You are looking at a deep-fried hamburger.  What did you expect?  Soy nuts and tofu?   The She Bear needs to eat!

The components: A pattie dredged in egg and flour and fried in 3 inches of vegetable oil. Rounding out this artery destroyer are three strips of bacon, a fried egg, mayonnaise, Dijon mustard, salt and pepper, topped with freshly shaved parmesan cheese and a smattering of local greens. For health.

We were also going to deep-fry the bacon but decided that might send baby June into cardiac arrest.

This is how we celebrate three years of marriage.

Guess which order was Jake’s and which one was mine.

(Lest you think I’m some lettuce leaf eating ice cream hater, I had just polished off an order of beet soup, flatbread pizza with mozzarella and pancetta and homemade tagliatelle with pea shoots and snow peas. I was stuffed. Jake, clearly, was not.)

It’s black raspberry season here at the ole palatial estate and fortunately there’s not enough of them to actually bake anything so I’ll just have to eat them off the vine, one at a time.  Darn.

When a man can make a biscuit this light and flaky and buttery, he is officially Southern. That means I’m married to a Southerner. (And no, there are no Stars N Bars bumper stickers on any of our vehicles!)

Witness: The Eggs McHusband, breakfast of fantasies.

I like to think that A and P have highly discerning tastes when it comes to food — P prepared us the most delightful thrice folded French omelet during his stay — so I have no choice but to conclude the Eggs McHusband satisfied their palates because a rather large box from fancy  William and Sonoma showed up yesterday bearing, among its treasures, this manly apron:

The McHusband models his namesake

When we first saw it, I exclaimed, “Wow, someone from William & Sonoma reads my blog! How delightful! They designed an apron named after your breakfast sandwich, babe!”

Jake patted my belly and said, “Um, no hon. I’m pretty sure it was monogrammed by A and P.”

You see, there is an inverse relationship between the size of a pregnant belly and one’s brain. The bigger the stomach, the smaller the brain.  My mental capacity these days is somewhere around that of a four-year old’s.

The box also contained an apron — a red one — bearing the words McWife (that’s what I am! Really! A McWife!) and an assortment of heavy, stainless steel biscuit cutters in a variety of sizes. That’s right: Biscuit cutters. Variety of sizes. Southern. Who’s south of the Mason-Dixon line, hmm?

There will be a future post devoted to these masterly tools, I assure you.

A and P, thank you!

I always walk through the woods with the dogs surrounding my house and yesterday Sunny and I stumbled upon a large patch of wild watercress. See the lettuce-looking stuff to the right of her as she sips from a stream? That’s it.

The discovery was a revelation since it means I am officially a food forager. I’ve successfully foraged for food. I foraged, I found food. If I was lost in the forest, I’d probably be able to survive if there’s a patch of watercress in the near vicinity. It was a real Grizzly Adams-type moment.

No doubt about it, that’s watercress. It had the green’s signature bitter, peppery taste.

By the look of it, I have the pleasure of enjoying watercress and hard boiled egg sandwiches with homemade mayo for some time to come — my favorite!

After I had filled every available pocket with gritty clumps of greens, I turned around and stumbled upon a patch of mint.  I’m getting good at this stuff.  A regular survivalist, that’s me.

I got to thinking about this later and thought how refreshing. To prattle on about the moral superiority and nutritional piety that comes from  eating organic soy nuts over Triscuits has become so very trite and cliche. Everyone’s a locavore now! We get it! The eggs are free-range! The meat in the freezer is from a farmer down the road! The fish is sustainably caught! Understood!  Here’s a gold star! Here’s a feather from a free range bird to stick in your hemp-fiber cap.

I’d like to think we have transcended this tired discourse. Can we please go back to just eating dinner without verbally frothing all over it?  (I include myself in this lament.)

As I write this, I’m wearing my insulated Carharrt overalls over ultra-thick thermal underwear and a pair of fur-lined grandma slippers. My hair is in braided pigtails.  I’ve been making jerky all morning. I ate jerky for breakfast. There’s something distinctly redneck about this picture. Hence I shan’t show one.

But I will proudly show the jerky I’ve made so far:

Spicy Tabasco Habanero

That new Food Saver we bought is turning out to be quite handy. It sucks all the air out of the baggies and should keep the jerky fresh for an entire year.  So Pa and I can stock the bunker!

Lime Soy Sauce Red Pepper, courtesy of Bobby Flay

I’ve got a third batch marinating now….I’m calling it Cuban Citrus. It smells divine. Tomorrow, I make Chipotle Lime! The day after that, Bourbon Bonanza!! I’m thinking a North Africa-inspired Harissa marinade might be nice as well!!!

