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What's your favorite hunting tradition?My brother Thomas and I like to get all our gear out, clean it, organize it, and then we sit down with our counters and plan out the season.
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Join Justin Townsend and the Harvesting Nature crew as they explore the world of cooking wild fish in game, while sharing recipes, tips, tricks, and lessons learned from their pursuit of wild food.
We sure hope you ate before the show, as you're gonna leave hungry.This is the Wild Fish and Game Podcast.
Hey everybody, welcome back to Harvesting Nature's Wild Fish and Game podcast.You got your host here, Justin Townsend, joined by Adam and a very special guest who I'm going to introduce here momentarily.
But today we're going to be talking, of course, about wild game, a little bit about travel, a little bit about different foods, all kinds of stuff.I think we're looking forward to a good, good chat.
I think one quick, I'll keep my comments short today. We just released our wild pig camp with Hank Shaw.It's coming up in the spring 2025.We've got some spice blends back in restock.
But other than that, I'm going to save my comments for the conversation.Kick it over to Adam real quick.What you got?
Not too much.I thought the fall mushrooming was all over with because we had a couple of light frosts.And yesterday I found a massive hen of the woods with my Taki mushrooms.So that's probably my last fall mushroom of the year.
And I'm super excited about it.I don't know.I had to use two hands to hold it.So it was a nice big one.So I'm looking forward to experimenting some with that and making some recipes.So that's about it for me today.
Yeah.I forgot to mention our last episode, too.We were out deer hunting, and I found a chicken of the woods.I actually sent you a picture, and it was like, check this out.It was pretty massive, too.I didn't take all of it.I left some.
But I made chicken of the woods chicken and waffles with a miso maple syrup on top.It was phenomenal.
That was incredible.Yeah.
But let's see.So our next episode, we're going to have Jean-Paul Bourgeois.Bourgeois.Gosh, I practiced and I still messed it up.Bourgeois.He's going to be on here.So if you have any questions for him, send them in.
He's got, I think, Duck Camp Dinners is the name of his series that he does on YouTube.Former current meat eater contributor as well.But I'll go ahead and introduce our guests and we'll get it kicked off.
So today's guest is a chef, hunter, angler, writer, and Emmy-winning Emmy-winning and four-time James Beard Award-winning TV personality and social justice advocate.
As the creator and host of Bizarre Foods franchise, Andrew Zimmern's Driven by Food, MSNBC's What's Eating America, Magnolia Network's Emmy-nominated Family Dinner, and the Emmy-winning Zimmern List, he has devoted his life to exploring and promoting cultural acceptance, tolerance, and understanding through food.
Lately, he has been promoting the importance of wild food through his show, Andrew Zimmern's Wild Game Kitchen on the Outdoor Channel.Andrew Zimmern, welcome to the Wild Fish and Game Podcast.
What the fuck did you need me for?Maple miso chicken of the woods waffle surprise, whatever the hell your man means.You don't need me.
We need you. All right, we'll see.Now I've got to bring my game.
I mean, you know, I thought you were just, you know, throwing a pheasant in a crock pot and hitting it with some cream of celery soup and calling it a day, but you guys are, you're chefing the shit out of this thing.All right.We get down.Okay.
No, I understand.I understand.That's fine.Hold on one second.Stretch one out. All right, let's go.
All right, well outside my introduction, could you tell us a little bit more about yourself?How you got into hunting, into fishing, and where did the intersection between all of it come together in the kitchen?
Well, you left out my new show Fields of Fire and about half of my other shows and my books and all my other things was my bio too big.I mean, I mean, you're, you're accomplished.We tried to pack it all in.
No, I'm just, you want to know, Justin, I'm just old.And if you keep doing stuff the way you're doing it, Adam, you keep doing stuff the way you're doing it.You just wind up with a, just a big, I mean, none of it was really intentional.
Um, and certainly not, On my radar screen when I was growing up in New York in the 1960s, I was a latchkey kid.I loved to cook.I spent my summers out on Long Island.
fishing, foraging, although we really didn't call it fishing and foraging, we called it having fun.My mother had me harvesting rosehips in the dunes to make rosehip jelly.
My father had me digging clams in the – I actually thought up until a couple of years ago when I was being interviewed about this, that it was like a father-son kind of bonding thing, but it wasn't.It was slave labor.
He had figured out that he could sort of sit and float on his inner tube ring and, you know, drink a couple Budweisers.And I was like, Dad, look how many I got with this one.And I would just fill up buckets and buckets of clams.
Then I'd be exhausted and sleep for the rest of the day.And he would have, you know, a 50 pound bag of clams pulled out of, uh, Barnes Landing.You know, we crabbed.
He would lower me by my leg to pull muscles out from, you know, the giant rocks of the jetties.We loved to go surf casting for striped bass and bluefish when the tides and the seasons were right.Mackerel when it wasn't.Eeling in Three Mile Harbor.
He taught me how to clean and strip and grill my first eel when I was like six years old. Not a lot of six year old kids in 1967 were, you know, peeling and and eating eel.But man, they were monsters.
I mean, like, five foot long, four or five pounders.I mean, just fat monsters and on the grill.I don't know if there's a better fish to grill than, than eel. really, really fatty central bone.I mean, it's like eating a chicken wing.It's all meat.
You just throw away the little pencil bone in the middle, but you can just grill it till it's crisp on the outside and baste it with whatever you like.
It's a really delicious fish for people who haven't gone eeling or who have the opportunity and have said no in the past.It's a real blast.And then when I was a teenager, I turned 14, my dad said there's no more allowance.
But I was a pretty accomplished home cook.My grandmother taught me, my mother, my father, I'd eaten a lot.And I got a job at my godmother's restaurant, which was a seafood restaurant.And the rest, as they say, is history.I guess I was, I don't know.
eight when I started learning about riflery at summer camp, sleepaway camp.I was a good shot, competed in the main state 13 and under small bore riflery championship. You know, you had to be pretty accomplished just to get in that.
Got my ass kicked by, you know, some local kids that shot year round.But I competed and I did well.And so I guess I wasn't
You know gun was important to me so when some friends said in high school let's go duck hunting i was like ok cuz i was all about cooking it up i had i never been duck hunting before it was a thrill limited out the first day.
The next day we went goose hunting.That was even more fun.And, you know, we just ate like, like kings.And I think, no pun intended, I was hooked. The, I had never, I had always spent time out in the fields and on the water and in the woods.
Moving to Minnesota 32 and a half years ago certainly escalated my opportunities to hunt and fish.This is a hunting and fishing state.I mean, we closed down for deer opener and fish opener. and pheasant opener and turkey opener.
It seems that every place has signed closed gone hunting.I'm sure there's a pocket or two of enthusiasm for this, but we're
We're not West Virginia, right, where people still hunt in the evening for the next day or hunt in the morning for their supper, which is something I got really turned on to as being invaluable and something that we were missing these days when I started making television.
Television gave me access to hundreds of different cultures, all of which hunt fish and forage.All of them cook and eat wild foods.All of them eat everything on the animal or repurpose it.
They may use the bones for tools or various other parts of an animal for jewelry or something more practical, stir sticks.I mean, femur bones in a lot of African cultures are used instead of stir sticks for cooking.So nothing really goes unused.
