CFBC: "Little Deer"

A few weeks, a fondue or two, and about 73 colds later, we get to beast the third. I actually cooked this just a week after "big deer" but I'm behind on writing it up.

I mentioned before that we weren't terribly impressed with "big deer" and speculated that perhaps meat from the butcher would be better. With this in mind, we all bundled up and trudged out on a rainy and cold Saturday morning to go to the market. For about 20$, I got an eight ounce steak of chevreuil. Ouch.

The next afternoon was much prettier, so I went for a long walk with one of my friends. While we were out, she mentioned not wanting to cook dinner, so I invited her and husband and daughter to join us for dinner. Now, obviously 8 ounces of meat was not going to be enough for four adults and two toddlers, so we stopped at the grocery (side note: we have a brand new grocery that is open on Sunday now - WOO HOO) and got a packet of hamburger steaks as well.  While the dads sipped whiskey and talked computers and the kids played, we got to work on making dinner.

As usual, we scored our beast on a scale of 1 - 10 according to the following criteria: appearance, texture, flavor, and gravy-ability. Our friend Dani also gave his scores. Steph opted out as she isn't a fan of hunt meat...

Chevreuil CFQ

                                C         K         Dani

Appearance:     8          9          8

Texture:               9         9          9

Flavor:                 7          7          9

Gravy-ability:    6          7         7

Final Score:      30        32         33

So, yes, the meat from the butcher was better but here comes the funny part: every single person at the table agreed they would rather have had two hamburger steaks and skipped out on the deer entirely.  

Both toddlers refused to try the meat but made up for it in amount of yellow rice consumed.

We have a lot coming up over the next month or so, so it may be a couple weeks until we get to beast four, but we'll get there...

Beasts:
Ostrich

Rabbit

Duck

Horse

"Little" Deer (chevreuil)

"Big" Deer (cerf)

Boar (if available!)
Bonus nonbeast - TOFU


Previous Beast CFQ

_____________________________

Cerf CFQ

                           C         K         Bee

Appearance:      6          5          0

Texture:               5          6          0

Flavor:                 6          7          0

Gravy-ability:    4          2          0

Final Score:      21        20         0

_____________________________

Ostrich CFQ

                           C         K         Bee

Appearance:      9          9          0

Texture:               8          8          0

Flavor:                 7          9          0

Gravy-ability:    6          5          0

Final Score:      30        31         0

CFBC : "Big Deer" Episode

And we're back with beast number two.  I had been planning to give rabbit a try this week, but I was unable to find any deboned or smaller portions of rabbit and I didn't feel like dealing with a whole long, creepy, full-of-bones bunny. Hopefully this week I'll manage to drag myself to a boucherie to get my next beast. To hold us over until then, I grabbed two little three ounce cerf (big deer) filets.

One glance at the absolutely fatless meat told me we were going to be taking a hit on gravy-ability, but I retained high hopes that the flavor would more than make up for the lack of marbling.  I served the cerf steaks with spaetzle and green beans with caramelized shallots.

Just like last week, we scored our beast on a scale of 1 - 10 according to the following criteria: appearance, texture, flavor, and gravy-ability.

Cerf CFQ

                           C         K         Bee

Appearance:      6          5          0

Texture:               5          6          0

Flavor:                 6          7          0

Gravy-ability:    4          2          0

Final Score:      21        20         0

Well that was disappointing. The first hint we had that our deer wasn't going to live up to last week's beast was the rather gamey smell he made while being cooked. It wasn't a terrible smell, but it wasn't exactly confidence-inspiring either.  The breading had a habit of sliding off the meat, which led to a lower appearance score. The flavor was nice (despite the initial odd scent) but the texture was very inconsistent - one bite tender and flavorful, the next mainly gristle.

Just like last week, Bee refused to try the meat but made up for it by eating two helping of spaetzle and licking her green beans before pushing them off her tray.

So you might be wondering, "Is cerf always this disappointing?" Definitely not! Cerf is a popular dish on the hunt menu here and is frequently served in a thick, dark gravy after an extended session of slow cooking over low heat. The meat falls apart - it is AMAZING. After country frying our cerf, we now understand why - between the lack of fat and the tendency towards the occasional tough patch, cerf seems to be at its best cooked low and slow.  (I should add that, despite the low score you see here, we had no leftovers...)

Two beasts down, several to go. Who's next?

Beasts:
Ostrich

Rabbit

Duck

Horse

"Little" Deer (chevreuil)

"Big" Deer (cerf)

Boar (if available!)
Bonus nonbeast - TOFU


Previous Beast CFQ

_____________________________
Ostrich CFQ

                           C         K         Bee

Appearance:      9          9          0

Texture:               8          8          0

Flavor:                 7          9          0

Gravy-ability:    6          5          0

Final Score:      30        31         0

CFBC : Ostrich Episode

I have this friend. We chat online.

