Experiments in the Kitchen

I smell pheasant. Actually, I smell bacon, because I wrapped the pheasant's breasts in bacon, per Emeril's instruction.

Eric returned home from last week's hunting trip with eight pheasants, and when he put them in the freezer, he threw away last year's bounty (only two or three birds, I think). But I felt this pang of guilt that we were those people who kill animals and then don't eat them. I've always been kind of intimidated by wild game, so I've never attempted to cook it when we've had it. I mean, if Rachael Ray doesn't address it in her cookbooks, how can I be expected to know what to do with it? So either Eric makes something of it, or it goes the way of last year's pheasant: freezerburned, into the garbage. But today I got ambitious. I got on the Food Network website and typed "pheasant" into the recipe search. And I decided that, even though all of the recipes involved things foreign to me, like stuffing and roasting, I could probably give this a shot. If I screw it up, there's a pizza in the freezer, and seven more pheasants too.

So I did it: I stuffed a pheasant with oranges and whiskey. And thyme. And I skewered it shut.

I even removed the foot that the guys had to leave on to prove that it was a rooster. Snapped the joint right in half. (Don't tell: I closed my eyes.)

I'm pretty proud of myself, and yet humbly aware that this could taste like cardboard. I'll let you know.