And then I sort of discovered that other you know, first world cultures, you know, we're also using every part of the animal.
You know, Japan, for example, where it would be disrespectful to the animal not to use the skin, the bones, you know, everything about it in a way that Americans don't.And I guess season one of Bizarre Foods
not the first episode, not the second episode, but I think episode three that we filmed was in Ecuador.And I was in the Amazonian basin of that country in the Southwest.And a Pilche tribal leader asked me if I wanted to go bird hunting with him.
And I said, sure.And we went bird hunting, and he was shooting wild chickens on the wing in dense foliage, right?So when you turn, there's trees and branches.I mean, this is the tropical rainforest.This is the Amazon jungle.
And he had a bow about a foot and a half long and was using flightless arrows. Right?So he went three for three.Wow.I mean, in the same part of the bird with the first three birds we saw.And I literally had never seen anything like that in my life.
And I said to him, I said, my Lord.I mean, that's a pretty impressive bit of shooting there, Donaldo.And he had no perspective.It was fascinating.
as an indigenous tribes person, a First Peoples of Lake Pilchicoa and the Pilchee River system, he grew up where all the kids learned how to do that by the time they were six, seven, eight.
In fact, they went out and hunted while dads were doing other work.You taught your kids to hunt so they could bring food to the table.And every kid in the tribe growing up was the same level of expertise as a marksman, right?
So my question, he just looked at me completely puzzled.It was one of the first lessons in cultural dissonance that I ever had where in our world growing up, there's people who have a chance to learn how to be a good shot.
And some people just have no interest, never even holding a gun or looking at one, right?So we're a bow and arrow.
And so some people are better than others to him, there was he kept looking at me like and looking at the translator, like, what is this guy talking about?Like, I'm just getting dinner.I'm not shooting like it was so foreign to him.
Needless to say, I tried my hand with these flightless arrows.I mean, Trying to shoot a bird on the wing in the jungle.I mean, I literally just saw a shadow go by.I mean, like, just like a meteor at night if you're looking up in the sky.
And, you know, DeNovellos just bringing down bird after bird like thank God he was there because we had a very good lunch.We cut up little bits of the of the wild chicken meat.
and put them on little wooden hooks that he attached to a piece of string and threw it into a pond.I literally almost, I was thinking about it and I almost said to him, The water's brown.I mean, there's too much leaf matter.There's no fish in there.
Of course, I'm bringing my whole Western, I know everything about the outdoors vibe to this fellow who literally embodies everything when it comes to ancient wisdom that you could possibly imagine.
I mean, his skill set quadrupled all three of ours put together. And he, it's almost like he could read my mind.He just kind of laughed at me like, eh, eh.Three seconds later, he has a four or five pound fish on his hook.
Wooden hook, handmade, with string that he carefully wound back and put into his pouch because that was one of the most valuable things he owned, was that piece of line. He could make a hook, right?He made the bow and arrow.
He made the flightless arrows, right?The arrow tip was made of seashell, right?He didn't need a lot to bring down a, you know, a three pound bird, right?But he, you know, rope, string, very, very valuable thing.So we ate really well.
And I just remember that whole experience.And I, I immediately when we went back, we returned from that trip.And I sort of took over the storytelling war room.And I said, we're going to do a hunting and fishing story.
in every episode of Bizarre Foods.We're not going to put a circle around it and say, you know, here comes the family meal, which we always put in the show.Here comes the hunting, fishing scene.
I just felt that even in cities we were in, we should be telling those types of stories because of that cultural dissonance that I experienced.Well, once I started doing that and the show became
popular, which it did after, you know, the first couple episodes aired, the vault of experiences opened up for me in a very massive way.
And that's really where I had, you know, 70, 80 outdoors experiences that, you know, I mean, folks who do this professionally wait a lifetime for I mean, I, I I did a driven pheasant shoot at Balmoral Castle with the Queen's Huntsman.
And I went into the gun room, which I assume would be a room like the one you're in or the one I am, I'm in, it literally looks like the room of treasure in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
I mean, it just goes on forever, right, with the gun collection that the Windsors have, right?And the guy, the royal huntsman who was assigned to me, right, to make sure I didn't shoot anyone, I guess,
Um, by accident, uh, asked me, we were at this wall and he just said, which gun do you want to shoot with?
And, you know, I mean, just the most famous gun makers in the world are spending for the most incredible woods, the most, I mean, and I looked up and, you know, there were the names of everyone who'd shot with them listed, some going back as much as 200 years.
Um, you know, the shotgun really hasn't changed that much in a long time from a technology standpoint, but you know, I, I selected a gun from the 40s. And there were only two people who had fired it before me, Winston Churchill, and Fidel Castro.
And I was the third person and they wrote my name, they wrote my name down underneath it in the date.And I was just like, I mean, I mean, stupid.And on the flip side of things, I got to, you know,
in, in Namibia to be with tribal people who are allowed to hunt freely on their own land.And, you know, of course, the government has to allow you in to the country and then allow you to hunt and then allow you to contact those people.
But television, being what it was and the attention that would that it would pay towards the the plate of these tribes people is the modernizing the country moved in and some of the traditional pathways with which they fed themselves.
You know i got to shoot a wild antelope and you know lots of lots of big game i took a massive wildebeest i think in that in that episode.
One of the more petrifying hunts that I've ever been on, only because to start, there's my guide who took me out alone.And we had one cameraman who ran sound and everything, because you had a very small group.
So there's three of us, and we're walking like two miles, three miles, four miles. And, you know, we're going after wildebeest.So I'm just like, you know, or, you know, I don't see the wildebeest.
And at times, he's like, you know, making too much noise.And, you know, finally, he he is is able to communicate to me by drawing on his hand. and peeking up in the tall grass.And I'm just like, wildebeest don't like crouch when they walk.
I mean, they're big.They're actually, you know, the large males can be five and a half feet high at the shoulder.And we're in four and a half foot tall, you know, grassland.
And I'm kind of looking at him and not understanding and he draws a cat face on his hand.And I'm just like, I'm looking at him and he's looking at me.
And I realized the way they track animals, why track a wildebeest when it's so much easier to track the lions that don't have predators there?So the lion is just walking through the grass
going to where he knows the wildebeest are going to be, and that the wildebeest herd is going to kick an older male, which is what we're going to hunt, out.
He'd be alone, defenseless, because the herding animals will sometimes all go after a lion pride and shoo them away, right?But the old males are defenseless.So, you know, we were following these lions.
And I'm, I remember turning to my cameraman and saying, If we die eaten by lions, all that will be left of us are like bloody clothes. and they may never know where we are, saying, no one may ever know we're dead.
And this guy kind of flipped out a little bit.But I was so scared because we were trailing the lions.The lion was hunting upwind, right?So the lion is hunting.So he really couldn't smell us.That's why he had to be really quiet.
But then the freakish thing was, We, the guy puts me on his back, he's lying down and he gets up and has these three sticks with a leather thong between them and just plants them down.
And so all I had to do was slap my, my rifle into the notch of the tripod.Wildebeest is right in my sights.I shoot the wildebeest, the wildebeest runs 50 feet and lays down and dies. And then he's like, hurry, hurry, hurry.
