Breads, sweet and sour; salads and soups; game, fish, and fowl -- they're all here, together with "field recipes" to rival the best meals offered by five-star restaurants. But first a word of caution from America's favourite humorist, outdoors or in: "It would be a good idea for you to read the memoir first, before jumping into the recipes. Otherwise, out of ignorance, you might select one of my mother's recipes and foolishly even prepare and attempt to eat it, in the belief that because the recipe is included in a cookbook, it must be for something good to eat."
Pat also has a word or two to say about the dangers of bear meat, especially the trouble you can get into on that very first bite: "I spent a week one night eating a bear steak," Pat recalls. "Actually, I ate only one bite. The more I chewed the bigger the bite got. By the time I gave up on it, the bite was the size of a yearling cub and still growing ..."
"With the exception of a few of my contributions, all of the recipes in this book have been ... prepared and tested by my sister and coauthor, sometimes referred to in this memoir as Patricia and at other times as Grendel the Troll, her childhood identity ..."
"Many of the recipes belonged to my grandmother, a cook much sought after in the logging camps of northern Idaho, where the loggers were more concerned with the quality of the food in the camp than the quantity of dollars in their pay envelopes. Gram was a superb cook ... When the wind was right, she could empty all the hoboes from a freight train and bring them streaming to our house for a handout. Only my dog, Strange, didn't care for Gram's cooking ... His idea of a gourmet meal was a flattened roadkill, properly aged in a ditch for six months ... and his criticisms ..., therefore, should not be taken seriously. I have also inserted recipes belonging to some of my hunting and fishing pals."
And last, but by no means least, although against the protests of the Troll, Pat has included some of his own culinary creations, such as Whatchagot Stew and that old favourite of elk hunters, Green Hash.
Enjoy!