Summer Sausage Time

Although deer hunting was not as productive as I would have liked, a couple of events gave me the needed venison that I was looking for to get a couple of homemade sausages made.  First was my neighbor Jake.  Jake found a freshly killed doe on the road in front of our neighborhood so he called the police, gutted it out and quartered it up.  Volunteering to help him we did the 2 front quarters and my reward was some trimmings.  Second, my friend Kevin and his son Ben did pretty well this year and had some leftover trimmings, about 25 pounds worth and gave them to me.  The first project was to try and make some venison summer sausage.  After ordering the seasonings from Psseasoning, a good source for sausage seasonings in Iron Ridge, Wisconsin the intent was to make 25 pounds of Summer Sausage using 1/2 venison and 1/2 70% lean pork trimmings.  One of my big complaints about Minnesota made summer sausage is it's pretty plain.  Locals like it but if you ever had Pat's Summer Sausage from Arcadia, Wisconsin you would know what I am referring to!  Most Wisconsin based summer sausage has a distinct tang to it cause by using bacterial starter cultures to change natural and added sugars in the meat to lactic acid which adds that tang to the flavor.  Because the curing takes a few days in a moist and warm environment, there is a product called Fermento, a dried whey/protein mix (essentially dried buttermilk) that can be mixed with your sausage meat prior to stuffing and smoking and it gives the same effect without having to cure the meat first.  So last Saturday my neighbor Lory and I tried our luck at our first batch of summer sausage.  I got 13 pounds of  70/30 (70% lean/30% fat) pork trimmings at the meat market in Rogers, MN.  Using a premixed Psseasoning's Blue Ribbon Summer Sausage seasoning, 12 pounds of venison trimmings and some sausage casings from Cabela's Lory had ground the meat before I arrived and we were ready to go.  Because I like mustard seed and garlic in the sausage, we split up the meat into 12.5 pound batches as I have a meet mixer that does a great job of mixing the pork, venison, seasonings, the fermento,

Fermento

together.  The seasoning mix comes with maple cure which give the sausage the right amount of salt and sodium nitrite to assure the right flavor and food safety while smoking.  Although I have an old fashioned sausage stuffer, Lory had his grinder/stuffer set up in place so we decided to use that.  Mixing all the ingredients together we ended up with a nice tube of meat ready to be stuffed in the casings.  It took longer than we expected because the grinder/stuffer set up wasn't exactly the ideal situation as the meat being re pushed into the auger, then another auger to push the meat down the stuffing tube, it tended to mush up the meat somewhat.  Never the less we were able to get all 20 smaller casings stuffed and thanks to out neighbor Tim, it was easy to seal the ends with his hog ring pliers.   Because it was easier to track the progress of the smoke from his family room overlooking the patio, we brought my electric Cookshack insulated smoker over and set it up where we could easily see it.  As well, I had ordered a Bluetooth Smokehouse temperature probe that has 2 separate sensors, we could monitor the progress right on our cell phones.  The first part was to preheat the smoker to 100 degrees F then put the meat in the smoker for about an hour.  What this does is slowly heat up the meat so the outside stays moist and doesn't have a tendency to dry out.  The next 3 hours, we turned the temperature up to about 175 degrees and put some apple wood in the wood drawer and induced a heavy smoke for about 3 hours.  After the smoke had done it's job it was simply a waiting game until the meat got to 146 degrees F, about 4 total hours in the smoke house.  Once the correct temperature was obtained we removed the meat from the smoker and put them in the sink with ice water, for about 2 minutes.  The first sample tasted fabulous but the casings stuck to the meat and it needed to sit for a while to dry out somewhat.  As stated before the texture of the finished product was not very coarse and was quite fine, as stated a product of the stuffing method.  Both Lory and I agreed that we need to use the old fashioned stuffer the next time.  The flavor was pretty good however, just the right amount of smoke and the fermento did it's job.  As well some time in the refrigerator has helped to firm it up somewhat.  We have decided it is good enough to try again as both Lory and I have plenty of venison scraps.  We've ordered more seasoning, fermento, casings, and did get some high temperature cheese to see how that works.  Our goal is to make another batch sometime in late February depending on how long our current supply lasts.