And I'm thinking to myself, what is wrong with this guy?We have to get the camera crew.We have to record all this.Like a lot of stuff has to happen.So I'm telling him to slow down.
And he holds up his hand where he had taken dirt with the kitty cat picture.And he points at that again.And I'm like, that's exactly right.Because now they smell the blood.And you know, that was, you know, episode 12.
And so that kind of hooks you on the excitement of it.And, you know, I've hunted on five continents.I've gone after just about everything.
And I've been lucky enough to do it with just amazing human beings, you know, castles in Scotland going after, you know,
Big stags and, you know, fishing, you know, wild tuna with Hawaiians off of canoes, you know, 10 miles off the islands and everything in between bird hunting with you know, Navajo and bird hunting with tribes people in Thailand.
It really was quite the experience.And now I just do it, you know, when I can and lucky enough to have a lot of fun friends.And I just think there's nothing better than spending time in the outdoors.
Holy smokes, that's awesome.That's quite the adventure, quite the... Just like history in it.It's a That's really great.
My question is and it kind of stems off of that and So like as you've traveled around as you've met all these people sort of around the world and who you know hunt fish Consume wild food pretty regularly.Do you think that here in North America?
We have placed the same value on it as in a lot of other places.I
No, we live in a disposable society that's convenience driven.I don't think we need to bring back the horse and buggy, but in our obsession with speed and convenience and new things, we oftentimes discard cultural pathways that are to our detriment.
I truly believe that spending time in the woods, on the water, out in nature, regard, I don't care if you're collecting leaves for a collage, making watercolors, hunting and fishing, it doesn't matter.We've disconnected from our outdoor world.
The outdoors has so many lessons to teach us. you know, preparedness, safety, beauty, philosophical contemplation, poetic contemplation, an appreciation for those things that were not created by us.
I mean, I could keep, you know, bookmarking things that we, I think anyone would agree, as if you're just halfway awake, culturally, we're all better off appreciating in some way, doesn't have to be your thing.
I'm not asking, you know, everyone to be, you know, poetically contemplate a sunset.But if you haven't been outdoors enough to see the difference between a late October,
ice-cold, end-of-the-month Minnesota sunset over a cornfield, or a sunrise in a duck blind in South America.
Forget about the hunting, or 10-foot waves crashing over the front of your boat as you're trying to make it back from a deep-sea fishing trip. And everyone on hand needs to work hard so that the captain can focus on heading into the waves.
I just think those are lessons and experiences that everyone would benefit from having.There used to be a time in our country where everyone did experience those things.Now look,
That was also a time when the majority of people lived on the coasts where 80% of Americans farmed.I'm not asking us to step back multiple generations.Modernism has accomplished a lot.
But I do think that spending time outdoors is something that is increasingly becoming less and less important to our culture.And I don't think that's a positive thing.
No, I, I agree with you.I think wholeheartedly on that.
I, I like, I battle it with my kids and their friends and just kind of seeing that, um, thankfully not as much battling it with my own kids because I drag them outdoors every chance I get to, uh, you know, because I think there's so much, uh, there's so much importance in that.
And I think culturally too, you know, I'm, I'm a Choctaw from the Choctaw nation in Oklahoma.
uh myself and that's where i grew up and it's like we we lived outside like we as a people but like me growing up like me my family immediately like we lived outside you you worked outside you played outside your parents were like just go outside like go find something go wander around the back pasture go in the backyard and i think
that created a, you know, a drive for me to just get out and also created a curiosity into me.
Like I can be out now and I think hunting and fishing is taking me a lot of really beautiful places to where I would be like, all right, what's over the next Ridge?Like what's over the next, you know, like, let's keep going.
Let's see, like, let's just explore.This is more than just about going out and catching a fish or shooting an animal or picking a mushroom.It's about just like that sort of immersive experience you get from the outdoors and, um, Don't know.
I've recently I moved to the East Coast.
I'm in DC now and it's very I live in the middle of DC So I enjoy you know spending my week in DC and then on the weekend just getting out into like rural Maryland and just like going and sitting just in like a Blind or walking through the woods to hunt squirrels.
It's just like it's good just to kind of plug back in 100% 100% III mean look
it's a cliche, I've yet to find someone who's serious about the outdoors, who hasn't shared the exact same experience, and that is my, and I'm sure you're just gonna nod your heads when I say it, but my best days outdoors, I've never put a fish in the ice bin, and I've never put the gun to my shoulder.
It's just been extraordinary days outside, seeing amazing things, with people that I care about just giving each other, you know, a bunch of crap, enjoying each other, talking about real stuff, experiencing something that
made the time just disappear?And yeah, was some people would say, well, don't you go out to get food?And the answer is, well, that's kind of the goal when I'm thinking about it, I go to bed the night beforehand.
But I've learned now after spending a lot of time doing this, that I'm, I'm usually and this is because I'm privileged, you know, I have food in the refrigerator in my home.And I'm not worried about where my family's next meal is coming from.
So the imperative to come back with something is lessened.But now I'm just like, as long as something exciting happens, as long as something really thrilling happens, I'm good with it.
Now I know that there's usually the opportunity, if I've planned the trip right and I've done my homework,
I can usually see a lot of incredible animals and experience a lot of really cool things and I'll eat a stale peanut butter and jelly sandwich or two and it's just a magical day.It really is.
Hey everyone, this is Captain Steve Roger from End of the Blue TV.And as soon as I feel a little break from this heat, I know that hunting season is upon us.Actually, the first time I ever went hunting, a buddy took me.
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Sometimes it's just even the things that you've seen daily.I'm thinking of some squirrels that I just sat waiting for a deer to show up.The deer never showed up.I watched two squirrels for like three hours as my ass got sore and sore.
And I'd never seen squirrels do the things that they were doing because I never just stopped and watched squirrels for three hours straight.And it's something magical that comes out of that, just being present and focused in the woods without
And that was a cool day.I remember that more than the other but not more than shooting a deer But you know, I really remember that later said yeah a thousand percent.
I actually have a I mean a bunch of funny squirrel stories only because I was really curious about them and they're everywhere and you know, I you know, then finally someone said well you got to eat them and I'm like Okay.I was very lucky.
The first world that I ate were some really, really, really fat red squirrels in Tennessee.And I mean, they were like turkeys.I mean, these things were huge.But um, their diet was so incredible.
Same thing in West Virginia, my preferred place to hunt squirrel only because some of the ridgelines in in West Virginia, the they're only eating beach nuts the last month before the snow comes.
And they're basically finishing themselves and making their meat fattier and better tasting.And I I'll put that I'll put that squirrel meat
That West Virginia squirrel meat from my ridge that I go that I can't even talk about because no one goes there except the guy who takes me.And sometimes I open up my big fat mouth a little too much about places.You just probably done it to us.
you know, the most delicious food.And I'll tell you something funny.I it just aired on field to fire last Monday.But and we told the story in the show, but I was it In real life, it was even freakier.I winged a squirrel.We were shooting with 22s.
I winged a squirrel, and I thought for a while he was hanging on the tree.And the guy I was hunting with says, I don't know.And we walked up, and the thing that I thought I saw was just a weird piece of bark, as is often the case.