I’ve gone jerk-nuts!!!!

I love venison jerky. It is, I think, a perfect protein. I’d much prefer tearing into a piece of jerky over a package of processed crackers any day. Does admitting this make me sound like a cracker? Mmm, yes. But I put jerky right up there with smoked sausage, my other favorite succulent foodstuff.

How we make jerky:

First, Jake helped Sam butcher the deer. Sam is an expert butcher. Jake is a butchering neophyte. He can barely cut his own hair and he has a buzz cut! (Ha ha! That’s a joke, sweetie. And with my current botched ‘do, I’m not exactly one to talk) Seriously, Jake might have accidentally discarded the tenderloins had it not been for Sam’s careful tutelage.

Then Jake brought over what felt like 200 pounds of steaks and cuts to our house, where we proceeded to slice the cuts into very thin strips using our other neighbors Bill and Ellen’s meat slicer (processing deer is serious business around here; in the country, meat slicers are as ubiquitous as toasters.)

One of many trays of deer meat, luscious deer meat

The jerkying took place did in our mud room-slash-distillery-slash-laundry room-slash-grotto gateway-slash-butchery. We don’t, for reasons too boring to go into, heat this room. Last night it was 15 degrees. Ergo, the room was freezing. It truly felt like a meat locker! We both donned our insulated Carharrt overalls and proceeded to slice every last cut of deer reserved for jerky into strips, roughly 20-40 pounds in all?  By the end of it, we were both close to succumbing to hypothermia, the cutting table was covered with muck and meat, but we had bowl after glorious bowl of this:

Doesn't it look appetizing? Not.

Making jerky is a little like canning in that it can be a time sensitive operation; once you start the process, you can’t stop until the very end or risk spoiling the meat, and you can only work in batches.

I took the contents of this bowl, which weighed roughly 8 pounds, dumped them in an extra large ziploc bag and covered it with my favorite spicy jerky marinade:

- 1 1/2 cups soy sauce

- 3/4 cup lime juice

- 1/2 cup vinegar

- 1/4 to a 1/2 cup crushed red peppers (I like it hot!)

- 3 teaspoons garlic powder

Smoosh it all around until all the deer pieces are completely coated, seal the bag and refrigerate for 24 hours.

We stored the remaining unmarinated jerky meat in freezer bags, then used our new $170 FoodSaver vacuum sealer to suck the air out of all the bags, and stashed them all in the freezer. This way, I can make jerky at my leisure, instead of having to make it all at once like I did last year.

Tonight I’ll remove the jerky pieces from the marinade and begin the dehydration process using our Nesco dehydrator.  [Small interruption: Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd be the kind of person to own both a vacuum sealer and a food dehydrator?!?!!] Sometime around 2 am tonight, the drying pieces of meat should look something like what you see below, but they won’t be fully dried until mid-morning tomorrow.

I already know what I’m having for breakfast: Jerky-n-eggs!

Will keep you posted.

This morning I collected 16 eggs! Sixteen eggs! I’ve already got 6 cartons of those delectable white orbs in my refrigerator, not quite sure what to do with them, though I’m sure some will be donated to the next humans I see.

So the subject of eggs has been front and center in my mind lately.  I’ve been making lots of egg salad, poached eggs, eggs on toast…..and I’ve been wondering….what is THE best way to boil an egg?

The problem with boiling eggs, of course, is that it’s impossible to see how they’re cooking in their shell. Often the eggs are overcooked, with rubbery whites and chalky yolks, or they’re undone, with slimy whites and runny yolks.   And sometimes the rapidly boiling water causes the eggs to crack before they’re fully cooked, leaving a trail of slimy white membrane in the boiling water.

So after extensive field testing over the past two weeks or so, I have discovered that the best way to boil an egg* — both for taste and peeling technique — is to:

- place eggs in a sauce pan and cover by an inch of water

- bring the water to a boil

- once the water boils, turn off the heat. Cover the pan and allow the eggs to cook by residual heat for 10 minutes (no rattling eggs means no cracked eggs)

- transfer the eggs to an ice-water bath with a slotted spoon and allow to sit for 5 minutes

-  remove an egg and squeeze it gently in your hand to crack the shell in several places

- begin peeling from the air-pocket (wider) end. The shell should come off in spiral strips

- eat. yum. good.

* adapted from Cook’s Illustrated with a technique suggestion from me

Roasted pear goat cheese tart, served with fried sage. Kelly sold out of these in a couple of hours.

Her homemade crackers.

Brooklyn pride.

Some people, though not a lot, sold vegetables.