James' Recipe Series

The good ole days…that's what we baby boomers say when we talk about how much simpler life was growing up, especially without all this high tech stuff surrounding us. How simple you may ask? So simple, that I began my hunting experience by becoming a professional guide at the Eagle Lake Rod and Gun Club on the waters of Eagle Lake in Texas. When not guiding people like Richard 'Racehorse' Haynes, an attorney out of Houston or Dr. Denton Cooley, a heart surgeon from Houston calling ducks to land outside our blind, I was taking the ducks and geese I bagged back to A&M University to help me survive during my tenure there. At A&M, when not studying, Joe Rau and Jack Etheridge out of Columbus would come back from the weekend with packages and packages of deer meat, Javelina, and squirrel. I would return on Sunday night and bring bags of goose and duck, and a few oddball meats such as bullfrogs and alligator. On Monday and Wednesday, I would cook duck or goose, and on Tuesday and Thursday, Joe and Jack would cook venison, Javelina, and other animals you might be disgusted with such as… Armadillo and Yellow Cat. I don't hide the fact that I love to hunt, fish…and yes, eat wild game. When going to work in the geophysical processing business in Houston, Texas, after graduating from Texas A&M, friends would often ask me why I preferred to eat wild meat almost to the exclusion of domestic. My answer was first, it was for health and nutrition.  Of course, they laughed at my response and replied back with, "Really?" By all comparisons with the chemical-drenched, fat-laden meat that is factory produced that too many people grow obese and sick from eating today, wild meat… fish, fowl, or red…is brilliantly natural, inimitably healthy, and, most of all, superior. Wild game is the meat that made us who we are today. Best of all, we must hunt in order to have it!

In many of my various recipe books, I mention going hunting, fishing, and being outdoors waiting for the morning sun to come up so I can catch the light just right as it falls on the water coming off one of the falls near my daughter's home in Gainesville, Georgia. It's cold as the dickens outside. She is with me to fulfill her love of photography also and said, "Dad, you know what would be good… a bowl of your famous award-winning homemade Chili!" Nothing… and I mean nothing, warms the body and soul like a hearty bowl of chili. If you have never attended a Chili Cook-off, you must try it someday. You must be careful tasting all the chili after the judges finish judging, and you go to taste the participants' chili. One such story introduces my recipe book on one such Chili Cookoff for the Texas Department of Transporation, better known now days as TxDOT.

Sidney St. James, an award-winning author in the romance and crime writing genre, is also a writer of hunting stories and recipe manuals on the preparation of wild game. In this novel, James shows one doesn't have to be afraid of cooking duck and goose and have you cooking like a pro right away. The good ole days…that's what we baby boomers say when we talk about how much simpler life was growing up, especially without all this high tech stuff surrounding us. How simple you may ask? So simple, that I began my hunting experience by becoming a professional guide at the Eagle Lake Rod and Gun Club on the lake waters of Eagle Lake in Texas. When not guiding people like Richard 'Racehorse' Haynes, an attorney out of Houston or Dr. Denton Cooley, a heart surgeon from Houston calling ducks to land outside our blind, I was taking the ducks and geese killed back to A&M University to help my roommates and I survive during my tenure there. At A&M, when not studying, Joe Rau and Jack Etheridge out of Columbus would come back from the weekend with packages and packages of deer meat, Javelina, and squirrel. I would go back on Sunday night and bring packages of goose and duck, and a few oddball meats such as bullfrogs and alligator. On Monday and Wednesday, I would cook duck or goose, and on Tuesday and Thursday, Joe and Jack would cook venison, Javelina, and other animals you might be disgusted with (Armadillo). You see, none of us had much money and did not go out to eat. Instead of buying a dollar hot dog at the corner UTOTEM every night, one of us would cook. No one cooked on Friday as we all headed back home, Joe and Jack to Columbus and me, back over to Eagle Lake where Racehorse and Denton awaited another exciting early morning hunting over the decoys. Well, enough with how I got started. The truth is, my love for wild game of all sorts has me here writing about some of the great recipes for cooking ducks, pheasants, dove, geese, and other wildfowl.

We all are always in search for recipes. There must be millions of recipes available from A to Z everything imaginable. We are always searching for great ways to cook food... the ones that are easy and not complicated, and the food just lands on the table as though they cook themselves. This is a "Grandma Country Cooking" book of some of my favorite recipes from my various grandparents and the ones they each became known for.  But, I know what you might be thinking. I have tried to cook from other so-called recipes from other Grandmas, and it never comes out right. Why you might ask? When we were young and stood in the kitchen looking up at "Grams" and looked over at a piece of paper on the counter, her recipes were just notes... notes she jotted down in pencil for herself. After all, she had a grandma, too, and watched her cook fifty years earlier. Grandmas already know how to cook. Their recipes always left out some steps. I know mine left out some ingredients, such as salt. My Grandma Walling once said salt was never mentioned because everything needed it. But what really makes our Grandma's cooking so fabulous? Grandma herself! She radiated a heart of gold! And, God knows she was full of wisdom... in my case, both English and German wisdom. Our grandmothers knew precisely how much a pinch of salt was. They knew what fats from different meats made the food taste just right. And, as will be seen in one of the recipes, they know exactly how long to leave the roast in the oven so it will come out moist and juicy…not dried out. Grandma's Homestyle Country Cooking Recipes from Apple Pies to Zebra Cakes puts in the missing ingredients and gives step-by-step instructions that will have you cooking like "Grandma!" So, if any of the recipes given in Volume 1 are something your grandma once prepared, give it a try. If not, be adventurous and give it a try.