A lot.

We like food.

A lot.

We chat about food.

A LOT.

So somehow one day our conversation turned to a discussion of the merits of "country frying" as a meat preparation. This led to some speculation of whether there was any meat you couldn't render mind-bendingly delicious by country frying it. The conversation moved on but the idea stuck.

And that's how we got here - to the Country Fried Beast Challenge. Autumn here is the season of the hunt - and this means an influx of different meats that aren't typically available. Each week we'll be choosing one new beast to country fry in an attempt to ascertain which animal best benefits from a nice country fry.

Obviously this is serious business and calls for much rigor.  In order to best assess each beast's country fry quotient (CFQ), we've chosen a basic recipe stick to.  Each beast will be tasted and judged by myself, my husband C, and our almost-two-year-old, Bee.  We will be scoring each beast on a scale of 1 - 10 according to the following criteria: appearance, texture, flavor, and gravy-ability.  So here we go...

Meet our first meat: OSTRICH

Ostrich appears bright red before cooking and retains its steak-like appearance.  The meat required only a little bit of thwacking to form a steak of the desired thickness. Flour-egg-flour and into the pan. Ostrich cooks up more quickly than beef and, like beef, is fine to serve with a little pink left. Being a very lean meat, ostrich doesn't render much fat - which led to lower gravy-ability scores. C and I both greatly enjoyed our steaks, though C gave it a lower score on flavor due to the lack of fatty richness. Bee licked her bite, dropped it on her plate, retrieved it and fed it to her papa. She refused to try the gravy.

Ostrich CFQ

                           C         K         Bee

Appearance:      9          9          0

Texture:               8          8          0

Flavor:                 7          9          0

Gravy-ability:    6          5          0

Final Score:      30        31         0

We will definitely be country-frying ostrich in the future but will probably add a bit more seasoning to the meat and flour coating before frying. This time we had mashed potato and brussel sprouts on the side, but would like to try spätzli as our next beast's carbohydrate sidekick.  This brings us to...  

Future Beasts:

Rabbit

Duck

Horse

"Little" Deer (chevreuil)

"Big" Deer (cerf)

Boar (if available!)

I am expecting duck to be the least amazing while C thinks rabbit will be the less than memorable. We agreed that "Little" deer is probably going to be the best. Which animal should we country fry next?

Fry away home

So today we had some residency paperwork to attend to which entailed a visit to an office a little on the outskirts of town, in an area we only get to about once a year. An area with a huge toy store and a "fancy" McDo with a playground. After the paperwork-related-French-speaking was all done, we decided to celebrate with a couple of Happy Meals and some playground time for Bee.

As is typical with places that have outdoor seating, there were hoards of chirpy little sparrows hopping around and eyeing our fries. The family at the table next to us consisted of a mom, dad, and a little girl probably a year and a half or so older than Bee. The little girl was having a blast feeding the sparrows as Bee looked on. Bee took one of my fries and dropped it over the little fence and screeched with joy when the sparrows came for it. She tried several more times, each time managing to get the fry maybe eight inches away from her at the most. She would watch the other girl and then drop a fry. Watch. Drop.

Until she got the hang of it, just in time to launch a fry - and a sparrow - directly under the tires of a car heading into the drive-thru.

Crunch.

We looked on in horror. Bee went back to eating fries. The other little girl was looking at the bird's remains with pointed curiosity (and not horror or sadness, fortunately - both girls were still too little to understand) and pulling on her mom's arm.  As we were debating what to do, the other dad (clearly a veteran at this parenting thing) calmly took one more bite of his Big Mac, grabbed a Happy Meal box and the red box his fries had come in, stepped over the fence and scooped up the bird without a word, or grimace, or blink. The other little girl went right back to eating her lunch as the dad disposed of the bird. As far as the kids were concerned, everything was back to normal.

And so we learn a little more about this parenting thing. Bravo, other dad.

And to the sparrow who hopped back to the scene to retrieve the french fry? Well, you're just a jerk.

Mo mo mo

Bee has been quite the little chatter box.  By our count, she's over twenty words but that changes by the day. As she collects new words, something interesting is happening - she's learning French. We speak a few words here and there with her but in general we talk to her in English.

Here's where it gets funny : because of her funny toddler-word-garbling, we often don't recognize a word until she's been saying it for days, if not weeks at a time. This happened earlier this year when we finally realized that the funny MANCH word she had been saying for weeks was actually mange - from the French word for "to eat."

Today we noticed a new one. We've been hearing it for a while but didn't realize it was a word. Bee refers to herself as je - the French word for I. I was drinking an iced tea and she was gesturing at my glass, repeating, "Je mo je mo mo mo mo je mo je mo" while making the baby-sign for "more" at the same time. Je mo. I want more. Je mange je mange je mo je mange. Who know show long she's been talking in these little sentences and we didn't even realize it.

