The Weekend

I have been a little neglectful…. to the blog…. We are now past the middle of January. I am back on my feet…. my back thing was a muscle spasm, not a pull or a strain. Is that good news or bad news… we shall see. I still feel a little warning, once in a while, but I think its something that comes with age!

This last weekend we went to a hunting lodge. The DH has taken up Bow Hunting in this last year or so…. partly my fault because I gave him a Compound Bow last year for Christmas. So NOW he has the bug!!

He tried very hard to find a place where I would have something to do… with the camera while he was looking for likely prospects. We had 4 days here… and I shot a few pictures. He didn’t shoot anything!

I also read a some books on the Tablet through the Kindle App. I was reading The Litigators by Grisham and started and finished The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh. Both books are good. I had planned to start knitting some socks, but between the rain storms, (one that knocked the power out) and poor evening lighting… I didn’t even cast on.

So now some pictures.

This is Mie Mie, she lives with her husband Pieter, on the Game Farm where we went hunting. She is 70 years old and runs a ‘Farm Store’. She makes all kinds of baked goods to sell there. On Sunday they invited us to their home for dinner. Entre was Warthog, scalloped potatoes, salad, rice, gravy and I brought dessert, (some Blondies I baked for us, but saved for Sunday dinner). Delicious!!! Told the Hunter (DH) he could shoot some of those.

This is a moth…. love the look of his antenna….

A grasshopper. Tried to find out which kind, but no luck on Google. He was quite colorful…

The view of the area from the top of the ridge was amazing. I love the wide open vistas and watching the cloud shadows on the land.

And lastly, while technically not a great picture, I spent a lot of time trying to capture a dragonfly in flight. These guys are very difficult to shoot… and trying to keep one in the lens and focused, is well hard! Next time I’ll up the ISO and shutter speed… and maybe I’ll get the wings in stop motion.

We are off hunting again this weekend, so hopefully more pictures next week…

More later! Beth

Meats

Last Friday we picked up the Wildebeest from the butcher. Don’t let anyone tell you they are small creatures!!! We have 308 pounds of Blouwildebeest packaged to eat. Between the Wildebeest and the Nyala, we had to get a freezer. Fortunately, we are able to borrow. So I took it home on Friday… and plugged it in, thinking we would have more meat than the freezer (side by side) could possibly hold.

We didn’t get home until after 7 so we spent an hour writing on the vacuum packaged freezer bags of meat what they were and put them in the freezer, we had 187 pounds of meat -fillets, steaks and roasts. We put the meat for Biltong and Droewors in the refrigerator to finish on Saturday.

Saturday morning we cleaned the clothes lines (that we’ve never used for clothes) and prepared to hang the droewors (dry sausage). This is a very thin sausage that you dry to preserve and eat. We had 77 pounds, and did it drag down the lines!!! For more info go here. 

We also hung a few pieces of the Biltong. It was pre-seasoned by the butcher, not something we wanted, it seems that most of our instructions were not relayed to the butcher -but what do you do about it?

I had purchased some tulle for the previous experiments in Biltong but we discovered that we didn’t have any flies so we didn’t need to cover it. I didn’t feel really good about leaving all the meat in the open… so we covered it. Haven’t really seen any flies except for may the first hour… It has to hang and dry until it is snap dry. I tested it last night and we still need to leave it for a few more days. It does have some really good flavor.

One of the other items we received is Boerwors (Farmer Sausage). It is ground meat and spices and is more of a dinner sausage, than a breakfast sausage, but it could be breakfast too. It has a good flavor and we have lots of it!!! It is packed in long unbroken tubes and coiled. It is cooked in the coil as well, especially on the barbeque

We tasted the Biltong tonight and the seasoning is a little lack luster, might even could call it tasteless. Fortunately we froze much of it, so now we have a bit of time to find our own spices and make our own seasoning. The stuff we used on the Nyala was too salty…

So that was my weekend… what did you do?

More later-Beth

Beasts Part II

Ok, so I have been a bit lax on the blogging side of things, but judging from the lack of comments….. I’m thinking everyone is as busy or otherwise occupied as I have been. Having the DH home has really affected my allotment of free time!!!

Once again the sewing room has been bereft and left to idle and I am so far behind …. that the light at the end of the tunnel appears to have been extinguished! I’ll do better in the coming week.