We saw this squirrel run by us on this log that had fallen about 25 minutes later.And we could have sworn that we saw blood, but we couldn't tell where on the animal.And we looked on the log and we couldn't find any.
And we spent six hours, I mean, on hunting. squirrel.And it was a really lousy day.It was really windy.And the squirrels just were holding up places.And then we saw another squirrel go run into a hole in a tree.
And we sat there contemplating this thing.And my God was like, we want to wait here.And I'm like, you know, the biggest waste of time in the world is is waiting, staring at a hole for a squirrel on a cold, windy day to stick its head outside.
I mean, what are we going to do?What did you shoot it and then it falls inside the tree.I'm like, it doesn't matter.We need that squirrel to leave, right?
And at the very, very end of the day, when we're about to call it quits, cause the weather's just, you know, we're not seeing a lot of movement, nothing.We spot another squirrel.
We decide, I was trying to get, I couldn't get a bead on it from where I was.And I said to him, I said, if you have a shot, take it.
So he shoots this squirrel, and we go, we find the squirrel, and he'd shot it once, and we saw the fresh wound that had felled the squirrel, and I had shot the squirrel before in the ass, through and through in its thigh, and it turned out,
that this one of our videographers had gone back to that log and found blood trail.Oh, wow.So it turned out that we had seen that same squirrel three different times.And what are the odds of shooting the same squirrel twice?
in a big forest in northern Minnesota.I mean, about a bazillion.I mean, I was like, and we have the whole thing.
We had the whole thing on on film, which was the fun part about making field to fire, which is that I get to go out hunting or fishing, and then head back to my outdoor kitchen and actually cook things up and create recipes for people.
whether they're using squirrel or whether they're going to use pork chops, the recipe is still the same.And, you know, I don't want to disenfranchise anyone.There's some people just like, watching me do my thing.
And they, they're not outdoors people, they're not going to eat square maybe makes them curious about it.You know, I shouldn't say that they won't ever eat it.But it's it's a really wonderful experience to be able to then share what I do with the the
the food after I harvest it, you know, how I cook it and how I treat it.So that's, that's a real blast.
I think it, it circles it back around.It completes the circle, right?
It takes, you know, a lot of experiences you've had throughout your past of like growing up in, in hunting and fishing and then traveling around and seeing people just like bring it back in.
And then the approach you're sort of taking it with in, in a field to fire as well as like, Hey, here's, here's,
here's this action that happens and here's the result but also like there's some there's more commonality in it than than people think even if you're not eating squirrel like and by the way there's not i mean
with a lot of people always ask me what were some of my favorite, you know, is I was out publicizing this season, you know, and doing a lot of interviews.And so what's your favorite stuff?
And I and I wound up talking a lot about certain types of fish.And the reason was, is that, you know, our when we have to shoot is dictated by when we have to deliver shows to the network.So we sort of work backwards on the calendar.
And then we have to pick where we're going.
And where we can get, you know, multiple episodes in in the same place so that we're not doing too many, you know, crew moves, you know, we can sit in Charleston, South Carolina hotel and each day, a different two different fish species and then go deer hunting and then get pigs.
We can shoot four episodes in one five or six day period in South Carolina.And I had the chance to get a fish species, one of my favorite fish to eat in the whole world is sheep's head.And there's no commercial fishery for sheep's head.
They're too hard to catch.So unless you have a friend who's gonna give you one, you have to catch it yourself.And it is a very tricky, that fish, you can barely feel the bite.
They have huge, you know, they have goat teeth with big gaps in them, but they have very powerful jaw.And so if you're fishing with tiny live green crab or little shrimp, they can be crushing at this thing where the hook isn't.
They're kind of persnickety and they savor their food.But the fillets, the fish itself tastes so good because of its diet.I mean, it only eats, tiny baby oysters, tiny baby shrimp, and tiny baby crabs.That's all it eats.
And I'm just like, this is the best, I mean.It's like a sweet, like a sweet buttery kind of flesh.Oh my God.I mean, in this, where we were getting them, you know, my guide told me these ones here, he likes to fish them on wrecks.
So he, he knew of a boat that had gone down in this one body of water and took us to this place.And he said, this is my honey hole.I don't take anyone here.He said, so, you know, he told the camera guys, you can't shoot this over there.
It's certain land where he says, I don't want anyone who lives down here to know where we are.And we're like, okay, great.No problem. And we got bites right away.And he said, there's no oysters here in this elbow in the estuary.
And he says, there's very few shrimp.They're closer to the shoreline in shallower water.And the redfish are going after them.And the next day, we went and got redfish in almost the same spot.
But he's in my kids got us a bucket of these little baby crabs to fish with.And I'm telling you, I, I cooked up one of those fillets that night on a hot plate in my motel room, because I just had to.And it tastes it just reeked. of crab.
I mean, yeah, animals taste of what they eat, you know, and which is why I like wild hogs so much, depending on where you take them in what country, what they're eating and what time of year is very important to me.
I'm, you know, a lot of wild hog in the deep south.You you know, the problem is warm weather, right?Breaks down the fat differently, they eat differently.
You know, I like to, to take hogs in cold weather zones, where they are, they're eating a lot of ground nuts, a lot of fallen fruit from trees, sometimes the fruit that humans may not be able to eat, but it, it puts on a
visible layer of fat that's different than their warm weather fat layer, you can see the line in them.And when you're skinning them, and it's, I mean, look, I, I I'll now talk out of the other side of my mouth.
Still the best wild pig that I ever ate was one that I got in Cuba, where the farmers down there, the campesinos who work the tobacco fields, trap, they don't kill the wild hogs, they trap them.
And they take them alive, and then they finish them on, I don't know, coconut and date palms.So for a month before they harvest the animal, They feed them only date palms and only coconut palm.So immature little coconuts, right?
So you grill or roast that animal and the meat literally caramelizes without any fat because there's so much sugar in the meat itself. is still the best tasting pig I've ever eaten in my life.And, you know,
a real lesson to not only, I mean, as hunters, we all know, and fishermen, you follow the food system to find the animal you like, that's, you know, a pretty sure way to get where you want to be.
But that the flavor of different species and different animals is so much predicated on and about their diet.It makes me a pickier outdoors person.
You know, I'm pretty indiscriminate about pigeon, which is one of my favorite birds to hunt, because they're very finicky eaters, they'll they'll only eat seed really doesn't matter where you take them.
But you know, where on the flyway the ducks are what time of year is it?Um, I don't even like to go.All my friends are like, duck opener, duck opener.And I'm like, I want the last three days of the season.
I want to go where there's the last little bit of open water.I want to get those last canvas backs that I can get.And they're just like, wow, you're picky.And it's like, well, yeah, limits are down.
And if I'm going to take a couple wild duck, I know where to. I know where to go.I know what I like.I know what I want.I said, I'll hunt other things while you're out duck hunting.And I love waterfowling.I mean, that's as fun for me as anything.
But yeah, I get pretty persnickety about it.Because once you've tasted the difference, and obviously I come at it from a culinary point of view, It is.The taste of those birds is so much better.
The taste of deer in different parts of the country based on diet is spectacular.I love Minnesota.I love Minnesotans.I love hunting my home state. We have the best tasting grouse on planet Earth up on the north shore of Lake Superior.
