Speaker 1: 0:15

Hey everybody, welcome back to the Son of a Blitch podcast. I am your host, george Blitch, and I'm really excited for you guys to tune in to this interview that I just did with Danielle Pruitt. If you guys are not aware, she is about to put out her very first cookbook. It is called Meat Eaters Wild and Whole Seasonal Recipes for the Conscious Cook. It's really great. We talk all about it and how it's kind of divided up in four different seasons and so it's not just the things you can hunt maybe during the spring, summer, fall or winter, but it's also what's growing or what you might be able to grow in your garden and how you can pair these things together. This whole approach to Wild and Whole started as a blog that she did, you know, years ago, and eventually it got her picked up and brought out to Pheasants Forever and their big annual event and had her, you know, doing a cooking presentation where she met Steve, rinella and Yanni from Meat Eater, as well as Doug Dern, a mutual friend of ours who was there, and kind of they invited her into working under, you know, meat Eater Inc, because it kind of went from the show to now being, you know, a huge juggernaut in the outdoor industry. Right, there's so many different things that are underneath this umbrella. They brought Danielle in and kind of she was the you know cooking wild, wild food contributor, editor, content creator, and you know there's a lot of different. You know hats that she's worn there through, but that's there's, you know.

Speaker 1: 1:35

Check out the show notes below because I'll have links to those A lot of the recipes she shares there. But this book is absolutely incredible. I think you guys are going to thoroughly enjoy it. We had a great time chatting about it today. Kind of give a little bit more insight into what was important about her putting this book together in the way that she did and really what it is that she hopes that the readers take away from this, and I just think you guys are thoroughly going to enjoy it. Make sure you place your orders. And again, that is Meat Eaters, wild and Whole Seasonal Recipes for the Conscious Cook by Danielle Pruitt. And you guys enjoy this podcast. I think you're really going to learn a lot from this and what Danielle has to share, and I hope you guys enjoy it. Make sure you share it with a friend and thanks again for tuning in. Everybody Appreciate all the support, take care. Hey Danielle, how are you doing today?

Speaker 2: 2:21

I'm great. How are you?

Speaker 1: 2:22

Doing great. I'm super excited to chat with you. Your cookbook's about to drop Wild and Whole Seasonal Recipes for the Conscious Cook. Congratulations on that. I've read through it, love it. I'm very excited to try out some recipes my wife and I kind of circled a few that we're going to check out. So before we kind of get into chatting about that though I really want to kind of pull out of my guests I'd like to introduce them to the listeners. As far as you know, if you can give me some background on kind of where you grew up, how you got involved with your love for the outdoors and cooking and hunting and you know, kind of, we'll just thread that through there and, you know, eventually start chatting about the cookbook a little more.

Speaker 2: 2:59

Yeah, You're in Texas based right, you're in East Texas.

Speaker 1: 3:05

I'm just outside of Houston.

Speaker 2: 3:07

Okay, where outside of Houston?

Speaker 1: 3:08

In Katy.

Speaker 2: 3:10

Okay, so I just moved, I moved. Well, I was in Houston.

Speaker 1: 3:15

I know you asked me questions about me and now I'm asking you All good, all good.

Speaker 2: 3:20

Yeah, so yeah, I'm Texas-based, born and raised in Texas. I'm from North Texas, Wichita Falls, which my husband gives me a hard time. He calls me an alcoholic, but I am south of the Red River, um, but my dad is from South Dakota. He and his family, uh, had a farm, big farm, in South Dakota and, um, that was kind of a big part of my life upbringing. We'd travel there for the holidays to visit family. He would, he would go hunting with his buddies often and, um, it was really the boys that went out and I always stayed back with my grandma and every like that Thanksgiving we always had pheasant, like fried pheasant. We always did a big chicken fry with pheasant. Um, and so like hunting was was always like there in my life. But I was never really a hunter, um, until I went to college met my life, but I was never really a hunter. Until I went to college met my husband.

Speaker 2: 4:29

You know just a classic story of a college kid met at a bar. I don't know why I'm telling that part. I think it's because today nobody meets that in person anymore. It's like it's sort of a funny thing. But he asked me out on a date to the gun range and um. So that was kind of our, our first introduction and which was fun, um, it was. It was a fun day and I thought it was pretty adorable and that the second date was a dinner at his house because he had just shot a deer. He was, he was sighting in a rifle at the gun range and so the second date was successful deer hunt came back and he was really proud to serve me backstrap um, which you know I was just kind of like all right, whatever, um, but I I remember the way like he just it was very endearing, the way that he like this was something that was really special because you know he shot it and he was like you can't buy this at a grocery store and I really decided to share it with you and I loved it. Um, and so that was kind of the sort of introduction to who he was in his life and why hunting mattered to him.