So what have I been doing that has kept me away…. We went hunting again. I surprised DH with a trip to a local Bow Hunting only place. Since I got him the Bow for Christmas…. Anyway it was a very nice and relaxing long weekend. -This is the entrance. The name comes from the region, (where there are huge granite rock formations, which are mined/quarried). There is a lodge, with a common room, and 2 sleeping quarters on each end, 2 freestanding buildings with bed, bath and kitchenette,

a recreation building that has a bar, pool table and eating areas, (as you can see a granite rock pile), and 2 Safari Tents.

 

We stayed in a Safari Tent, which are luxurious as tents go!!!! The tents are really soft sided buildings, and have electricity and running water. They come complete furnished with beds, tables, chairs, linens, etc. just like any hotel room.

One of the more interesting features is the shower. It is outside. In the summer it would be wonderful, but in the winter …. even with hot water…. not for me. The room did have a tub in the bathroom, with a handheld shower…. so you could bathe in relative warmth.

All the facilities are ‘self catering’ meaning you cook your own food, they supply the kitchen and a simple assortment of utensils.

It is winter here, and like home, hunting season is in the winter… So the temps were chilly, but compared to winter in Chicago… balmy! The nights were cool and days were nice. I was able to take walks and see some of the local creatures… and there was even a horse I could ride. I did get a few pictures, but not too many. I did see a bird or two (I’ll post those later), a few deerlike creatures with horns; but the winner was the sunsets. Because of the smoke in the air, sunsets in winter are spectacular!!!

And of course the question… everyone is asking… Did DH bag a beast? Yes, a Wildebeest. So we are going to find out how they taste too.

Well thanks for reading and I post again soon… I promise.

More Later- Beth

Hunting

While I was in the sewing room the DH was out hunting. He spent the first week of July looking for animals and freezing. To be fair I was originally supposed to go, but we decided there wouldn’t be enough to keep me occupied while they were out stalking dinner, (just a euphemism). The hunting place was primitive and the only heat would have been from a campfire, and it would have been too cold to do handwork or just sit and read and in the winter… not much to photograph (possibly). We checked out the surrounding area for other distractions… but sadly not many.

So was DH lucky? Yes, he got a beast (DH is the Smurf in the picture with our friend Faan [Farnie]). An Nyala (En ya la). As, Lana E. recently commented on one of the groups I belong to, of a picture I posted on Flickr.   …”I have to say that my favorite is the Nyala. What a strange looking creature! He's my favorite because he is such a curiosity. So many strange body features in one creature”.  And she is right! The Nyala looks like someone made a beast from leftover parts: yellow socks, shoulder hump with fringe, long horns, white stripes, dots, big ears, thin nose, etc.

In case you are going to be up in arms… about killing a creature… the Nyala is a long way from being endangered here and we will consume a considerable amount of this guy. Of course the skin will become part of our possessions, as will the skull and horns, (not a stuffed and mounted head).  So far we have packaged and frozen much of the meat.

In addition to the meat we have in the freezer we will have some boerwors (farmer sausage); ground, seasoned meat in tubes that you can eat as is as sausage, braii (bbq) or put in casserole being made. And the best is Biltong, South Africas version of Jerky. Here you use salt to remove moisture, rinse and then season, refrigerate, and then hang in the air for 3-5 days depending on how dry the air is. In winter the air is dry here. Very very dry. Biltong is one of South Africas favorite snacks, and is available in most grocery stores and malls. The meat found most often in the stores of course is beef, but we have seen several other animals too.

So far we have tried the fillet and some ground meat that we made using the grinding attachment to the Kitchen Aid mixer . DH likes my big mixer now too. The meat is sweet, similar to venison (US deer) here it’s also called venison, but it encompasses most of the deer-like creatures. The texture was similar to beef, but a little chewier. The ground meat was dry… very dry. So, it won’t make hamburgers…. but it will make some interesting packet meals or Bobotie, a South African main dish . If, DH gets another deer-like creature… we will season and add some fat or oil to the ground meat, so it will cook up a bit more edible.

Our first batch of Biltong is done… and it is a bit salty and a little too dry, but since this is really a guessing game… we’ll do better on the next batch. I found us a Biltong slicer, and it really makes short work of slicing the meat… and it is so much easier than a knife! The piece of biltong on the slicer is from our second batch an while still salty, it is much more moist and tender.

Hopefully the next hunting trip will be some place I can go and find something to do… If not, I am saving all these opportunities up for a special vacation for myself! Can you say Bali? Wanna go?

As usual, more later.

Beth