There's something about what the birds have available to eat.There's something about the cold weather.There's something about the whole nine yards.It's a really hard hunt.And really, really, really, really tricky.
And you need some really, really, really good dogs.And you've got to be fast.But boy, is it rewarding.By the same token, Minnesota deer compared to, like,
Tennessee deer or Maryland deer or other venison that I've taken other places, it's just not as good based on diet.They're eating too much scrub plant and just the meat doesn't develop the same way.
So, you know, I like to plan my hunting and fishing around where I'm going to get the best food for eating.And it's a great way to live.
Yeah, absolutely.I think, I was thinking about, just like I, growing up in Oklahoma and then I've traveled kind of all around, I've hunted on the West Coast and the East Coast and all that.
And I still think like, yeah, Southern Whitetail Deer is up there, but I don't know.Pronghorn Antelope from Wyoming is at the top of my list as far as like flavor.Delicious.Oh, so good.
Delicious.Have you ever hunted kudu in Africa or had the opportunity to taste it? Uh, nope.Adam has.
I tasted it.It's incredible.
Yeah, I didn't get the content.You want to eat, you know, and fresh or, you know, aged, you know. when we've taken them, we've hung them for a couple of days.And I think it eats like veal.I've never tasted anything better.
Wild African porcupine is the same way from Botswana.There's a couple animals in certain parts of the world that because of their diet and where they are, I'm just like, yeah, give me that every day of the week.You know, kudu might be
my favorite wild red meat.Certain species of other African antelope are really, really, really, you know, off the charts. It's a, it's, you know, elk is right up there for me as well.I've eaten other people's moose.It's still on my list.I'm dying.
I'm hoping next September to get up to Canada and take my own first moose. But i got it.Not sure there's a couple different places that i can go in september and i'm trying to figure out where i'm gonna go do that there's some folks it.
some outdoor magazines and stuff that are really interested in documenting that for me.On one hand, it's great to be hosted somewhere that's great, but I also don't want to go on a commercialized moose hunt.
I like to be out there with a friend or two and and go do it ourselves, but it is humping out a lot of meat on a couple miles.
I had a day, I thought I was going to die in Hawaii on the top of a volcano hunting wild sheep, that the guy looked at me and I realized that it was something that we had never discussed.
In the in the couple of days of planning before we went up there that we were gonna drive to a point and kind of walk and angles kind of downhill to this place for the animals came in the there's no water source for these wild sheep.
They gather at this place where there is all this do collect it if there's so much do it's almost running. into this pasture, like it's wet the ground, and they eat the grass there.
And it because of this cold, and then sunlight, and it's Hawaii, because of the the where it is, it produces a ton of grass and a ton of dew is collected.So that's their water source is even this grass.
And my guide said, we're just gonna set up here, you know, against this tree, this fallen tree and give us a little bit of cover and we'll get some sheep.
And then I realized as I was about to pull the trigger is we're going to have to take everything out with us.And illegal there to leave entrails and other things behind.And we had been given special permission by the state to go up there.
We're documenting this for a TV show.And I was like, Oh, you gotta be kidding me.And I, I mean, I, especially when he said, by the way, make sure you have a couple bullets in your gun.And I'm like, for and he goes, the second one.
And I said, the second one.And I'm like, and I'm kind of looking at me says, Well, there's no pressure on this herd.Like every couple years, we someone gets permission to hunt here.So there's a chance these sheep have never even heard a gunshot.
And so what's going to happen is you will, you will take one, you know, we're at distance, we're, you know, 5600 feet away.He said, you're gonna, you know, unless you're a moron, you're gonna, you're gonna take the first one.
And you've got about 20 seconds to eject the cartridge, load another one in the chamber and bolt action.And if you're, if you can quickly get a bead on one.
So before you set up your, kind of like playing pool, know where you're going to move the gun to take the second one.And I'm just like, they're not going to move? I said, Are they dumber than like California doves?
And he's like, Oh, wait, they just have never.He said smarter, but they just never they just don't know what's going on.So we're able to take two, which was great.Because we ate one in the episode, and we smoked a lot of the meat.
He made his ad hoc smoker out of these big giant ferns and stuff and twigs that we hung the meat on.And we were able to donate the other one the meat to a local school.
but oh my gosh carrying that stuff uphill on volcanic I mean it looks like tufts of grass but it's just foot high ankle breakers of this volcanic rock that was just That was a crazy day, but a lot of fun.Holy smokes.That's incredible.
Yeah, 30 degrees in the morning, 80 degrees in the afternoon.Oh yeah, that's a big swing.Then you've got to carry all your clothes to deal with it too.Oh my God, and on this mountain in Hawaii, when we got to the truck,
I wasn't so happy to see a vehicle as I've been.I mean, other than one time when I actually got lost with a friend, and that feeling where you finally are like, oh my gosh, I think that's our truck.Thank you.
The foxhole prayer that please, please God, return us to our vehicle.
Adam, you had a question you wanted to ask too.
Yeah, so we started off our conversation talking about a couple of mushrooms Justin and I found.I know you've dealt with some wild edibles on your shows before.How do you think that wild plants and forest foods complement wild game in the kitchen?
And why do you think more hunters don't play around with wild edibles?It seems that there's a wild edibles camp that's often vegan-oriented and a hunting camp that's separate.
Here at Harvesting Nature, it's all one, and just wanted to get your thoughts on that.
Well, it should be all one.It's one planet, it's one continent, it's one state, it's one region, it's one acre of forest or grassland or wherever you're hunting or fishing.As a chef, I learned a long time ago that what grows together, goes together.
Definitely.By the same token, a lot of times what one animal eats goes with that. food as well.I talked about that sheep's head.
I served on, it's coming up, I think in next week's episode, but the sheep's head, I made a sauce out of jumbo lump crab meat, fresh jumbo lump crab meat that we picked to go with the sheep's head, which made, the fish made the crab taste crabby-er and the crab made the fish taste crabby-er.
It was a wonderful, wonderful thing. I'm not sure there's a better pairing for any, I mean, it's fall in Minnesota, right?I don't think there's a better pairing for any fall game meet. than a fall harvested mushroom.
I mean, turn it into a sauce, saute it in brown butter and finish it with, you know, just a few drops of lemon juice and salt.I mean, the The pairing, mother nature made the pairing for you, you know?
You know, autumn berries, sometimes you have to sweeten them, but autumn berries with autumn game meats, the same thing.
Autumnal spices, which people don't think about when it comes to foraging, but you know, I play disc golf and there's one golf course that has the best sumac in the state there.
And I always take a cone or two of the sumac and dry it in the dehydrator and get the buds off and buzz it in the grinder.
And when you take, you make a seasoning blend of a little bit of salt, a lot of sumac, and you roll a venison medallion, a duck breast, or trout fillet or walleye fillet in it and just let it hit the pan, done.I mean, you don't need anything else.
I mean, you can, but there's something about things that grow together, going together.
And I think, you know, look, you know, we talked before when I was talking about the tribes people, the skill set, you know, someone has to teach you about hunting, then someone has to teach you about foraging.
