Austin has wanted to make pemmican, an old Native American food for the hunt, for ages. What IS pemmican? Well, it's dried meat that's been ground up, mixed with dried berries, with beef lard (suet) poured over it, moistening it and holding it together. Lots of calories for the hunt, and no sugar! Mmmmmmm....
On Valentine's day, we were going to go snowshoeing in West Virginia and I decided I'd make him some pemmican as a little Valentine's day present for the trip. Except it was about 70 degrees that week and all the snow in West Virginia melted. I conveniently forgot about it till the last minute as well, and unfortunately, a gal can't dry meat in an hour on a Saturday morning. It's the thought that counts, right? (Or is that what's incriminating in this little Valentine's day story?)
Anyway, I did finally get around to drying some venison jerky last week with the idea of making pemmican. We even got beef suet at our local Mennonite farm where we get all our meat.
The problem is that as a former vegetarian, even the idea of pemmican is revolting to me. The process of creating it was an act of love and revulsion at the same time. I ended up having to put the dried venison piece by piece in the coffee grinder to get it to a fine powder, mixing it with currants and prunes and then heating enough beef suet in the microwave so I could pour just enough over the mixture to moisten it (before just about dying from the smell...). Then the berry-meat-lard mixture hardened in the fridge.
I think I'm relatively open-minded towards food, as gals go... I never tried any of the squirrels Austin hunted, but I allowed them in our kitchen and in our freezer. I allowed Austin and Josh to butcher three deer this season in our side yard, and even let them hang the deer from a tree, for all the neighborhood to see. Pemmican is in the same category--it's allowed in the fridge, but I most certainly am not going to try it.
I did let Austin give some to Tucker this afternoon, though. It's kinda tricky thinking of fun snacks for Tucker because we don't really have much snack type foods around (nor want that sort of thing in the house). Austin ended up breaking off pieces of pemmican for Tucker, who devoured them like they were chocolate. Like father, like son....
