a recipe for rabbit

There have been two very successful rounds of rabbit hunting around here in the last month.  Enough so that the first hunt brought (I wanted to say brang right then) home six and the second hunt, two weekends later, brought home thirteen!  Granny cooked a batch for us at her house one night and after the second hunt I asked Shaun to keep a couple of fresh ones out for me to cook.  I used a recipe from a new cookbook I have called Living Naturally from some local gals from Living Naturally Group of Middle Tennessee.  The recipe I found is from Gina Cooper who says it is a family favorite.  Well guess what... it's a family favorite in our house now too!  I made a few changes from the original recipe like adding the mushrooms.  Enjoy!

You seriously have no idea how wonderful this recipe is.  Wine sauce can make anything good!  Not to mention the heavenly aroma left hanging in the house for two days.  I could drink this sauce with a straw!

Weekend Adventures

I wanted to share some pictures from the woods that I took this weekend.  I spent around eight hours this weekend in the woods (honestly more)  searching for morels, violets and fiddleheads.  Two of those were easier to come by than one but I am happy with what I did find.  I looked and gathered and wound up with two mushrooms, two cups of violets and one cup of fiddleheads.  We cooked supper over our camp fire Saturday night and that is also when I cooked the fiddleheads which were pretty divine along with the one mushroom that was fit for eating.  The violets became jars of jelly that I am afraid aren't going to set today... we'll see.

Mushroom hunting is fun but can be a tad exhausting.  They are hard to spot, especially when you've not found many where you are looking.  They don't grow in particular spots.  Oh you might think you know what they grow around or what trees they may grow under, so you spot these things and hike up the hills and through the creek only to find they aren't there.  So I wonder if my hunches are true.  But I try to mentally note what the area is made up of when I do find one.  Although I am tired and my body is aching from roaming up and down and all around about 15 acres or more I'm not giving up.  They are here somewhere.  I will try again maybe tomorrow evening and for sure next weekend.

Morel Mushroom

 

Fiddlehead

Violets

Bellwort

This is the first time I have ever seen the Bellworts.  Things flower and then finish flowering so fast in the woods that if you turn around twice you'll miss something.  Last weekend I didn't have my camera when the Trout Lillies were blooming and this weekend they were pretty much done.  I love knowing where all these flowers are in patches of our woods and adore the fact that I can take the time and care enough to venture out to see it all.