And I will say this about mushrooms, everyone has to be very, very careful.There are a lot of species out there that can get you sick.So you never wanna take something that you're not 100%, sorry, 110% sure is what it is. Everybody always says that.
That being said, a false morel isn't going to get you that sick.I'm not encouraging people to disregard the rules, but a golden chanterelle is a golden chanterelle.A black trumpet is a black trumpet.
A lobster mushroom, there are a lot of mushrooms that are singular and easy to identify that doesn't require you to take a class. that you can read about it in a book, you can look it up online, you can put the pictures on your phone.
I mean, there are apps now where you can take a picture of it, and they'll tell you what it is, right.So it's really much easier for even the most amateur of foragers to collect things out in the woods.And by the way,
I was talking about the squirrels and the beech nuts.There are a lot of different other plants out there that you can harvest and include in your food.There's nuts.There are berries that are drying on vines.
It just goes on and on and on that really makes for some absolutely delicious food.The same can be said in the In the springtime or early summer up in northern Minnesota, taking the first blueberries of the year and making a blueberry sauce.
I like it sweet and sour.I love that Italian agrodolce vibe with game meat, I think is wonderful.And, you know, making a gastrique and then putting a lot of blueberry puree into it with, A piece of fish is about as fantastic.
You know, mount it with a tablespoon or so of butter right before you pull the saucepan off the heat, along with just a seared piece of steelhead or whatever it is we're lucky enough to get in the spring here.Just phenomenal.
It doesn't get much better than that.No, it doesn't actually.And that's the, I think that's the great lesson that I think, you know, we can carry as outdoors people and as people who love food is that, you know, we, you know,
We can make this as fancy and, you know, Mr. Maple Miso over here.You can get as fancy and chefy about it as you want.But at the end of the day, you know, simply serving it, you know, I live here in Minnesota.
So, you know, we have a lot of wild rice and, you know, good wild rice with some, you know, phenomenal autumnal game bird or hoofed animal or fish, doesn't matter.Keep it simple, but just put it on the plate.Wild food has so much more flavor.I'm
you know, I believe I'm a huge proponent of aquaculture.You know, I'm very civically involved in a lot of NGOs and nonprofits that are that are trying to solve some of our existential problems.We have many of them.
on this planet that have to do with a sustainable food system that is broken and in desperate need of a lot of repair in different places.It's not just one hole in the pipe, it's a lot of holes in the pipe.
And so as we rebuild a better food system, I believe there's a place for wild foods in there.If everyone in America could take one meal a week, that's 52 meals a year from the wild.
The studies that i've seen show a no discernible impact as long as we're taking fish from managed fisheries you know we're not taking things illegally we're making sure to play by the rules.
But if we could do more harvest, if hunters could donate more wild food, we have too many laws against that.When I was in Scotland and I'm in the kitchen with the chef doing this dinner, and I'm like, where'd you get all the birds?
And he's like, oh, my sous chef and I went and shot them this weekend.And I said, and you're selling those in the restaurant?He's like, well, yeah.
I was in Croatia a couple of years ago, and everyone was coming to work, the waiters and the bartenders and the busters and the line cooks, and all of them had five-gallon buckets filled with giant spears of wild asparagus.
And I asked the owner, I said, what's going on?He goes, oh, it's asparagus season. And I'm like, Yeah, you know, I that's, you know, one of the reasons I came to this restaurant was famous for all these asparagus time of year.
I said, But what are they doing carrying it?And they're like, she looks at me like I'm crazy.What do you mean?And I said,
I just wasn't connecting, and she says, oh, everyone lives, this one lives 10 miles away, he lives three miles away, he lives four miles away, people walk to work, and I pay them to stop and harvest wild asparagus and bring it to work.
So they take their buckets, and when they're filled, then they have a friend come get them, they call on their cell phone, or I'll drive to get them.
And the restaurant fills up with these asparagus every day, and they make asparagus pasta, asparagus this, grilled asparagus, you know, it blows my mind.In America, it's illegal to do that.There's something wrong with that.
I know what we're all trying to stop and solve for.But I think those boundaries sometimes shoot us in the foot.The I think wild food has its place.
And if we can eliminate 12, 13% of our factory farm foods that are killing us and the processed foods that are killing us, I think it's a really, really good investment in our, you know, in our neighbors and friends and family and fellow Americans.
I don't see this as, red, blue, left, right.I see this as a civic issue that requires really sound decision-making on because 20% of Americans don't know where their next meals are coming from and that includes children.
To have solutions for solving childhood hunger and not enacting federal legislation to ensure that no kid in America is ever hungry, to me is a genocidal act.If we have the ability to solve the problem.
And the result is that some children will have worse outcomes.Some may die from malnutrition.Some may die from processed food-related diseases.I don't call them food-related diseases.They're processed food-related diseases.
No child ever got diabetes from eating too much broccoli.Never happened, ever. We have to take a really serious look at all aspects of our food system, and it's incumbent upon all of us Americans to make sure that we are aligned there.
We need a cabinet-level position for food in this country.It represents over 20% of GDP, just food in general.It shouldn't be housed in three other agencies, some of which don't even have cabinet-level representation.
We need to have food decisions being made by smart food people in Washington, D.C.and in our state and municipal governments.And, you know, this is not, again, this is not a political speech.
This is simply something that there are certain decisions that need to be done municipality by municipality because one size does not fit all when it comes to food.
you know, the issues with hunger are different in New Mexico than they are in New England, right?And the environment is different, and the resources are different, and the tax base is different.The size of the state is different.
And I think it is oftentimes, I mean, look, we only have nine states in America that have free lunch programs and breakfast for students. That's absurd, right?
And we should be taking advantage of the outdoors community that knows so much and there's so much wisdom with fisheries that are being abused in our oceans.We're taking wild foods in some cases commercially when we shouldn't.
We are not supporting aquaculture in some cases where we should.And then, I mean, We talked squirrel, pigeon, geese, which in many communities are nuisance.
You know, one year here in Minnesota, in the city of Minneapolis, they had law enforcement shooting thousands of geese.We had a big goose problem. on our city lakes.
And the the the the animals going to the bathroom was creating a huge issue for streets, park benches, docks, all kinds of things.
And these these geese herds were really causing a lot of problems in our city lakes where we have very dense population living around them.And it I was just outraged at the time our governor was not a hunter.Our current governor is a hunter.
And I believe if this current administration was there, he would have understood the necessity for, you know, why are you throwing away 20,000 pounds of some of the best and most nutritious animal protein on earth when we have people who are hungry here in Minnesota?
It blew my mind. I think the outdoors community has something to teach everyone about conserving our open spaces, our green spaces, our blue spaces, how to deal with food issues.
I think people who hunt and fish and spend time outdoors have to have a seat at that table.I tell folks all the time, The people I know who are outdoors people are the best conservationists I know and the most well-informed.
I sat on a tractor once when I made this show for MSNBC called What's Eating America, still the best piece of work that I ever did in television.
And one of my favorite lines, I was on this giant John Deere combine and I looked into the camera and I said, if you want to understand how farms in America work, I suggest you get your ass down to a farm and walk around and talk to farmers, right?
