Recipes for a Hungry Michigan Woodsman!
This would be very similar to my Aunt Martha’s stew we ate at Brookwood.
Ingredients:
2 squirrels cleaned and cut into pieces
1/4 cup flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
2 tablespoons oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 large onions, chopped
4 cups water
1 large potato cubed
2 large carrots, diced
2 ribs celery, diced
2 cups coral mushrooms, torn
2 – 14 1/2 ounce cans diced tomatoes
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
3 tablespoons flour
Directions:
Dredge squirrel in flour, salt and pepper
Heat oil and garlic in large Dutch oven and brown squirrel
Add onions and cook until soft
Add water, potato, carrots and celery
Cover and simmer for 1 hour
Add tomatoes, mushrooms and Worcestershire
Cover and simmer for 30 minutes
Mix 3 tablespoons flour with 1/2 cup cold water, stirring until smooth
Add to stew and simmer until slightly thickened
Season to taste with salt and pepper
VERY GOOD TOPPED WITH BAKING SODA BISCUIT DUMPLINGS!
Sylvia Mohr Bartlett said,
March 20, 2009 at 6:10 pm
Woodsmen Stew often also included game of the day – which ranged from the squirrels you mentioned to rabbit…and one time skunk. Don’t know if that happened after you were old enough to remember or not. Of course, one of our older brothers always opined that everything – even the occasional snake meat, all tasted just like chicken!
dawnmk said,
March 22, 2009 at 2:32 am
Sylvia-
I am not sure what generation you fell in regarding the stew. We only had squirrel stew, not “Huntsman Stew” when I was younger, never any other game in there, I am positive of that for I used to gross out my friends telling them about the the squirrel. Believe the other animals would have had better shock value!
John and Mom both say never anything but deer or squirrel were consumed in the way of meat – the deer from Carl catching poachers. I don’t recall having venison until one of the folk fairs at Navy Pier so I don’t recall that part ofit.
Vicki doesn’t remember any of that LOL.
I do remember Uncle Carl giving you the untanned squirrel hide with the, uh hum, “peg” it was often held by. you kept that ratty thing in or on your dresser for quite a while as I recall LOL!
Sylvia Mohr Bartlett said,
March 28, 2009 at 6:26 pm
OMG!
I’ve been outed. You remember the squirrel hide! I used to love to pet the fur. I hated that a squirrel had to die for me to get it, but I loved the thing.
I still love squirrels.
I know most folks think of them as little more than rats, but I just think they are so darn cute. Perhaps you think me strange, but we had a neighbor down the block whose house I used to visit often and she had trained the squirrels to come to her window and be fed. She used to let me help feed them. It drives me batty that I can not remember her name. She was an older lady and lived alone. It was on our side of Van Buren, that’s about all I can say, but I digress too much. This is Michigan memories, not Bellwood.
I’m surprised Vicki and John don’t remember the other things that went in the stew, but I do remember Pam and Glen (and Win) had more knowledge of the (perhaps covert?) contents.
Perhaps my memories are blurred. May it be that there was Aunt Martha’s Woodsman’s Stew and another, because I have distinct memories of something Dad used to make – he called it Stone Soup with mystery meat because you basically put a bit of everything in it. He had a whole story of the origins of Stone Soup he used to tell us.
Anyway, I do know lots of critters that went in the soup (if not the stew) were unnamed to most because there were many (umm, example, Mom and maybe even Aunt Martha) who would squirm at eating the meat, if they knew what the critter was.
Hence the one article out of a newspaperarticle that was cut out and hung, out on the porch of the cabin, if I remember correctly, about Road Kill Stew. That part was a joke on what folks might really be eating, but they didn’t know it.
Mind ours was never road kill. Them was hunted and hence fresh kill.
Perhaps being the middle child I remember stuff the olders and the youngest don’t. I am pretty sure both Glen and Winston were in on the hunting. It was a contest between them with Uncle Carl the enabler, as I recall. I know I saw the critters while they still wore skins, so I do know what they were. As I recall the methods of hunting included snares and slingshots, amongst others.
Uncle Carl always cleaned and dressed the meat, though the boys were shown how.