Venison Teriyaki Recipe

To celebrate the opening of hunting season we cooked up some of last year's venison.  I tried out a new recipe and we loved it (we had other options on back up just in case, since I was winging this one and not working from a recipe).

To start I sliced the venison into thin strip and marinaded it in the fridge for a few hours.  I prepped it at lunch time and just let it sit until I was ready to cook dinner.  For the marinade use just enough teriyaki sauce to coat all the pieces of venison and a dash of soy sauce to taste.

When you are ready to cook the venison heat  several tablespoons of olive oil with a tablespoon of rice vinegar (if desired for taste) in a frying pan then added the venison along with the marinade to the pan

Stir often until the venison is cooked through.  While the venison is cooking you can chop the veggies (about 2 cups) for your fried rice.  We like carrots and celery in ours but you can play around with lots of combinations.  

Once the venison is cooked remove it from the pan leaving the juices behind.  Keep the venison in a covered dish in the oven on warm (you want to keep it at healthy temperatures without overcooking the meat so keep an eye on it and have a thermometer on hand so you can check periodically).  Add another tablespoon of oil to the pan and sauté your vegetables.  If you like more flavoring you can add more teriyaki or soy sauce at this point.  Sauté the vegetables until they are soft then push them to one corner of the pan and scramble an egg in the pan.

Once the egg is fully cooked stir in two cups of cooked rice and you're ready to go, just top with the prepared venison.  

This entire recipe cooks up in about 20-30 minutes depending on the temperature you use.  It is a quick and easy recipe using items that we normally have on hand so no special trips to the store.

Teriyaki Venison

1 lb venison 

Teriyaki sauce (enough to coat the venison)

Soy Sauce (optional to taste)

Olive Oil

Rice Vinegar (optional to taste)

Cut venison into thin strips for frying.  Place in a glass bowl and add enough teriyaki sauce to coat all the pieces of venison.  Add a dash of soy sauce if desired for taste.  Cover the bowl and allow to marinade in fridge for several hours.

Pour several tablespoons of olive oil in a frying pan and heat on medium-high.  Reduce heat slightly then add the venison and marinade.  Cook through checking temp with a thermometer.  If you have the fried rice prepared, top it with the venison and serve.  Or place the venison in an oven safe container on warm heat checking the temperature often while you prepare the rice.  Under cooked venison can be unsafe and overcooked venison can lose it's flavor so keep a close eye on it.

Fried Rice

2 cups chopped vegetables

3 cups cooked rice

Olive oil

1 Egg

Chop vegetables to your desired size and add to the heated pan with the juices from the cooked venison.  Add a few tablespoons of olive oil to coat the veggies.  Allow them to cook until they reach the desired consistency (between 5-10 minutes depending).  Push the vegetables to one side of the pan and crack one egg on the open side.  Cook through and scramble then stir the cooked egg in with the cooked vegetables.  Stir in your cooked rice and heat if needed.

Huckleberry Mint Sparkling Water

I love sparkling water! It's wonderful that companies are finally adding variety and making sparkling water more readily available.  However, I think that it is still fun making your own at home (and it tastes better too)!  Especially if you already have ingredients in your garden.  My mint was ready for harvesting and I had some leftover huckleberry juice from a frozen bag of huckleberries.  So I had all the ingredients available for a refreshing treat after a long morning spent splitting wood for winter.  If you are interested in trying this recipe it's super simple!

First grab a few clippings of mint from the garden (or grab fresh mint from the produce section if you do have a crop of your own):

Next you'll want to wash the mint under cold water to get rid of any debris.  Then drop a few leaves into your cup and pour just enough juice to cover the bottom of the glass.

Use a spoon to bruise/muddle the mint.  This will allow it to release it's flavors.

Let the bruised mint sit in the juices for a few minutes.  The timing will be trial and error, depending on how strong you like the mint flavor.  I use a Soda Stream to make my sparkling water so I usually let the mint sit while I'm carbonating the water.  You can use bottled sparkling if you prefer.  Once your mint has had time to steep add in your sparkling water.  You can either remove the mint at this point or leave it in.  The longer that it sits in your drink the stronger the mint flavor will be.