And if you want to learn about the outdoors and what we need to do to solve so many of our issues with our green and blue spaces and with our food system, I think the hunting community and the fishing community and the foraging community needs a seat at that table because we understand, we spend time out in those environments.
A lot of people making decisions about those things, again, this is not left or right or red or blue.This is just common sense.Let's get the people who spend time in the outdoors chiming in.
I mean, we need to make the decisions collectively, but it angers me that we don't have a seat at that table.And I think we should.
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No, I agree with you, I didn't like...
And we've talked about it so much, Adam and I, and the larger like sort of harvesting nature community of like hunting and fishing and foraging, like the right to do that and the access to do that, like that's an ability to solve food security problems, like not just for us, but for everybody too.
And I watched that, you know, Pennsylvania has such a big program.I think Hunters for the Hungry, I like follow them on social media and I see like the thousands and thousands and thousands of pounds of venison that's donated every year.And,
Then I was talking, this was years ago, I was talking with a trapper, a wild pig trapper in Texas, and I was like, what do you do with the pigs?He's like, well, we just get rid of them.And I'm like, why?He's like, we can't do anything with them.
And he's like, then I had to pay guys to come out in the middle of the night and process them and take them someplace.He goes, in reality, we just can't.And I was like, man, this is such a travesty that that opportunity.
I mean, if you just looked at the wild pig population in the South alone, you know, there's some argument there whether we really want it gone, but.
I was about to talk about that because that's probably the largest opportunity, you know, where you're talking about, I mean, you know, shoot a goose, you know, you have a couple pounds, you know, at a time to, you know, but take some of those, you know, big ass wild hogs down there
And you take Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, Texas, parts of Florida.
If you could have state programs that allowed us I mean, studies have been done cheaper to pay people to clean the animals and USDA processing plants to pack them and freeze them and distribute them than it is to subsidize food programs in those communities.
Which is insanely expensive.Yeah.Insanely expensive.And by the way, if we could enact programs like that all around the country, Southern states alone could probably put 30 pounds a week, sorry, 30 pounds a year on the tables of families that need
healthy, clean protein resource.That is the difference.Is it going to take care of every hungry person in America?No.
But if we could take care of 20%, 22%, 23%, somewhere around there, the amount of money that then would be saved that we could turn our attention to the others 70 something percent.That's where the that's where the creative thinking needs.
Everyone's like, well, if we can't solve the problem 100% with with, you know, wild hogs, then why do it?It's like, why do it at all?We need we need 12 different resources for this.Sorry, my dogs.My dogs see something outside.That's okay.
Well, I think by a giant deer stalking.
To add onto that, I think about like if there were programs inactive to like give wildlife management agencies the avenue to sort of like expand on that as well.
Like I think about Maryland, the county I hunt in Montgomery County, just right outside DC, like there's almost no limit on antlerless deer because they call it an urban, it's an urban hunting zone.It's so overpopulated with deer.
It's just like- That's right. You know, you like what if you had the opportunity to open that up and you're like, all right, for every deer you shoot, you donate one or like, you know, some some sort of way to manage the program.
Now you enable state agencies to have this tool to go in to manage populations through hunting, but also like see those resources distributed throughout the community.I think about like similar to the way Germany sort of manages their program, like
A lot of that wild game goes back into the system.That's correct.And I think that in the United States and even Canada too, where Adam's at, that's a foreign concept to us to be like, wait, I shoot the deer.I don't keep the meat.
It goes to the butcher and the butcher sells it or does whatever with it.And like, whoa. You know, and our North American model of conservation works well, but everything is the best thing it is until something better is there.
So much to learn.So much to learn from the way people in other states do it.By the way, in Canada, depending on where you are, in what province,
The chefs can take wild food that they harvest out of the water or from the land and serve it in their restaurants, which is certainly a very enlightened concept.
And I think we, you know, we can, we can start there, you know, I mean, chefs shouldn't have to forage. you know, plants and quote-unquote smuggle into their restaurants illegally, you know, the most ludicrous thing I've ever heard of in my life.
Adam, this is the first that I've heard that you're in Canada.You know, Minnesota is the lost Canadian province.We're like your little baby.We're almost, we're like half Canadian.
Yeah, you even have the accent and everyone seems really nice there.
We do.We do.Same thing.Same thing.Yeah, that's exactly right.You know,
We both know what a loon is.Exactly.And I've tasted those grouse you talked about on our side of the Superior, and hot damn are they delicious.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.That is, if you look at that little band on the Canadian side, the grouse, that's where the flavorless grouse.Oh, yeah, yeah. The really good ones are just a few miles south.
I see.I'll have to come and visit you.
It's nice to know that we've hunted within eyesight of each other.It really is a superb bird.I mean, oh, you talk about delicious.I mean, I serve that to friends and they're like, this is the best tasting chicken I've ever had.What is this?
It's not chicken, is it?It doesn't seem like chicken.I said it's grouse.It's chicken, but better.
It's better than chicken.It's the essence of chicken, if it was better and wild and just something amazing.
I felt that way.I mean, a lot of us have eaten farmed guinea hen in this country, but in Africa, having a chance to hunt the OG species of guinea fowl, I mean, It's just staggering how delicious that bird is.Well, they're making me hungry.
I'm excited.I get to go and feed the family now.I'm making cavatelli.Ooh, that sounds good.Yeah. Yeah, you know, little tomato sauce thing, very simple.We've been cooking a lot of more elaborate meals, but you know.
So I've got my cavatelli roller that I'm staring at across my kitchen counter and my double O flour out and getting ready to slam into cavatelli mode.Oh, nice.
Ooh, that sounds perfect.We're eating leftover snow goose gumbo.So, which? Not bad.
Not bad.No, not bad at all.I'm a big duck gumbo guy.That's where a lot of my legs and thighs wind up.I do encourage full utilization of the animal.My first hunting experience ever for waterfowl was watching someone breast out a goose in the field.
was throwing the rest of the carcass in a garbage bag.I looked at this guy, I was 16, and I looked at this guy and I said, let me have those.I cleaned them.
I laid them in salt, sugar, herbs from Provence and garlic for about two days, then took them out of the cure, cooked them in their own rendered fat and made goose confit out of it, and then crisped them up and served it to him a week later.
with roasted apples.And he's like, this is the best tasting goose I've ever had in my life.And I said, this is what you were putting into the garbage.You know, I mean, are you are you out of your mind?
And even with a lot of there's a lot of birds where the thighs are edible, but people say, Oh, there's there's too much connective tissue, there's the legs.
Just confit that stuff, braise it, and then take the time, just pull some of that connective tissue out and just throw that meat in there and just like, oh my gosh, take five extra seconds.
Throw it into a crockpot with a can of beer, if nothing else.
See, I knew you, Adam.You see, I knew you and your fancy mushroom talk earlier.You're a crockpot and a beer guy.I'm not, but that's better than nothing.Your point is very well taken.
I tell people all the time it's the easiest way to process meat in the world is just to throw it in a crockpot with a few cups of wine or a can of beer and then clean the meat. And then you can do things with it.
You can, you know, you can cream it, you can put barbecues, I mean, whatever you want to do.It doesn't have to be fancy, you know.Not fancy like maple syrup miso guy over there.
