Jim Casada Outdoors, December 2006 Newsletter

Special Note for the Ruark Fan

As many of you know, I’m a great admirer of the work (though not necessarily the life) of Robert Ruark. Before getting to this month's newsletter, let me share a new feature recently added to the Web site. I just dug up a whole batch of Ruark-connected items I’ve had stored away for a decade or more, added a few more recently acquired items, and created a separate listing of them. Take a look, and you’ll find copies of most everything he wrote, along with material relating to him. If you are a fan, I hope you locate something of interest to you or that will fill a gap in your holdings.

February is for Figurin’

My Grandpa Joe, a rocking chair philosopher of the old school, always detested February. He reckoned it was the shortest month of the year because it “was so mean and miserable a body couldn’t stand 31 days of it.” Ever the optimist though, Grandpa still found some positives amidst the sleet, rain, snow, cabin fever, and gloom which typified February in the North Carolina high country where I grew up. “February,” he proclaimed, “is for figurin’, and there’s no better way to beat present misery than to plan for future magic.”

In his view, that planning for the future involved things like spring fishing outings, summer camping trips in remote trout country, or maybe something as simple as digging worms in the chicken lot and bank fishing for a mess of bream or horny heads. He would get comfortably settled in his favorite chair, close enough to the old pot-bellied stove to keep warm, and launch into campaign plans worthy of the most astute of military strategists. Such musings would, in turn, lead to recollections of glorious moments from the past. In the course of a single session of tale telling, we might go back to the turkey hunting experiences of his boyhood, visit trout streams in a time when speckled trout were so plentiful folks caught a flour sack full of them on a regular basis, or when a single night of running a trot line could produce a hundred pounds of catfish.

All those warm memories inevitably course through my mind at this time of year, although “figurin’” today has facets which would have astounded the simple, humble individual who was Grandpa Joe. I am pretty sure he never hunted or fished outside the confines of his native Great Smokies, and I know for a fact that his hunting and fishing equipment, while carefully maintained and lovingly utilized, was plain and inexpensive. He would have been flat-out astounded (“thunderstruck” would have been his choice of a descriptive word) by the shows, exhibitions, fund-raising banquets, and conventions which today are standard fare at this time of year.

For example, about the time you read this I will be multi-tasking at the annual Fly Fishing Show in Charlotte, N.C. (February 2-4). I’ll have a booth, give half a dozen talks, and offer two specialized, hands-on classes on fishing the mountain trout streams Grandpa and I loved so dearly. Then, in the two weeks that follow, I’ll be guest speaker at a church game supper (something which is quite popular in this part of the world) and offer a brook trout seminar to a Federation of Fly Fishermen chapter in Greensboro, N.C. Late in the month the missus and I will load my truck full of books and set out for the National Wild Turkey Federation’s annual convention in Nashville (if you plan to attend, be sure to stop by my booth, #746, for a shake and a howdy).

Any of these gatherings of sportsmen would have brought a gleam to Grandpa’s eyes, and I have no doubt whatsoever that he would have soon found a way, in his inimitable fashion, to share his own insights and experiences. He was a great storyteller. While I never once caught him in a bald-faced lie, I doubt if Grandpa Joe even knew the meaning of the word embellish. But rest assured he understood and practiced the action the word describes.

Along with all my upcoming traveling and talking, with ample opportunity to meet and greet many of you who share my love of the outdoors, I’ve got plenty to tend to on the home front. I’m still plugging away at the Ruark biography I’m editing; polishing up a magazine piece on Wiley Oakley, a grand old mountain man who lived in Gatlinburg, Tennessee and was one of the progenitors of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park; wrapping up a collection of Archibald Rutledge tales revolving around the Christmas season which are accompanied by a lot of traditional Christmas recipes (contact me for more details or to be put on the “notify when published” list; and handling a bunch of other stuff.

Amidst all those activities there are thoughts of coming spring and all its joy. Greening-up time brings gobbling turkeys, rising trout, pleasant hours in the garden (I’m a lifelong gardener who is blessed with something of a green thumb), and more. For the moment though, delicious odors are filtering from the kitchen back into the study, and that leads me to share, as I do every month, a few thoughts on food and some recipes.

