Hunting Camp Spaghetti Sauce - meatless unless you get some

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Ed Harris posted this 04 September 2007

I gave up on watery store bought spaghetti sauce and improvised a simple receipe which people like.  My 93-year-old mother insisted that I  write down, so I'm complying with her wish that I share it.  If you like "chunky” sauce substitute a 28 oz. can of diced tomatoes for the puree. 

 

Ed's Hunting Camp Spaghetti Sauce

 

Pour  ½ cup of extra virgin olive oil in the bottom of a 4-qt. kettle, warm to medium heat.

Add 1 c each of diced onion and green bell peppers, sauté until the onions are clear

Add: one 28 oz. can of tomato puree,

 one 8 oz. can tomato sauce,

 one 6 oz. can tomato paste and

 1 cup. dry red wine, use the wine to rinse the tomato cans to get all the good stuff out

Add either 1 tablespoon of Trader Joes Pasta seasoning or;

  Alternately 1 teaspoon each of dry basil, oregano, garlic powder and crushed red pepper

  Or ½ c. each of diced fresh herbs and four cloves of crushed fresh garlic (if you got ‘em)

 Ã‚½ tsp anchovy paste (optional) 

For meat sauce add 1 lb. of fully cooked, crumbled, drained ground chuck or Italian sausage, or 16 oz. package of thawed, frozen meat balls (optional)

Add 1 tsp salt (½ is OK if watching sodium intake, but don't leave it out, it needs some)

Simmer 30 minutes over medium heat, stirring occasionally

Add ½ cup half & half (reduces the acidity from all that tomato!)

Add 4 oz. 1 can of mushrooms with their packing liquid and stir well

Now start boiling your pasta water and keep the sauce warm until ready to serve.

 

Makes two quarts of sauce, enough to save half for later or to serve 2 pounds of pasta to a camp of hungry hunters.

73 de KE4SKY In Home Mix We Trust From the Home of Ed's Red in "Almost Heaven" West Virginia

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linoww posted this 04 September 2007

I'm half “eye-talian” and thats a  darn good standard recipe for sure!! I have never been able to choke down that overcooked storebought gunk.If you can get some Boletus  or “Red-head” mushrooms  it will really impove it.Try the same over polenta in pace of pasta and WOW !!!! If you add  nice little browned dove breasts to the basic mix you wlll be amazed. “Doves and Polenta” is an old standard.I can feel the stuff drippin' down my shirt as I wirte this!!

Georgio.

"if it was easy we'd let women do it" don't tell my wife I said that!

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Ed Harris posted this 04 September 2007

Georgio,

Thanks for the stamp of approval. My tax accountant Tony Amato says this is very similar to his marinara.

I like it spicy, have made it without the crushed red pepper for the less adventurous and I just don't tell anyone about the anchovy paste. 8-)

A favorite variation of ours is to poach sole, flounder, cod or salmon fillets in the sauce.

Sometimes at camp we use the leftover sauce for breakfast, poke a couple holes, poach some eggs and serve some Italian links on the side and ladle it over toasted garlic bread with some good strong coffee.

Are you ready to go hunt yet?

73 de KE4SKY In Home Mix We Trust From the Home of Ed's Red in "Almost Heaven" West Virginia

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RicinYakima posted this 04 September 2007

Unlike linoWW, I can't claim an heritage, but grew up around Cincinnati, OH, and a lot of my childhood friends were first generation Italians from Naples and their Mommas could cook. Your recipe sounds very good! I passed it on to my wife to whip up a batch of the poached salmon, as it is salmon season here. Best wishes for fine eating, Ric

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linoww posted this 04 September 2007

Almost forgot,add one bayleaf to the mix.Really improves it.I used to hunt feral hogs in Northern Ca. and we were surronded by them (Myrtel / Pepperwood trees).My family was just as exited gathering the leaves as shooting the hogs!! Heck, the darn things are $3 a bottle in the stores. We dego's are a bunch of ruthless scroungers.

 

George

"if it was easy we'd let women do it" don't tell my wife I said that!

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Ed Harris posted this 05 September 2007

Roger the bayleaf, the Trader Joes Pasta Seasoning we keep in camp does contain it and alot of other stuff.

My hunting buddy Orlando Misticelli told me when he was a little kid in Italy growing up after WWII it was a prety rough life and they used to catch starlings and other small birds in nets on the roof. They ate everything except the feathers in their sauce. He said the tiny bones were just fine cooked al dente. He developed a fondness for SPAM which came in the CARE packages and occasionally serves it cooked up in crunchy, deep fried meatballs with red pepper and garlic with tomato sauce. He tried to interest the Army in his recipe as an MRE entree, but Natick sent him a nice letter saying that its salt and fat content was too high and it was unhealthy! When in any form protein was scarce he was glad to get it.

73 de KE4SKY In Home Mix We Trust From the Home of Ed's Red in "Almost Heaven" West Virginia

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giorgio de galleani posted this 12 September 2007

OK ED,accept the blessing of an Italian shooter on your “sugo al ragù di carne".It's perfectly original.

I envy you becase I have been put to a  low calories fatless diet.