Speaker 2: 5:42

And you know, over the years, as we dated and eventually got married, um he was doing, you know he's just an avid outdoorsman, he's he's a very, very he's a very salty guy now he's very fishy, but he truly is sort of um? Um opportunistic hunter in the sense that wherever you live, especially in a state like texas, he's all about taking advantage of whatever opportunities are available near you. Um, which I'll get into later, um, but but he was always bringing game home for me to cook and I was fascinated because I loved food, I loved cooking. I actually went to school for fashion design, apparel design and manufacturing Totally totally different than what I'm doing now. But I didn't love it after college and I kind of wanted to like get into something new, something else.

Speaker 2: 6:41

And so he was cooking was something that I really wanted to just pursue. I wanted to go to culinary school after, after I just graduated college and I was like, yeah, maybe I don't know, I didn't want to work in the restaurant industry and life just took a really hard detour whenever we got a call from his company he works in oil and gas to go to North Dakota and that's sort of like where I like to say the story for me with hunting really began, because the opportunities there and the lifestyle is was just so different than anything I'd ever known in Texas, I mean dramatically different. And so that's, I mean in Texas, I, I, I would go dove hunting with him. Yeah, I feel like that's just like a part of our culture in Texas, like dove hunting.

Speaker 2: 7:39

But dove hunting to me, I mean, it's definitely is not hunting, but it's. It's not quite as um in depth. As you know, big game and upland hunting, um, it's a great thing to do with your friends and dust, dust, the blow the dust off your gun, your shotgun. But, um, it wasn't until I moved to north dakota where everything just like totally took off and and so we got a bird dog, and that was sort of the hook for me when wanting to get out in the field was to watch my dog work, because I think it's just fascinating to just see a dog do whatever they're born to do. And so, she, she was great getting me out in the field and I, I tagged the whole first year hunting season. I just brought a camera because that's just, I, just I was perfectly content not having a gun, I just wanted to be out there. And, um, finally, my husband's like, well, you know, get a hunting license, get a gun, and let's take this to the next level. And so I did, and I remember shooting my first pheasant, um was in the cattails. Um, marina, flushed. But she, marina, is my golden retriever. She's 13 now.

Speaker 2: 8:57

Oh, it's hard seeing a dog.

Speaker 2: 9:00

Your first bird dog, um, anyway, yeah, so she flushed my first bird for me, um, right in front of me, and and you know I shot it and it fell in the cattails, which I thought we would never find, and she brought it back and it was just a really perfect little outing in the morning, um, and then I went home and and I prepared it and it and at by that point I'd been cooking game for a handful of years, and so it was like cooking pheasant was not new to me, especially since I grew up eating it, but this was the first time I had eaten anything that I had shot.

Speaker 2: 9:39

And then, all of a sudden, I remember like I had just sort of this aha moment where everything fell into place and I felt this unbelievable amount of gratitude for that bird and not just for the bird, for the habitat, for the place that I was hunting, that it was preserved by you know the state, that it was taken care of, that, like there were just so many things about like how that that bird got to my table that I was grateful for, and, um, that sort of really became the trigger point where I said, like I want to eat this way every time, like I should feel this good about eating meat every single time. And I knew that the reason was because I had that intimate connection with the landscape, with the bird, and that's the way I wanted to eat for the rest of my life. And here I am.

Speaker 1: 10:35

Well, you know, you, you kind of talked about how you started this passion project of wild and whole and you were doing a blog, but at first you weren't really telling a lot of people about it. You were just kind of going through and doing this for yourself, it seems. And then was that, when you kind of started that, was there an idea that you're like kind of wanted to maybe make that shift and transition? Did you have kind of an approach to how you wanted to maybe make your own mark in this outdoor industry? Or was that even a thought at that point in time when you launched that?