Justin, you know, someday I'm going to meet you in person and I'm going to look at you and go, hey, maple syrup and miso guy.I'll bring you a bottle. Do you want to know something?
This year, I think it's on a show that's going to come out in the spring for, I think, season four of Wild Game Kitchen.We just shot it.
And I forget what episode it is, but as a side dish, I cut big thick planks of sweet potato and charred them on the grill.And then right before it comes off, I brush them with maple syrup and miso.
sesame seeds on it and then just let it sit for like five seconds.You don't want to burn the sesame seeds, you just want to toast them and caramelize that maple syrup and miso.And what did I serve it with?I may have served it with grilled antelope.
But it was with a grilled pork, but on sweet potatoes, I'm nuts about the stuff.Maple syrup and miso is a great combination.I'm just giving you a bunch of guff.
I, yeah, I was gonna, I'll end, we'll wrap up here just a second, because we're coming up with time.I know you want to get to dinner too.One last, so wild rice.I love wild rice from Minnesota.I was there in the spring.
I picked up a bunch of bags and came back with them.We took a Florida wild turkey.What color was it?It was dark, I don't know.I got it at Sean Sherman's store, the native store.He's got the food store there. Do you have any left?No, I ate it all.
I ate it because we took braised turkey legs, braised it all down, took that liquid, the chunks of turkey, put it over top the wild rice, mixed in apple cider vinegar and a little bit of maple syrup, and ate it like a warm salad.
And oh my gosh, it was like phenomenal.
The reason that I ask is that I have a lot of friends up north who are living on tribal land.
And because I've done a lot of work with, you know, shot a lot of TV shows, spread their story, done a lot of fundraising and stuff like that, every year I get presence of that wild rice harvest.
And I have a few bags in my cupboard from last year's harvest.One is gray and the other one is almost as white as my t-shirt.Wow.
And the more grayish white in that area, that's the really primo like head stash wild rice that they save for themselves.
The commercial stuff is dark brown, and Sean would not be selling that in his store, and I know that he's providing an outlet, oh yeah, and I'm sure it was a really good dark gray varietal.
The next time you're coming through Minnesota, let me know, we'll have dinner over here at my house, and I'll, because I have this one bag, and you really gotta appreciate, you gotta be a wild rice person, this stuff is snowy white,
And when I tell you it just in 10 minutes, it just opens up and is like, I mean, salt and the barest amount of butter.
And yes, sometimes I sauté a little bit of carrot, celery, and onion, and deglaze it with a little sherry, because it brings out all that nuttiness, and really brown mushrooms in some butter, and mix all that in, and just eat it in front of the fireplace.
It's about as good as food gets.I'm obsessed with wild rice.My mouth, I'm just salivating, like freezing.
It's so good.So, so good. Anyway.
All right.Well, any last thought?Anything you want to leave the listeners with?We've talked about so much.
AndrewZimmern.com.Well, AndrewZimmern.com is one-stop shopping for everything we do.I'm on every social media platform there is.
I encourage people to subscribe to Spilled Milk, which is my Substack newsletter, which is a really, really, really good award-winning place, not only to get recipes and video content and stories and my crazy-ass opinions on stuff and travel recommenders and everything, but a lot of info on and first peeks at things we're doing.
I have a great YouTube channel that we really got into the habit of migrating a lot of stuff onto YouTube and rotating it through.Doesn't cost anything.There's no paywall, but a lot of really cool content there.
So, you know, folks can, I mean, it's easy to find me.I'm an overexposed old man. Just let that, I'll leave you with that thought right there.
Adam, you got any last thoughts?Something we never got to, we never got to a lot, but it's been such a great conversation.
But I know that you have a lot of causes that you fight for, you pitch and you do a lot of work with different causes, and I just want, because we never got to all of them,
just that we could include it in the show notes, if you could send some over, some things that you really care about.
Oh, I'll give you, I mean, we could spend all day, I literally devote most of my life to that kind of stuff.
I'm on the boards of several international and national non-profits from the Environmental Working Group to the Nature Conservancy, Partnership for Drug-Free America, Charlie's there on Africa Outreach Project, the United Nations World Food Program,
World Food Program USA, City Harvest, Second Harvest Heartland, World Central Kitchen.I mean, I could just keep going on and on and on.And I do spend a lot of time working on those things.
And there's different reasons that I align myself with those organizations and work so tirelessly for them.
People can, if you go to andrewzimmern.com, no paywall, you click on the partner page, the 15 or 20 that I did the most work with, and I have the most representation, spend the most time on are all there.
And if people feel like donating to something, go ahead.What's more important is actually read the little blurb we wrote about each one.
And if you see a sentence that moves you, cut and paste it, or just take the link and send it to everyone in your email list.Because awareness of these issues is 99% of the problem.If there's more awareness, the money will flow.
Whether people are giving me 50 cents or $500, Awareness is what we need of these issues.People aren't aware that we still have... As much of a problem as hunger is in America, they're still not aware that 20% of kids in America go to bed hungry.
Kids, kids, it just boggles my mind.I'm a dad.Absolutely boggles my mind that my kid should be extra blessed because he knows where his next meals are coming from.I mean, food is a basic human right.That is a basic human right.
This is the greatest country in the history of the world and the richest country in the history of the world.The most fantastic country in the history of the world.I love my country. I am bonkers angry that we have hungry children in America.
It's tragedy.Tragedy. So yeah, there's a lot of information and a lot of really good causes.Thank you for bringing that up.
I will say this, shout out to all the people with the platform who do good things in their community, acknowledged and unacknowledged.
And that can be the outdoors person that donates meat to a local food shelf that will take the wild meat or process it.Like the Hunters for Hunger that you were talking about Pennsylvania, Justin.
A lot of people just do what they can in their communities.And that is, that's what we need more of is people just under those, those hunters understand that there's a hunger problem, they're aware of it.And they're trying to solve it.
Too many people go throughout their day, just absolutely unaware with blinders on that there are people in our great nation that that are not being taken care of.And that is that is a genocidal issue, my friends, and we need to do something about it.
So go to andrewzimmern.com.There's a lot of information there for a lot of really cool organizations.
Absolutely.I was just going to say thanks for coming on.Thanks for chatting with us.Yeah, my pleasure.I think both Adam and I grew up watching you on TV.It's really special to get to- Here it comes.Thank you.Thank you.Make me feel old.
No, no, no.This is the make me feel old part of the program.
Next up's the, we all cry together and we have a moment.
I appreciate that.No.Thank you.I appreciate that.That's really nice of you.It's really nice of you to say.I appreciate it.
No, and you know, I think too, it's good.You know, the, the hunting community, the fishing community, the foraging community is very broad and to have such positive represent representation in it is, is a great thing.And I thank you for that.
Um, you know, and likewise, just introducing people to more wild food and putting it in a positive light and, and breaking down those barriers and even being willing to tackle and talk about some tough issues that some people get a little squirmy about, I think is, it's very respectful.
Oh, I am the talkiest, least squirmy person that you now know.So thanks again for coming on.I'll say we'll put all the links to things in the show notes.
Everybody that's listening out there, please go through, click, follow, read, share, and whatever podcast platform you listen to, punch that five star button, leave us a review, tell us we're doing right, or, you know, tell us what we're doing wrong.