Jared and Ben with a nice walleye on Lake of the Woods

The weather forecast for last weekend was snow on Friday and Saturday.  Although we did not get the predicted 8 - 12 inches, it still made for a wintery weekend, a good one for making Summer Sausage.  On the other hand my good friend Ben went with his wife and son Jared back to Springsteel Island Resort to fish the weekend.  We stayed in touch as he arrived on Thursday night as they planned on staying in the heated ice house for the weekend.  Our new friend Dave was going up as well.  Ben kept me updated throughout the weekend as they said Thursday was slow, Friday picked up quite a bit, proof is in this picture, while Saturday was slow again.  They were supposed to get a good dumping of snow up north but it sort of fizzled out before they had to leave.  Ben left his skid house up there which presents a great opportunity for me to drag my wheel house up there for a weekend of fishing on the ice.  Normally Mark Applen, Russ Praught and a few others would be on Red Lake this weekend however the significant amount of snow has really dampened the opportunities on Red as they are only getting out 2 - 3 miles.  As well they have a layer of slush under the snow and on top of the ice that makes getting out and back in a problem.  Red closes at the end of February but Lake of the Woods is open till April 15th, so there might be more opportunities to fish and Springsteel Island is only about an hour further north than JR's is.  I feel sorry for JR's but it's pretty hard to fight Mother Nature.  Anyway the winter is far from over!  The next few weeks may determine what is the next ice fishing strategy as Bill Lundeen and I have made some definite plans to fish closer lakes.

  

Catching Up

Pig on the Pig Roaster

This weekend was a chance to get caught up on a few things before winter is upon us and that is now less than 90 days away.  Saturday was our neighbor, Tim Kuntz annual end of summer pig roast and I usually help out in some fashion even if it's only moral support.  Finding a reasonably priced pig can be a challenge these days as he ended up going to Starbuck, MN to get this beauty, a 265 pound porker. Injecting the meat with our favorite Maple Cure from PS Seasonings in Wisconsin, he let it sit overnight before putting on his pig roaster Saturday morning.  Adding a nice rub to the outside of the pig, it looks pretty good as we slow cook it to 200 degrees.  It can be amazing how long it can take to fully break down all of the fats and connecting tissues however by 6:00 it was ready to eat.  We had a good amount of the neighbors stop by but in the end there was a lot of pork left, enough for a few good meals.  While the pig was cooking in the morning I did take advantage of Tim's cleared driveway to pressure wash the inside of my boat, cleaning what remained of our Lac Seul trip a couple of weeks ago.  With just the right slope and having a concrete surface to work on, I used some commercial carpet cleaner and my pressure washer to make it look new again.  Sometimes I feel that the sand that gets down inside the carpeting can be almost impossible to remove and  that a pressure washer only drives it deeper.  Vacuuming it out a couple of times before putting the hose to it should help but I think next time, if I have the opportunity to return to Lac Seul, I will definitely put temporary carpeting over the entire floor.  I will take one less "anxiety" point away from the trip and it's probably a good idea anyway.  My current Ranger was suppose to be "The Griz's" boat and in talking with him over the years he always put down additional carpeting while using the boat for guiding in order to protect the original flooring.   I'll have to look him up at the Sportsman Show this year to see what he used.

Cookie, Carter, and Marcus

So while I was out mowing, cleaning boats, and helping with the Pig Roast my friends Eric and Greg were busy participating in the Wisconsin Youth Hunt this weekend.  Eric to ducks is like me to walleyes as he well set up with all the equipment and knowledge to hunt in the backwaters of the Mississippi River around La Crosse and beyond.  The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources establishes a youth hunt ahead of the normal duck opener.  This really give the youngsters a chance at those first ducks before they get too wary caused by normal hunting pressure.  It's a chance to get the young interested in duck hunting, a sport that has seen a decline in participation for a while.  As you see in the picture, they were very successful bagging a number of nice wood ducks plus a nice hen mallard.  Cookie, the yellow lab belongs to Greg and his son Marcus is on the right.  Carter, in the middle is Eric's son as I've had the good fortune to fish with him last year.  As you see these kids are getting pretty good at handling a shotgun and certainly have been rewarded for hanging with their dad's Eric and Greg.  It great to see this and is definitely worth the time to recognize their efforts to keep their sons interesting in something besides video games.  

