and a strong cup of coffee

Honest Kitchen: Honest, whole food cooked from scratch. Simple, delicious and sometimes from the wild side. Robin, Erin and Michelle often prepare wild game, mushrooms, berries and other foods they harvest, grow or buy locally. Regardless - come cook with us. Copy this paragraph (please leave the links) into your blog and leave your link in comments each Wednesday so everyone can visit.
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As a mom, it is great to be able to pull some venison out of the freezer, stick it in the crockpot all day and know that when we get home from work, there is a healthy, organic, free-range pile of meat waiting to be eaten. And that even my two year old can eat it without me worrying about what hormones are pumped into it.

Here is what I used:
* Quart bag of frozen stew meat (deer)
* 2 cups of beef bouillon (I used water and cubes)
* Wild Cheff Roasted Garlic
* Wild Cheff Wild Onion


I threw the whole thing in the crockpot with the water going in first to make sure that nothing stuck to the bottom …

With the weather getting nicer, you will want to make sure that you are not missing out on any of the fun adventures that I have planned this summer!  Now, you can subscribe to Coffee and get the posts and notifications right in your Inbox. 

Enter your email in the box off to the right (above my bio) and you are all set.

Thanks and happy hunting!

Dad, Hubby and I headed into the woods last weekend to look for some turkey sign as well as see if we could find some sheds.  It was a beautiful afternoon and we took our time enjoying the run and the start of some green grass.

As soon as we got out of the car, we saw deer tracks - and some pretty nice looking ones. We headed up to the Sky Condo and down through the woods to T3.  We were maybe 10 steps into the woods when Dad stopped and pointed - four, maybe five flags bounced through the trees and away from us.  We were glad to see that they were starting to spread out again and break away from their yarding areas and they looked healthy.

We spread out to cover more ground and kept looking for a shed or two.  A few years before, Dad and I had found one in this area so we were hopeful but we came up empty handed.  So, we headed to T3.

Tracks and poop were plentiful.  We walked through the woods and down to where T3 is standing. The frost is leaving the ground and the stand is much m…

We spent a few hours in the woods last weekend and I came across this pile of scat on the side of an old log.  It almost looked like the mystery critter could sit on the log and use it as a toilet seat.


It looks like turkey poop but there is a pile of it and usually when  have seen signs of turkey, they are more scattered and a little bit larger. These were the size of Cheetos puffs.

So - what does it belong to?

If you were out in the woods and saw this, would you be able to know it was chaga right away?  I was lucky that I had Robin with me and she was able to point it out with 100% certainty of what it was. She was also on top of things and brought a saw to get it off the tree.
It was a beautiful, somewhat windy day and we got out in snowshoes before it got too sloppy and slushy.  It was almost hot when the wind died down. 


We took two pieces off of the tree and went in search of more, which we did not find.  I am hoping to keep working on my ability to identify this in the woods when I am out now but it may take a time or two before I am totally confident in my finds.

Honest Kitchen: Honest, whole food cooked from scratch. Simple, delicious and sometimes from the wild side. Robin, Erin and Michelle often prepare wild game, mushrooms, berries and other foods they harvest, grow or buy locally. Regardless - come cook with us. Copy this paragraph (please leave the links) into your blog and leave your link in comments each Wednesday so everyone can visit.


We were in the mood for something a little different and headed to Pat's Meat Market to see what they had that would not be totally foreign to cook.  The result was duck breast.

I put the meat in the warm pan with no added butter or oil.  Duck is fatty as is and I like the natural flavors better.  I kept the pan on medium heat and let the smells start permeating the kitchen and dinning room.  I flipped them once to sear it but let them cook while I prepared some roasted chickpeas and broccoli.

Duck is one of those meats that you cook like something else (bear, you treat like beef but cook like pork…

When some blogs just talked about opening day of fishing season, Robin Follette and I LIVED it!

I drove four hours north the day before to hang out with Robin and go on a few adventures (those posts are coming, but here is a sneak peek).  The biggest was to stand in the Stream in Grand Lake Stream on opening day and try our hand at fly fishing.  We didn't really care about catching a fish but we were excited to see the groups of people that would be there and the excitement surrounding the beginning of fishing season. 

We met up with Brian Donaghy of Epic Adventures to help us with gear and guidance. When we pulled into the parkinglot, we saw Brian and only 4 or 5 other vehicles.  This was not the crowded fishing adventure that people said that it would be. Robin and I were the only women there with about 6 or 8 other guys who were there to hang out and talk to people or fish.


Robin and I got into our waders and got ready to head into the water with Brian.  We had to get up and …

The following is a copy of my article from the Northwoods Sporting Journal. 

Who is on your short list when you think of outdoors women?  I would like to think that if you are reading my articles, that my name would be there.  I also hope that Robin Follette is on your list.  If it isn’t, you need to quickly head over to her website www.robinfollette.com and be prepared to spend hours reading her stories and reviews.  She is one of the top outdoors women in Maine that you may not know about.


Last year, Robin declared that it was her year and she was going to attack that to do list with gusto.  She had a long list of goals having to do with her vegetable garden, flower gardens, fruit trees and bushes as well as trying to raise two pigs, six turkeys, meat chickens and ducks to provide meat all winter long. She also wanted to:
* Bow hunt turkey and deer
* Bear hunt
* Rifle hunt deer if bow hunt fails
* Moose hunt
* Partridge and woodcock hunt
And these are just a small sampling of her list fr…

Honest Kitchen: Honest, whole food cooked from scratch. Simple, delicious and sometimes from the wild side. Robin, Erin and Michelle often prepare wild game, mushrooms, berries and other foods they harvest, grow or buy locally. Regardless - come cook with us. Copy this paragraph (please leave the links) into your blog and leave your link in comments each Wednesday so everyone can visit.

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I was worried when I got my bear that I would not like the taste of the meat.  My bear was 457lbs so there was a lot of meat to be had.  I gave some to friends to try and then had to figure out how I was going to try it myself.  I figured burger was the way to go, but in order to cook it thoroughly to kill any parasites, we had to pretty much dry it out.  I was not a fan.

Then, I attempted my stew recipe on some of the stewmeat.  I did my thing, added some spices and let it cook in the crockpot overnight.  When I was woken up at 2am by the smell, I knew things were looking up.  Little did I know …