Right now my good wife has a pot of pinto beans simmering, with a fine piece of country ham in the mix for flavor and seasoning. When accompanied by a golden brown pone of cornbread made from stone-ground meal, a bait of greens with diced turnips, slaw using one of the last of my fall-planted cabbages, and a bowl of hot apples that have just been cooked, the result is a simple yet eminently satisfying feast. As I enjoy it I’ll think about Grandpa Joe, who was a trencherman of the first water. He loved “leavings” of things such as pintos or greens (he called it “soup” but it was just the water left from cooking), and he’d pour it in a bowl, crumble in cornbread, and spoon the result with great gusto. I do the same, and although I’ve never been one for “sassering” coffee (for the uninitiated, this involves pouring coffee so hot it can’t be drunk from the cup into the saucer so it will cool), I love pot liquor as he did and know that’s where the most vitamins are found.

ANN’S CRUSTY CORNBREAD

There are a number of keys to making first-rate cornbread. For starters, you need stone-ground meal, not the standard “hot ground” stuff. Too much heat in the grinding process seems to affect flavor. Then a well-seasoned cast iron skillet (or spider, or whatever you want to call it) is a must. Beyond that, the way the pan is treated before the batter ever touches it is of vital importance. My grandmother always rubbed a piece of fatback across a heated skillet a number of times; my wife, Ann, takes a different approach and heats her cooking oil in the pan before introducing it to the batter. That makes for a good, crispy crust, a pone which doesn’t stick, and beautiful golden brown bread.

1 egg
1 ½ cups buttermilk
1/8 cup canola oil (or, if you want the old-timey stuff, Crisco)
1 ½ cup stone-ground cornmeal (do not sift)
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1 heaping teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
¾ teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder

Mix the egg and buttermilk together with a whisk in a separate bowl. Put the oil in your skillet and heat it in the oven while moving on to the rest of the (dry) ingredients. In a second bowl mix the other ingredients. Then add the mixed egg and buttermilk to them and blend with whisk. You will need to add buttermilk, a bit at a time, until the batter reaches the right consistency—not too runny but not stiff. At that point pour the hot oil from the skillet into the batter, mix it in, and place the skillet in a 400-degree oven. Cooking time will be 20 to 25 minutes. Topped with butter (or, if you must, some health-conscious substitute) it is a country boy gourmet’s idea of culinary heaven. The only thing which might make it better is cracklings.

PINTOS WITH HAM

Dried pinto beans
Chuck of country ham or fatback

Rinse beans, then cover with water (two inches above beans) and soak overnight. Drain, rinse again, and cover with water (again two inches above the beans). Add meat and bring to a boil. Reduce to simmer and cook until beans are soft. At this point (and not before) add salt and pepper to taste. Simple, hearty, cheap, and delicious.

GREENS WITH DICED TURNIPS

Fresh mustard or turnip greens
Raw turnips
Bacon, country ham, or fatback

Rinse greens repeatedly until there is no evidence of dirt or grit. Cover with water in a large pot. Dice turnips into small pieces and add to greens and water. Add meat and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and allow to cook until the greens and turnips are tender. Add salt and pepper to taste. Note: Greens take quite bit of salt, but if you use country ham it will provide most if not all the necessary salt.

BEEFY QUAIL

Turning from simple to sublime fare, let’s take a peek at a quail recipe. A couple of weeks back I enjoyed two days of first-rate wingshooting at River Bend Sportsman’s Resort in Fingerville, S.C. It’s a first-rate operation in every sense, and if you are looking for shooting instruction, some leisurely clays shooting, or preserve hunting over fine working dogs, check them out (www.rvrbend.com). At any rate, I came home with some birds for the pan, and in the studied opinion of my spouse, who just happens to be a superb game cook, ain’t nothing finer than quail in Carolina. Here’s one way to cook them, and there are a whole bunch of others in our award-winning cookbook, Wild Bounty (you can order this attractive, hardbound, lavishly illustrated work through this Web site for only $20 plus shipping and handling).

1 (2 ½-ounce) package chopped, pressed, cooked beef
6-8 quail
1 cup sour cream
1 (10 ¾-ounce) can cream of mushroom soup

Line a greased, shallow one-quart baking dish with chopped beef. Place quail on top of beef. Mix sour cream and soup and pour over birds. Bake uncovered at 350 degrees for an hour or until birds are tender. Tip: If you prefer, wrap the quail in the slices of beef and secure with a toothpick.