That's all there is to it.  With a few simple ingredients from your garden and less than five minutes you have a refreshing and tasty drink with no added sugars.  What I love about garden sparkling water is that the combination are only limited to the scope of your imagination.  You can also use fruits that you have frozen, just crush them a little to get the juices out.  Plus then the fruit can act as ice cubes.  Below are a few that I have tried and love.  What are your favorites? Share your ideas in the comments below.

Blackberry/Sage (muddle the blackberries and sage together)

Raspberry/Lime (for those of you lucky enough to live in citrus country)

Strawberry

Blueberry/Mint (just be sure to muddle the blueberries to get the flavor)

Watermelon/Mint

Strawberry lemonade

Blackberry/Mint

Apple

Coconut

Lavender/Mint

Vanilla/Heavy Cream (makes it like an Italian cream soda)

"Food always tastes better when you eat in nature!"

My sweet boys bought a kayak for my birthday a while back and we spent that weekend playing around on the lake.  I cannot think of a better way to spend a day.  The lake that we spend our summers at is filled by run-off from  a near-by mountain.  We decided that we would paddle up the creek to see how close we could get to the mountain from the lake.

It didn't take too long before little man wore out so we tied his kayak to the back of mine.  That way when he needed a break he could take one.  Which came in handy as we went further up the creek and the current started pushing back.

As we neared the shallows a hen grebe flushed out from under a mud cave.  She put on quite a show flapping from bank to bank acting like her wing was busted and squawking at us.  My son (who wants to be a vet someday) asked if we should rescue the poor thing.  I explained that she was not hurt, she saw us as a predator and was trying to draw us away from a nest.  So we we scanned the bank and sure enough hidden just under the grass roots in a little mud cave was a baby grebe just barely peeking out above the water.

I only had my cell phone with me so it's not the best photo ever, but if you look closely you can just make out the head in the shadow by the wall of mud.  Lesson learned...always carry your good camera and camcorder.  I would have loved the opportunity to share this moment with everyone.  Duck mamas will go to great lengths to protect their babies.  We didn't want to flush out the baby or scare mama any more than we needed to (plus we had reached the shallows) so we backed out and headed back to the cabin for lunch. 

 Little guy was really mad that I didn't want to eat at the beach, but I just don't like sand in my food. "MOM!  Food always tastes better when you eat it in nature!"  So he staged a little protest and moved his chair off the deck so that he could eat in "nature."

Homemade Potato Chips

It's been a cool 104 degrees around here this past week, in fact we have been breaking all the temperature records for our area lately. Oh Joy! On the plus side all the fruit in the area is ripening quickly which is great because I can't hardly wait for all the fresh local fruit. On the downside, all my pantry items are spoiling early. Today I noticed that our potatoes were on their last few days and I just recently purchased the bag. Not wanting all those potatoes to go to waste I decided to make potato chips.

 A while back I purchased a microwave chip maker from Pampered Chef and I absolutely love it. In just six short minutes I have yummy potato chips all ready to go without any oil. Today I decided to try my hand at sea salt and vinegar potato chips. I started by slicing up three potatoes and letting them soak in a bowl full of vinegar.

I let the potato slices soak for an hour (just a note...I would recommend letting them soak longer if you want really tart chips.  This batch didn't quite have enough vinegar taste for me).  After the chips have soaked for as long as you would like you'll want to pour them out into a strainer and let all of the vinegar run off of the chips, but don't rinse them.  Place the chips on a dry paper towel and gently blot them with another paper towel just to soak up a bit of the moisture.  After that place them on your Pampered Chef chip maker and salt to your liking, which is A TON if you are anything like me.

You may be able to get away with using a plate, I haven't tried that before.  This chip maker has vents so that the air can go under the chips as they cook.  I used two trays and found that even though the instructions said 3-4 minutes it took 6-7 each batch, maybe because of the added vinegar.  If you are stacking trays it's best to rotate them every two minutes.  In no time at all you have a fresh, warm, homemade, mostly healthy batch of tasty potato chips.  Enjoy!!

I cooked up several batches and bagged them up for the weekend's camping trip.  I can't wait!

What flavor chips would you make?  Leave your  ideas in the comments sections!

Photo Gallery

Time to Simplify!