Sincerely

Giorgio de Galleani

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Ed Harris posted this 12 September 2007

Giorgio,

Thank you so very much for your kind remarks.

I will share them with my mother as we drink to your good health, long life and many good hunts with your best friends!

Ciao!

73 de KE4SKY In Home Mix We Trust From the Home of Ed's Red in "Almost Heaven" West Virginia

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CB posted this 12 September 2007

Ed,

Can I go hunting with you?

Your hunting camp recipe reminds of one winter my trapping partner had 'cold packed' ho-made spaghetti sauce and Sloppy Joes in pint jars. All we had to do was heat up the sauce and boil the spaghetti. Saved a lota time and still had fast home made meals. 'Cold packed' fully cooked sauces should be used in 60 days. Canning books also give instructions for pressure cooking sauces for those wanting a higher degree of preserving foods for hunting camp. Taste great and sure saves a lot of money over the dehydrated produced foods!.............Dan

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Ed Harris posted this 13 September 2007

10-4 That's pretty much the way we operate.

Dad told me that “after age 50 you don't need to practice to learn how to be uncomfortable anymore.” In the 1970s when Dad was still building “the cabin” as he called it, we used to tent camp. But today we no longer use a rough camp, but have a permanent structure.

Dad's so-called “cabin” was enlarged and doubled in size after I left Ruger and came back to Virginia in 1988. It was remodelled in the style of a New England lakeside camp, but on a mountainside and minus the lake. We put in modern electric, plumbing, appliances, kitchen and winterized it. It will be my retirement home one day. You can look down a steep incline out the screened porch beyond kitchen door and see and hear the gurgling trout waters of Back Creek about 100 ft. downhill. While you can't literally walk out the back door to hunt, it is a short drive into the Sleepy Creek Wildlife Management Area and 5 miles into town in the other direction for supplies. We have neighbors nearby who live there full time, but the lots are 5 acres, so it has a nice woodsy feel and you don't see other houses except through the trees in the winter when the limbs are bare. We have a nice view down back creek valley which is very typical eastern farm country. PM me your email address and i can cand you some pictures.

It isn't the New Hampshire northwoods, but is sure quiet at night, no suburban road noise, just the woodpeckers, crickets, tree toads, rain spattering on the roof, the bubbling stream and the wind in the trees.

Almost Heaven. West Virginia.

Noirmally the first guy to get his deer is thereafter assigned assistant mess mate. Chief of the Mess doesn't hunt, but is in charge of provisioning the camp, bunk assignments, work parties, set up, cleanup and tear down, etc.

73 de KE4SKY In Home Mix We Trust From the Home of Ed's Red in "Almost Heaven" West Virginia

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Lloyd Smale posted this 10 December 2007

thats a great looking camp you have there!! Looks more like michigan then WV

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crash87 posted this 26 March 2011

Ed I've waited long enough to comment on this recipe. When you posted it I tried it, and it is absoloutly the best I've ever, EVER had. In fact I made a double batch yesterday, which prompted me to post this today. This is a mainstay recipe in my family now. We have spaghetti or some kind of pasta dish at least once a week or more and  this sauce is included alot of the time. I usually add pork, wild boar when I have it, and it just so happens I just got some more of that :D But I will say this Ed, I just have not got the nerve up to include the anchovy paste, and I probably wont :P, But,  HERES TO YOU MY FRIEND :dude: thank you CRASH87

 

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shjoe posted this 27 March 2011

agreed. very nice recipe! cant wait to try it with some tripe!

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Webley posted this 27 March 2011

Another “Ed's Red” recipe. Thanks for sharing it, and the image and description of your “cabin". It seems like a great location. Cheers:thumbsup:

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Uncle Russ posted this 04 January 2012

I just don't understand some folks. Anchovy anything is great! A little salty straight other than that just good seasoning!

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Ed Harris posted this 04 January 2012

Try the anchovy paste, only a small dab the size of a grape, or one whole anchovy pureed in the blender with your fresh herbs, wine, garlic and olive oil. Do not tell anyone. Our secret.;)

73 de KE4SKY In Home Mix We Trust From the Home of Ed's Red in "Almost Heaven" West Virginia

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99 Strajght posted this 05 January 2012

Now we are going to have 2 Ed Harris CD's. One for reloading and one for recipes.

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Uncle Russ posted this 12 January 2012

Fine by me. Can I get an autographed copy? :thumbsup:

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cephas53 posted this 26 March 2013

This is some good sauce. My current wife loved it, and she's a down home country cookin gal. We've been married 37 years but it keeps her on her toes if I refer to her as current. Did it with half sausage and beef. Thanks.

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longround posted this 27 March 2013

Spaghetti sauce recipe...After loading, what is the anal velocity? Gas checked, paper patched?

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Ed Harris posted this 27 March 2013

Easy managed 0.1 fps, paper patched of course!

