Hi -

 

Welcome to Wild Bites #2 from Hunter Angler Gardener Cook, an ultra-brief biweekly newsletter designed to make you smarter about your wild food. We'll also tell you what we're up to right now - a taste of what's to come on our website, podcast, YouTube, or To The Bone.

 

 ~ Hank (the chef) and Holly (the photographer)

 

https://honest-food.optin.com/newsletter/awlist3722118/MTQ2MTgzMTQ=/wild-bites-2-from-hunter-angler-gardener-cook.htm

 

1. What's Hot Now

• How to make mustard
• Fried morels
• Grilled flat-iron steak
• Foraging wild asparagus - every U.S. state and Canadian province has it
• How to make authentic carnitas

2. Smart Take: Survival Fishing

"Your generic survival skills do transfer around the globe in certain ways, but only 10-20% of the time; 80% of the time, if you haven't taken the time to learn what's there in flora and fauna, you can't guess. It's very dangerous to guess.

 

"...You may recognize it's a lobster, and a lobster is a lobster is a lobster. Or it's a crab, and a crab is a crab is a crab. But if you've never understood what a stonefish is, in the Cook Islands, you may just simply kill yourself by trying to get that fish."
 

 ~ Les Stroud

 

 

We're big fans of survival shows, and one thing we can't help but notice is that survivalists who are good at catching fish are good at staying in the game.

 

That's just one reason Hank was stoked to talk with Survivorman Les Stroud on the Hunt Gather Talk podcast. This one is worth a listen even if podcasts aren't a regular part of your diet, and you have no plans to take up primitive survival as a hobby or lifestyle. Why? If you get this newsletter, you likely spend time in the outdoors, and you never know when you might find yourself in a situation where you need these skills. Plus, Les dishes a bit...

3. What We're Up To

We think we're about to turn into morel mushrooms: We dream of them, hunt them, clean them, dry them, cook them, eat them. The dehydrator has been running nonstop. The only reason we have collected just 20 pounds of them is because both of us have been felled by a serious bug that has us coughing our lungs out most of the time. (Holly actually went morel hunting on Day 4 of the bug, and we wonder if that might be why she's now on Day 13 - nothing like a 7.5-mile hike at altitude when you're sick! #moreljunkie)

 

We've also been also lucky enough to bag a few porcini in an otherwise horrible porcini season (they don't seem to appreciate fire as much as the morels do), as well as some bracken fern, mountain pennyroyal and wild onions, and Hank put it all together with some trout in a post that went live yesterday on HAGC. It's less a recipe than a guide to linking time and place on a plate.

 

4. One Week Only: 33% off

 

To The Bone is about our lives outside the kitchen - the spaces where we explore our relationship with nature, hunting and gathering, as well as our travel adventures. For one week only (through June 16, 2022), we're offering Wild Bites readers 33% off a one-year subscription - that's $33.50, the price of a good pizza delivered to your home.

 

We know subscription-based newsletters - even though they're ad-free - aren't for everyone. And sometimes we're too busy for one more thing, so maybe you are too. But if you enjoy going deep once in a while, we think you'll really appreciate it. And if you're interested in hunting Western burn morels (what we're doing in the photo of us above), we recently shared some serious intel about how to be successful at it. This is stuff we'd normally share with only our closest friends, available only to paid subscribers of To The Bone.

 

TTB reader comments:

Every time I think you have written perhaps one of your best pieces, you surprise me with yet another! I think you absolutely hit the nail on the head with your observations in this thoughtful work.

~GS, on 'Mindfulness in a Bucket'

 

Right on point. We eat everything we hunt and are thankful for the experience. Hunting gives you a heightened appreciation for the environment. Without preserving our natural spaces we can’t have the privilege of eating well and organically. 

~L, on 'Drumstick Diplomacy'

5. Follow-up: About That Gar...

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