The world has been taken over by stuff.  Consumerism is at an all time high and the trend is not going away anytime soon.  Visit "The New Consumer" to see some shocking statistics on this national and global trend.  Including some mind numbing numbers like, "$30.5 trillion—amount spent on goods and services worldwide in 2006, up from $4.9 trillion in 1960 (in 2008 dollars)."  Spending on goods world wide has increased nearly six-fold in the last 48 years.  Whether or not these numbers have been adjusted for inflation was not clear from the article.  However, it is clear that we have gone crazy over technology and the desire to have the newest gadgets, "400 million—# of toxic electronic products discarded each year in U.S."  The thirst for the latest and greatest leaves many nearly new electronics to be destined for the dump.  Yes I do use these stats to shock, in hopes of bringing awareness, but please don't misunderstand my message.  I love technology, innovation and the freedom to start a business that is offered by the great country that I live in.  I just worry that we have become so inundated with stuff that we have lost  the other beautiful things that this country has to offer: forests, lakes, fertile lands, freedom, hard work and great rewards.  We have become slaves to technology, screens and the latest fads.  Its time to unplug temporarily, regroup and find a new path to follow as a family.


As hard as it is to admit, even our little hunting family has been consumed with stuff lately.  All these fun gadgets and gizmos have run amok and stolen our time, finances and quite frankly a piece of our happiness.  Unfortunately, for all the time and money that we have poured into our toys we have received little in return other than distraction.  We've decided that it's time to unplug and step out of this overwhelming and all consuming cycle of consumerism and move back to a more simple life.  Where hard, meaningful work can and will produce amazing results both financially and personally.  Join us as we document our journey to get closer to our roots and dump the junk.  Below are some of the ways that we plan to change our lives over this summer.  As we make progress on our list I'll post links here.

Quality Family Time

Time Savers

Grocery Budget Savers

Home Cooking

Mid Summer Vegetable Gardening

Canning and Freezing

Smoking Fish

Venison Jerky

Wild Berry Picking

Farmer's Markets

Preparing for Hunting Season

Free Summer Activities

Community Service

After you sit down with your family your list will most likely look dramatically different and that's the point.  Instead of following what we see in other's lives it time to follow the paths that are right for our individual families.  I just hope that the wins, losses, mistakes and fun that we have along the way will help guide even just  a few families on a new quest for happiness and adventure.  If you have other ideas that you want to try out please list them below.  We are always looking for new ideas and might even try a few of yours out if they fit with our plan.

Not a Blood Thirsty Trophy Hunter!

A common misconception about hunters that I see thrown about on social media is that we are all just a bunch of gun loving, blood thirsty, trophy chasers.  Unfortunately, very few non-hunters know how much time, care, love and attention goes into successful and ethical hunting.  Almost every hunter I know is also a conservationist that puts hours upon hours into improving the habitat in the areas that they hunt. 

Hunting is one of the most unique opportunities, a chance to view nature undisturbed.  Yesterday I woke up well before the sun, packed on my layers and headed out into the deep woods.  Hiking in as quietly as possible I climbed up into my tree stand to wait for the sun and hopefully an opportunity to take a mature deer.  The goal of a hunter is to blend in and go completely unnoticed.  So while I was sitting in my tree the woods came to life with the slow rising of the sun.  Right at first light a small  fawn came into the area and spent the next thirty minutes milling around, coming to within five yards of me without ever realizing I was there. 

Around the same time a flock of chickadees landed in the same tree that I was camped out in.  They were all around me singing and flitting from branch to branch even landing on the arm of my tree stand.  A much better way to spend a morning than sitting in a crowded, noisy coffee shop or on a commuter train.

The evening brought an even rarer surprise, a herd of bull moose.  Moose are generally solo animals so it was wonderful to see a herd consisting of six mature bulls.  It was rather foggy out so the pictures are not the best but here you go:

All were within 30 yards of the tree stand.  How often do you get to see a sight like this? 

Sadly I was not fortunate enough to have a mature deer come into the area.  Did I go home angry or frustrated?  If I were a "blood thirsty, trophy hunter" I may have.  However, I said a little prayer on my way home thanking God for another chance to view the beauty of his world from my quiet perch in that cozy little pine tree.