Speaker 2: 11:03

Yeah, I want to say this was like eight or 10 years ago, I can't remember, when I had people telling me you should start a blog. And I didn't want to start a blog because at that point in time blogs were like all the rage and it was mostly people talking about their cat. For you know, forever and ever till you got to the recipe at the end, and still today, now, people don't talk about their cat. For you know, forever and ever till you get to the recipe at the end, and still today, now, people don't talk about the cat. But now they tell you everything you need to know about, like, that ingredient, and it's super annoying. But, um, so for that reason I didn't want to tell anybody, cause I was like, oh, I don't know what people will think about it. Um, I'm very hard on myself and I'm a perfectionist, and so I wasn't like ready to show this thing out in the world, because I felt like I needed time to develop a brand that I was really proud of. So on one hand, it was sort of a hobby, because I wanted to play around with food photography I just I needed that creative outlet and on the other hand, it was knowing that there was something missing in of burgers and poppers and not much else and and it was really tailored to to like this very narrow field of like this is just for the hunters and is very male dominated. And I saw we were, we had I had made a decision that I wanted to hunt for all of our protein and so to me, game was just just a meat source. It was the same as beef chicken pork. It was just a different animal. Like I didn't see it as like hunting and domestic, like I didn't see it like that and I saw this like bigger holistic view of what food is. And I think that's partly shaped by the way I grew up. We had an emu farm and so, like as a child, like I was like all animals were food unless they were illegal. Like all animals was food and I didn't like have this like beef chicken pork, like compartmentalized brain, and I wanted my blog to sort of represent that in a holistic way and showing that like these animals fit into your regular weeknight meals just like anything else. They're no different. However, now I kind of see that a lot of times some of these animals are very difficult to hunt. You may only get one Turkey a year, one beautiful Mallard a year. And so I'm like that's when you really want to celebrate that animal, that like, what do you do with it? And so that's what that blog was sort of born out of um, wild and whole.

Speaker 2: 13:57

It wasn't just recipes for wild game, but it was also everything else on your plate. Um, what, what are you pairing it with? Because I had a firm conviction on connecting to my protein, but I wanted the same for everything else. So you know it's been an evolution. But today, you know I really care about. You know, like flour. You know where am I buying my flour from cooking oil salt flour. You know where am I buying my flour from cooking oil salt? Um, now, not every. I mean, I still go to HGV, don't get me wrong. Like I still go and like buy that stuff, but but I'm conscious of it.

Speaker 1: 14:34

Sure, well, and you know we'll, we'll chat about that too, and kind of your seasonal approach to the cookbook too, and how you're kind of pairing a lot of things that are fresh ingredients at that time, whether it's in the garden or whether it's foraging, um, but I, I think that that's a really interesting uh way that you kind of put that cookbook you know together and and again we'll dive into that I kind of wanted to thread one more needle there and that was kind of how you took another step forward with, uh, you know, kind of eventually working with meat eater.

Speaker 1: 15:01

But you know, you, you talked about the blog. It got picked up and there's an article and then eventually National Pheasant Fest on Quail Classic from Pheasants Forever invited you out for doing a presentation at the Wild Game cooking stage and in that you ended up meeting with Steve Rinella Yanni and our mutual friend, friend Doug Duren, and kind of had a conversation. This was right when meat eater was about to make a big shift in the meat eater Inc and kind of the things they were doing. And at that point in time, uh, you know, they kind of brought you in uh to do some work with them and I kind of wanted you to maybe just chat a little bit about that experience and what that looked like then and how long you've been with them now.

Speaker 2: 15:39

Yeah. So, like I was saying, I kept it secret and I don't know how it became not secret, other than the North Dakota Game and Fish contacted me, wanted to do a story, and so they did that. And then somebody from Pheasants Forever saw that story and said, hey, we should have her come out to to do to, to do cooking demonstrations at the Pheasant Fest, to do cooking demonstrations at the pheasant fest. And so I I had agreed to do that. And in the meantime, um, a friend, a cold call terry. Um, she's in the hunting and fishing industry as well. She was working with steve at zpz. This is, yeah, this is the pp days, um, and she's like, oh, you should, you should meet danielle. She's there, you're going to be at the event together.

Speaker 2: 16:26

Steve was the keynote speaker that year. And so set up, um, just like a little breakfast, uh, with Yanni and Doug Duren and met him for the first time, um, which was pretty cool. Um, at the time I I had to admit I wasn't really familiar with meat eaters, so I was just kind of like rolling in with just a regular old breakfast with somebody, which is probably a good thing. Otherwise today I think I would have been intimidated to go out for breakfast, so luckily I wasn't very familiar with them Anyway.

Speaker 2: 17:04

so yeah, and this was pre-Meat Eater Inc. I don't know if anybody has followed our company for long enough to know that we're to know that it sort of became a bigger umbrella and it grew to involve a lot of voices in the hunting and fishing world, like Mark Kenyon, ryan Callahan. So I joined Neat Eater when we were just a handful of people in a room with a whiteboard and it was really fascinating to see this company grow because we had the foundation and the core ethics that have always been a part of Meat Eater and will always stay a part of Meat Eater, no matter how big we've grown or what we've done and all the things we do, that core belief of what of of nature, enriching our lives and and protecting and conservation. It will always be there. And so it's been fascinating.

Speaker 2: 18:10

Now I've been there over six years, I think. Um, I've been there a while. It's crazy. So it's it's been a wild journey to to just kind of be a part of this company and to continue to grow. And it's weird because when I started, like, I wanted to create recipes and develop recipes, I wanted to be in the food industry. I have no intentions of being like a social media person still don't. Still, I mean, it's totally a part of my job in my life. But like I could have, I would have never, like like, picked this route if I had to. It's just kind of the way the nature goes, but um, but yeah it's. You know, everything's changed over the years and so it's been.

