).
Six looooooooong days later, we finally got to try the Corned meats! The two meats definitely looked different - the beef (on the right) had a much lighter color and a noticeably higher fat content.
The corned bear was super tasty! But I think the vote went slightly in favor of the beef. Bear is just a little bit leaner and that fat gave the beef a little bit better mouth feel. If I hadn't had the beef though, no one would have been any wiser. We had company (including Sam's parents!) join us for dinner and I was worried about having enough!
Of course, the kids could care less what was served for dinner - they were just excited to have super fun play time with each other. And Abby was smart enough to grab the step stool out of the bathroom and got the trumpets off the top of the bookshelf. As loud as those things can be, I wasn't mad at that feat of ingenuity! Plus look how happy Henry was that she got one for him as well! :)
Thomas didn't care that he didn't get a trumpet. He was too busy playing with his cars on the peel & stick race track. And being a pilot. I think at one point he told Henry (dressed as the Fire Chief) that his plane was on fire and Henry rushed off to save it. Those two love their costumes!
And we got visited by our first rabbit! I have heard they are everywhere, but we haven't ever seen them near the house. He even hung around long enough for me to get a photo of him! Of course, the fact that the dogs didn't noticed him might have had something to do with that. ;)