FOUNDATIONS

The steel was scrubbed to a worn finish leaving very little of the factory produced lure it once had. What plastic it did have on either side was cracked due to its constant use, from mistreatment or maybe a little of both. I remember it being used frequently to feed our family and maybe once or twice as the threat of a weapon. It remained a primary tool of my mother’s love and a utility of my father’s stewardship of his family.

This 6-quart stockpot, my mother’s “spaghetti pot”, had handles still with their original rivets and the faint words Montgomery Ward pressed into its copper-lined bottom. It was the centerpiece of my family’s gastronomic history. The lid had long been lost to the dump, mistakenly donated, or vanished wherever such things disappear to, never to be seen from again. Its task, however, was chartered to whatever else fit its diameter.

It fed hundreds by my modest count and was used by my kid sister and I countless times as the centerpiece of our makeshift drum set during our youth. It was put into action when my father nearly burned the kitchen to the ground due to an ill-planned business phone call and the cooking of chicken fried steak. Likewise, it was the vessel I used to cook, some would say attempt to cook, for friends in my teens. This simple pot, most likely a wedding present to my parents outdating even myself, would be one of the bedrocks of my culinary career.

So why would I start this relationship with you in a publication such as this speaking about the nostalgia a stock pot would give me? Why would I be almost romantic about such a memory when tasked with the objective to discuss the culinary side of hunting. One word: Foundation.

I was asked recently by an alumna of the Women Hunt® family where I started my journey in wanting to teach cooking. “Where does this passion come from?” she asked responding to an Instagram post. This question is one I’ve been asked multiple times and the answer remains constant. My family.

You see my mother is, in every context of the meaning, the life of the party. Having a full house of people to feed was the norm. She held close her love for her family and her faith, so much so that it led her to become a youth pastor. Her passion for being a light for others, to this very day, shines in those she meets. My late father was her support, acting as a sergeant at arms when our modest home was filled multiple times with nearly a hundred high schoolers attending a youth night every Thursday. Our neighbors who still live next to my childhood home in San Antonio can begrudgingly attest to this.

That pot was simply a tool that fed so many. A utility that anyone would pass up in a thrift store without a second thought weighing no more than four pounds, was heavy with memories. It was a symbol for the mission my mother and her family were to later find out was our commission to serve others.

It’s not hard to find food in our modern lives. What is hard is to find food that means something. If the soul of eating was an ingredient, it fell from the recipe card of our modern American diets long ago. Multiple apps exist to take the guess work out of providing for ourselves the necessary task of eating, thus surviving. It’s become extremely simple to obtain sodium, fat, and sugars at a constant, seemingly without end. Where man seeks convenience, business will always oblige. This is the foundation of capitalism and I applaud it, but what is lost in this transaction?

The answer for myself and countless others is that foundation. The equity we needed to reclaim something that was lost and is slipping further and further from our grasps. The ability to source and cook for ourselves. That same ability to cook for others and to provide sustenance to the ones we love.

That spaghetti pot was an avatar for that movement within my past. It symbolized the feeding of countless young souls that made their way into my home. A home that rarely had a locked door and would be a soft place to land for so many wayward youths. It was not just those hungry for a home cooked meal that would find their way over.

Currently, the need for convenience has altered our sense of living. Less families cook then ever before ushering in its fair share of horrible byproducts. The current state of nutrition for children can be summed up in the need for Type 2 diabetes protocols for eight-yearolds. For adults, the leading cause of death in Americans, heart disease, remains the number one killer. This is the same condition that took my father, making this mission of mine a personal one.

A foundation can only be as strong as its fortification. The rebar, concrete and framing it took to get me to be a wild game chef came a little further back on a German dairy farm not too far from Shiner, Texas in the town of Yoakum. The very same family farm where my father passed was where I also adapted my vocation to the outdoors.

My weekends and time off from school during my youth were spent in this soil. Milking cows, fixing fences, feeding, and I’m sure so much more that I exiled from my memory. It was country in every sense of the word and its caretakers matched the description.

We ate a lot from the land and this meant the offerings from a large garden, whitetail, foraging from around the farm, and hogs. So many hogs. Produce was fermented, grapes turned to wine and anything that benefited from preservation was preserved. Mason jars of all shapes and sizes sat in the cupboard, my aunts handwriting in cursive embossed across their faces. It was all the habitual practices of their upbringing and served us well.

My mother tells a story of my beloved uncle Ray, who’s actually my third cousin, killing squirrels for a dinner to welcome my mother’s first trip to the farm during my parent’s courtship. This crucible was not without its motive of teasing the “city girl” my father brought. The rodents sat on the table, roasted to perfection, most likely over salted if I know my family and starring back at my mother. “Beware the shot,” Ray warned my mother as she hesitantly picked her squirrel from the platter at the center of the table.

This didn’t scare her off, obviously. Stories like this one fill the memories, deer camps and farms of our nation and beyond. People from far and wide breaking bread over the food they harvested themselves. Currently this idea seems more of a fad for social media posts than the nomenclature of “survival” our ancestors once deemed it as.

Fortifying a foundation with core memories, life lessons and even mistakes made brings me to this crossroads. Every animal I have fabricated, whether commercially during my twenty-plus years running professional kitchens or those hanging from a gambrel on a deer lease have taught me a lesson. That honoring the death of an animal needs to be done in the best and most humane way possible.

The next step in this process is where the fun comes in. Where I ultimately long to take you, the reader, while writing such articles...a look at not just the importance of the sacrifice but also the joy it can bring to you and your family. The breaking of bread, the slicing of perfectly cooked protein and the drinking of wine over a meal of your design, smiles all around.

I have not taken this task to simply write to you in order to give you recipes, my favorite cutting boards or to sell you on what hunting caliber is preferred by chefs. No. Rather this is also meant to be a soulful conversation to the core of why we hunt as humans. Why we put in the equity into our world to later withdraw what we need to feed ourselves and why we apply heat to protein to make something magical.

One step further from that point is to enjoy the process of such a task. To help take the guesswork out of, what anyone who cooks wild game will tell you is a high stakes endeavor. To implement antique and modern food practices to achieve the best result possible.

This is going to be fun and it is my hope that you are along for the ride in a way that we all can learn from each other. Each contribution I submit will be that of me unpacking the wild world around us. First and second-hand accounts of the “what happens” after the animal succumbs to your efforts—what tools have served me well—and the partners who make them. Whimsical and heartfelt stories that I hope are familiar and inspiring. More importantly, I want to act as a resource to enjoy your time in the kitchen, over the fire or on the mountainside.

Most of all, I want for you to uncover the reason you bring your harvest to the kitchen. What methods exists just beyond your grasp or research that can best utilize your kill? What techniques can be employed to make game cooking enjoyable for those who have reservations about eating such protein? What tools can bring cooking from a chore to a joy?

That simple wedding present still sits in the cabinet at my mother’s home, acting as a beacon to my culinary past. Its usage not as frequent due to the implementation of newer and sturdier cooking vessels. I frequently look into its empty void and think of the long conversations, laughter, tears and lives changed that this simple tool facilitated by a family and a humble spaghetti pot. This is our craft. It is survival paired with the knowledge and know how to make it enjoyable...and at the same time, bringing joy to others in a way that honors and nourishes. This is ours to steward and do so with vigor. Let’s get cooking. WS