73 de KE4SKY In Home Mix We Trust From the Home of Ed's Red in "Almost Heaven" West Virginia

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tturner53 posted this 27 March 2013

RE. #6 above; a young man that used to work for me in the 80's was from Jallisco. He told me as youngsters him and his buddies harvested blackbirds and an occasional rat to either give to momma or to sell. Meat was scarce. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner involved tortillas, beans, and rice. Throw in corn and some meat from a small animal and you had your basic diet. Variety came from peppers, spices and cooking methods. Birds were cooked on a stick when the boys were out gallavanting thru the countryside. As a youngster myself I never knew anything close to poverty but my friends and I would spend the summers out in the wildest places we could get to. Lunch was poached quail, raw crawdad tails hand caught, and wild berries and fruit. We didn't want to have to go home for food. An occasional raid on the older boys' position gave us our first beers.

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Ed Harris posted this 29 March 2013

I am not the Harris mentioned in the Army study, but he is a distant relative.

http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1029&context=vpc14

RODENTS AS A FOOD SOURCE LYNWOOD A, FIEDLER, USDA/APHIS/S&T, Denver Wildlife Research Center, P.O. Box 25266, Denver, Colorado 80225-0266.

ABSTRACT: Rodents, one of several kinds of vertebrates included in the human diet, are very suitable as human food. More than 71 genera and 89 species of rodents, mostly hystricomorphs, have been consumed by man. Some have even been domesticated for private or commercial production of food for human consumption. Rodents in the temperate world serve only as a supplement to the regular diet of humans; but in the tropical world, they are widely accepted and a popular source of protein. Although harvesting field rats for human food is beneficial, it is not an effective pest control strategy. Consuming rodents in pesticide-treated areas and handling rodents with potential zoonoses are two possible risks.

Proc. 14th Vertebr. Pest Conf. (L.R. Davis and R.E. Marsh, Eds.) Published at Univ. of Calif., Davis. 1990.

Some interesting extracts from the article:

At the University of Arizona, pack rats (Neotoma sp.) are consumed by a social club (Secret Order of the Neotoma Eater) that insists these rodents are a delicacy (Anon. 1987).

History of Rodent Eating

Peruvians have been consuming guinea pigs for centuries. The guinea pig, domesticated since at least 2500 B.C. (Lanning 1967), was the first rodent raised for food. By the 15th century A.D. (during the Incaic Empire), it was the principal meat consumed. Capybara (Hydrochaeris hydrochaeris)may have been domesticated in Brazil as early as A.D. 1565 (Gonzalez-Jimenez 1984).

Early Chinese ate “household deer” and during the Tang dynasty (A.D. 618-907) ate newborn rats stuffed with honey, conveniently snatching them with chopsticks (Hendrickson 1983).

Romans popularized the edible dormouse by the 2nd century. It was caught from the wild in autumn when it was fattest and either roasted and dipped into honey or baked while stuffed with a mixture of pork, pine nuts, and other flavorings. Romans also raised dormice in special pots called “gliraria” and in large outdoor enclosures where they were fed walnuts, chestnuts, and acorns for fattening (Brothwell and Brothwell 1969). Southeastern Europeans still enjoy dormice.

The Maoris of New Zealand used snares and pit traps in family hunting territories to trap the kiore or Polynesian rat 149(R. exulans, Best 1942). In the 16th century, they introduced this rat to Polynesia as a food item by carrying it in their ships.

Elsewhere the Irula, a tribal group in India, has traditionally included rats in its diet and today is hired by Indian farmers to capture rodent pests.

More recently a United States Army Quartermaster Corps survey identified 42 different societies in which people eat rats (Harris 1985). Traditionally we think of “rat eaters” (rodentiophagists?) as belonging to primitive societies”€œsmall groups living in remote areas with large, undisturbed land areas available for hunting and trapping small mammals. However, squirrel hunters today could be considered just as traditional. The squirrel, a rodent in the Sciuromorpha suborder, is one of the most important game animals in the United States. About 40 million gray squirrels, popularly referred to as “tree rats” in the US southern states, (Sciurus carolinensis) and a lesser number of fox squirrels (S. niger) are harvested annually (Flyger and Gates 1982).

73 de KE4SKY In Home Mix We Trust From the Home of Ed's Red in "Almost Heaven" West Virginia

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madsenshooter posted this 30 April 2013

You forgot chopped ramps when made in the spring!

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Ed Harris posted this 01 May 2013

Most Yankees think ramps are what you drive your pickup onto to change the oil.Yeah, we eat'em in Whiskey Victor, but they are sort of Her Majestie's Secret, like using corn likker or grappa if ya got any, to deglaze the cast iron Dutch oven bottom.

73 de KE4SKY In Home Mix We Trust From the Home of Ed's Red in "Almost Heaven" West Virginia

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Eutectic posted this 10 September 2021

Ed's Hunting Camp Spaghetti Sauce has not been mentioned lately, but it is a big winner at our house which is far from any hunting lodge. 

I add a can of diced tomatoes or diced fresh tomatoes. This batch used Baby Bella fresh mushrooms.  As long as you don't get tempted and short-cut by using those canned rubber pieces they call mushrooms you will get a first quality sauce which will make Mama Mia proud. 

I made this batch last week and had some for lunch today. It freezes well and may even taste better later!

Steve

 

 

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