My plan for the weekend is to try and get to Mille Lacs for some night trolling.  Believe it or not, I've only been up there 3 times this year and am almost embarrassed to say so.  I guess it will depend on whether I can find someone to go with or not.  In the meantime the work continues on the Salem Ice Cabin, getting it ready for the ice fishing season.  Re caulking the floor, finally getting to cutting and installing a door to take advantage of the space under the couch, adding an external cable antenna connection and upgrading the inside one, replacing the curtain rods, finish spray insulating the hole covers, time is getting short.   Recently the City of Dayton overlaid our street in front of the house and totally screwed up my driveway.  Where it used to be 1.5 inches above the road was now almost 3 inches below it.  Although there was a solution, replace a third of my driveway to match up with the road, it was a stupid plan so I had the entire driveway redone.  It's looks great, not like somebody cobbled together a stupid plan to simply get by.  It's a 7 day wait to drive on it however the weather has been perfect for curing concrete.  My travel schedule is crazy for the next few weeks, more adventures I guess!

Oh The Weather Outsides Delightful.......

This Christmas was interesting for us in Minnesota. It started on December 20th with all the local weather broadcasters forecasting the next "Storm of the Century" starting on Wednesday night through Saturday. Two low pressure systems were set up to meet, dumping up to 24 inches of snow by the time it's done, or so they say. All this brew-ha-ha forced mom to cancel our traditional Christmas Eve in Eleva, moving it to Sunday. Well, the snow turned to rain and although the storm lasted almost 4 days, the totals were somewhat less than predicted. About12 inches here in Dayton, it only accumulated back home to the tune of around 4 inches. Either way my snow blower and ATV got a pretty good workout, as well the weather forecasters lived their fantasies. Traveling to Galesville on Saturday, it was Christmas Day with my sister-in-law. My present to Sue was to fix her gas fireplace that would not stay lit, then loading Microsoft Office 2007 on the computer. Christmas on Sunday turned out to be pretty good as everyone was not stressed to get everything accomplished in a short time. As a bonus I did get to visit my classmate and good friend Rick Semingson and his parents, Dunk and Mary. Rick is retiring this year, boy how time flies. We also visited my friend Kevin and Janet Aiona. Come to think of it Kevin is a year younger than I and is also retired! He had a nice bucket of sunfish caught in Alma a few hours earlier. The above picture is looking east from my driveway. We have a good 14 inches on the ground and it's time to get the snowmobile out and put a few miles on.

One of the things I like to bring my folks for Christmas is my now famous apple wood smoked turkey. Having a variety of smokers over the years I finally have a professional style smoke oven made by Cookshack. After trying a number of methods have settled into brining the turkey with Maple Cure from PS Seasoning, a Wisconsin meat supply company. Making a brine using 1 pound of cure to 2 gallons of water, I reserve about a pint of cure and inject it into the turkey before soaking for 24 hours. One of the best turkeys for smoking are Archer Farms Brand, butter injected frozen turkey's from Target. They produce the most moist finished product of any brand I've tried, butter just flows out as you make that first slice into the breast meat. Taking up to 1 hour a pound, apple wood smoke at 250 degrees, the picture is the finished product. I guarantee it tastes as good as it looks. The brine has cure in it and gives the turkey a ham like flavor that is second to none.

With the snow messing up my weekend schedule, my neighbor Lory and I got out on Saturday afternoon to see if those big crappies would show up west of town. Although we did not get the big snows as predicted, what did snow was heavy, wet, mixed with rain. These conditions make ice fishing interesting. The snow on the ice causes 2 major issues, first being that it insulates the ice slowing the freezing process. Without this latest storm, we would be driving on the lakes by now. The other issue is the weight of the snow will cause water to be forced up on the ice flooding the surface under the snow. Forming a layer of slush, it makes travel and setting up on the ice very sloppy. Any ice houses that were on the lakes prior to the storm need to be jacked up higher than this slush layer or they will freeze in solid. Driving to the lake we found the conditions as described. Pulling our gear, it seemed like we walked a mile up hill! 6 inches of snow, 2 of it was slush, 150 yards later we set up. Immediately the sunfish appeared and they were hungry. With about an 90 minutes before the sun went down the action was steady catching about 30 fish. Most were small but I managed to keep 4 nice ones while waiting for the crappies to show. As the sun set those 12 inch crappies where non-existent in my holes. Lory had slightly better luck catching one. Another mile back to the truck, we called it a day. Mille Lacs is in my sight this weekend and maybe another trip to to check out the crappies. This cold weather predicted for the rest of the week will certainly help the situation.