Thanks for Thanksgiving and Pheasant and Mushrooms...

Pheasant under Duress – with mushrooms

Thanks for the Thanksgiving memories. 

One favorite is Aunt Kay in the kitchen yelling out to her husband,

“Hughie you wanna neck?”

Us kids sitting around the table, tittered and responded, Now?”

The joke was lost on Aunt Kay, however, since she was trying to serve turkey neck to Uncle Hughie.

But, the best times were dead ahead.

I fled deepest darkest New Jersey for the Rocky Mountains of Colorado to go to college, and the few students who could not afford to fly out for Thanksgiving, banded together for a party. Some guys went into the wilds of Colorado, armed with shotguns, and killed some pheasant for dinner.

Being from New Jersey, I had no understanding or appreciation of people with guns who shot and ate their kill, but there would be a keg of Michelob. And, I never had pheasant before. And, there was a peace pipe. And, apparently some psilocybin mushrooms which I was afraid to eat because, again, I did not consider wild mushrooms a delicacy. So, while everybody seemed to be dancing on the ceiling, I was partaking in the peace pipe and the Michelob, when I looked over and the COUCH WAS ON FIRE. 

But back to the pheasant: It tasted, mmm, good, but pretty soon, everybody was spitting out bullets, since pheasant are not very big, and the guys weren’t very good shots, so they shot each pheasant twenty or thirty times.

Imbetween cracking my teeth on bullets, this was the first and last time I ate pheasant and especially, enjoyed the part where they put out the couch fire with the beer, but that’s enough information on my freshman year of college and my michelobotomy.

So, should you want to try pheasant, I don't suggest you go and shoot some, but there is a website, pheasant.com, and for $20 they ship you a pheasant.

From "Comedy Cooking" by Nora Boyle