I'm so relieved to see her picking it up so naturally, particularly as I'm fighting to figure it out.  In no time at all, she'll be correcting my grammar for me...

Progress!

By the time I complete and post this entry, I will have blogged 25% of last year's total...

I know you're impressed.

At this pace, I'm guessing no one reads this anymore and I'm totally okay with that. As a result, this is going to be a very ME-centric post.

Last year was probably the most difficult year I have ever gone through, but not in an unpleasant way. We took a couple memorable vacations, made some new friends, found some new music, and got to know our little MISS BEE very very well. Also, by the last two weeks of the year, we finally started getting some sleep again. Last year I didn't get a lot accomplished outside of the whole learning to be a mom thing, which I'm fine with but this year it's time to get to work.

So here we go. I want to post a quick resolution run down because I find that typing it up makes me think about my goals in greater depth and putting it "out there" makes me feel just a little bit more accountable. This year I have three big areas to focus on: health, French, and jiu jitsu.

Goal 1: Lose half a pound a week. I'm still carrying around a bit more of my baby weight than I would like to be, and since the baby is now a toddler, it's probably about time I stop using "baby weight" as an excuse. Half a pound per week feels like a healthy rate that won't make me feel too stressed or like I'm starving myself, especially with the results of Goal 3 factored in... More on that shortly. I've broken my pedometer back out and am aiming to log a minimum of 7000 steps per day except on Wednesday and Friday. I plan to increase my steps goal after a couple months, once the weather gets nicer here. To track everything, I'm using the sparkpeople.com website and iphone app.

Goal 2: This is the year I am going to start speaking French. My reading and comprehension have gotten so much better in the past year, but I still find myself too uptight about sounding silly to actually try and speak to people. That has got to stop. Working together, the Mr and I have come up with a list of 52 topics. Our plan is to focus on one topic per week as a way of increasing our vocabulary while limiting our studies to keep us from getting overwhelmed. Additionally, I will be getting together with a neighbor for 1-2 hours every Friday afternoon and working on my French and her English. Since we don't know each other very well, I think it will be easier to start speaking French right away because I'm less concerned about embarrassing myself and all those "getting to know you" topics (what music do you like, what's your favorite food, nice weather we're having today) are great for beginning language practice. We're hoping to go for a better residence permit this year and that process included a fluency test, so this really is very important.

Goal 3: Jiu jitsu. I studied jiu jitsu for about a year and a half before I got pregnant, but in a very haphazard and, to be honest, half-assed manner. Now that I've been going back (16 months later - EEEEP), I've really thrown myself into it and I'm anxious to make some progress this year. I can already feel myself improving and I take a great deal of pride in not losing fights at practice right now. Where I train, I am typically the only female, on top of being 5-10 years older than most of the other students. And, ya know, completely out of shape. That's why not losing, right now, feels as good as I imagine winning will someday. My goals for jiu jitsu this year are to get my blue belt and to compete in one tournament. I go to class twice per week for two hours at a time. It's a great start but I probably need to add a bit more conditioning in on my own time. That's something I'm going to come back to in two months - for now I want to focus on attending regularly and giving a solid 100% when I'm there.

I have a few mini-goals as well: blog on occasion, break out the paints once more, craft a bit more, read a book a month but those all come in second to the big three.

And there you have it - 25%.

Book Project 2

Month: February

Book: "200 Crochet Blocks" by Jan Eaton

Experience: A little bit late, but better than never. My original goal was to complete a small blanket made from stash yarn and a few different blocks from this book. As I suppose should be expected (BEE BEE BEE BEE BEE), that didn't happen, but I did get the time to work several different blocks. I found the patterns to be well-written and easy to read. I loved the interesting color combination and patterns suggested by the book, covering a wide range from traditional to surprisingly modern looking. I found lots of projects I would love to tackle at some point when I have a little bit more free time.

Verdict: This one is a definite keeper.

My great-grandmother taught me to crochet when I was about eight years old. After I got the hang of making a basic chain, granny squares were the second thing I learned to make. For years, I made squares out of any little scraps of yarn I could get my hands on. My Barbies wore granny squares as ponchos and skirts. The beds in my Barbie house were covered in granny square blankets and topped with pillows made from granny squares folded in half. I made granny squares cat toys and granny square dog toys (not popular) but I have yet to complete a full-sized granny square blanket.

And I still haven't.

But one day, I will - and that's one reason I'm going to keep this book. Another reason this one is worth keeping is that I'm already looking forward to teaching Bee to crochet and I think granny squares are a great place to start. Once she gets the basics down, I think she'll really enjoy all the different variations in this book. I imagine us one day working on a blanket together, each adding our own squares to a giant pile and arguing over who has to weave in all those obnoxious ends.

I bet it will be me.

Next book: How to Write Funny