Me and Emeril

 

During deer season, Brian Loveland of Sand Springs and I eat home cooked meals in a 12 x 14 wall tent. Well, the tent is our home for the duration of the season, and that's where we cook our meals.

I really think that TV cook, Emeril, would fit in, in our camp. He's about the only yankee I've ever thought might be able to get his brain wrapped around redneck ways. It's just a feeling. I could be wrong about that, but you watch him throw handfuls of this, and handfuls of that, into a pot and yell, "Bam!" when he does it, and you get a sense of something redneck a slick, New York TV producer can't cover up.

Like I said, I could be wrong about that.

Certainly, in a good, downhome deer camp, you should not expect to find any measuring spoons, or measuring cups. Meat thermometers? Croutons? A little lemon zest? White wine? Good grief. Call your mommy, will 'ya?

All of our food up on the wild Arkansas River is heart horrible, and fried the same as Grandma did when she killed Grandpa. It took her 78 years. The last time I saw him, by the way, he had a smile on his face and said, "Pass me a biskit, and summa' thet gravy", which I did. Later, out on the front porch, he rolled a cigarette out of a cloth bag of Bull Durham. The man seemed bound and determined to die before he reached a hundred.

The other evening up at deer camp, Brian and I were confronted with a situation that would've caused instant panic with any TV cook except ol' Emeril: I forgot the gas hose to the propane stove we usually use to cook our meals in the tent. In my agedness, I make lists to prevent complete capitulation to "old timer's" disease. In my agedness, sometimes I forget to double check the list. Maybe I need a list for that, and so it goes.

Brian made it an issue, not me.

"Where's the stove hose?" he asked, not a hint of worry in his voice as he began moving around the stove table preparatory to fixing dinner. A coyote howled not a hundred yards from the tent.

"Dang. I forgot to bring it, and it was on my list. Just throw that cast iron griddle on top the woodburner. That'll work." And it did.

As a general rule, we cook on the propane stove, and out of the propane bottle. Instant fire. Natural gas created by the sun, 93 million miles away. Man is small. Coffee in a jiff in the morning while the frost freezes outside the canvas. Warm and toasty inside under the hissing Coleman. A man with a cup of coffee in his hands is big.

The woodburner, our old, rusty, heat-warped friend, has never let us down. All it wants is a little dry oak for its rectangular box.

We let the griddle heat for thirty minutes while we caught up with one another. Would it snow? Rain, maybe? We certainly hoped so. If it did, we could sleep in, and listen to the falling weather hit the canvas. We would get a deer: Buck, or a doe, for certain. We weren't worried about it.

We weren't worried about dinner, either. We always bring plenty of food; cakes, pies, you name it, in ice chests and boxes. Tonight's menu would be fresh pork sausage (A-1 Sauce on the side) butchered and made by Brian and his brother David, down from Springfield way during "hog killing weather" last week. They had killed and butchered two show hogs Brian had bought off some FFA kids at the end of the State Fair. You could do the same, were you inclined. 

"Show hogs" are always for sale after the show. It's nice to be wanted. The best meat imaginable. None of the cast-off stuff the commercial outfits hide to cover their expenses. We had boiled new potatoes (buttered, salted, and peppered), and spinach heated in the can on top of the stove; just a dash of vinegar for ol' Emeril's sake.

Between now and the end of December Brian and I will be up yonder in that tent every chance we get. We may, or may not, get a deer. We will not starve.

© 2012 Conrad M. Vollertsen