Speaker 1: 19:01

It's been cool to watch it grow Well and you know I've kind of followed that journey for a while. I know you've done a lot of work, a lot of different people, and it kind of while in whole has been developing over the years. Um, you know you're doing a lot of content creation. Obviously you're a big part of producing and getting out and editing all sorts of different amazing recipes. And you know it was just, I feel like inevitable that at some point in time you'd have a cookbook.

Speaker 1: 19:24

But I was kind of curious when that first took shape in your mind. Like that you decided you know what I want to do this and how did that look like? Cause I mean, it takes a long time to put together books and yet alone cookbooks where you're trying out which recipes are going to make it, cause I'm sure you have a big basket to choose from and then you have 272 pages that you're narrowing down, plus you want to talk about your stories, your introduction, what's important to you. So I was kind of curious what that looked like, how long of a process was that?

Speaker 2: 19:50

And, um, yeah, just kind of what was that?

Speaker 1: 19:51

like for you.

Speaker 2: 19:53

Um, I was approached by some publishers about four years ago and at that time there were some small publishing houses and I was like I don't know, cookbooks are really big deal to me. I want to put my heart and soul into it. These weren't really the publishers I wanted to go for and I had gotten enough publishers that we said, hey, let's go ahead and get an agent and people are interested in the idea of a wild and whole cookbook. Let's put together a proposal and send it out to the publishers. So I spent like probably eight months developing a proposal and so, for anybody unfamiliar, the proposal is basically like your, you know, you got a whole cookbook, that's say two 300 pages. The proposal is just like a 30 page document that gives you just the snapshot view of like, what is this book about? Why am I the one to write this book? Like, why am I, why am I authority on wild game? What are the recipes? Like what? What does this book look like? What are the recipes? What does this book look like? And that was really hard to do, because Wild and Whole over the years wasn't just about cooking and recipes anymore. I wanted it to be more of a lifestyle cookbook that inspired people to get outside I got a big reason why I wanted to start hunting was to be able to eat more sustainably, and the longer that I hunt, the more I realize what that actually means and what it means to eat consciously and to think about all the factors the way agriculture plays a big role in the wildlife, and then why it matters that we should care about the sustainability of our food system, how food production works, because it very much affects our wildlife. If you look at statistics on like how much of the grasslands we've lost just habitat in general, you can see like farms that are regenerative and increasing biodiversity, our wildlife gets better. So as a hunter, I wanted to tell the story of why the food choices you make matter, and I think it's in a world where you hear a lot about food sustainability from anti-meat eaters to like the other carnivore aspect, no one has really told that from the perspective of a hunter who cares about the conservation of wildlife and habitats as a whole, and not just what's our carbon footprint, you know it's a bigger picture of the biodiversity. So as I started working on this cookbook, it just like it really became this journey of writing the story of like how to eat consciously.

Speaker 2: 22:50

For me, and when I really start to piece that together, I realized that eating through the seasons was, was very important, not just from a perspective of like. Eating seasonally means that you're eating locally, so you're supporting, like, local farmers if you go to a farmer's market or anything, or if you garden, but in the wildlife, like every, you know, I hunt and fish year round and I love to forage, and so every season there was something to get very excited about and I think most people, when you open a cookbook, they say, okay, I've got beef. Or or say or say, if you're specifically thinking of wild game, you're like okay, I have an elk steak. Let me go to the big game chapter, and here's the steak recipe I wanted to see. I wanted to show it a little bit differently in terms of what time of the year is it? What are you most excited about? When you think about the spring, you're thinking about turkeys, you're thinking in Texas. For me it's dewberries on the vine.

Speaker 2: 23:51

Like it's all those fun things to get excited. The white bass run Like there's a lot of different things to get super excited about in any given time of the year, and so when you look at things from that perspective, you're more bound to get outside and be in nature, which is what I wanted this book to be about. Like get outside and get excited about getting your food. And so it took me about eight months to write the proposal and we sent it off to publishers and I had a handful of people interested. Four out of the big five publishing companies wanted to publish my book, and what they do is you go to like an auction. I met with all of them and they all wanted to publish, and Penguin Random House kind of swooped me up from under the table, and so after after that, I spent a little over a year writing the actual book, because I wanted the headnotes to tell a story.

Speaker 2: 24:52

Um, I always say there's a story behind every meal if you're willing to look for it, and so I wanted that book to be filled with those stories, and so I spent the whole year going through the seasons telling the stories of everything that you know, like the you see, like a picture of like a mule deer I shot in Montana. All the venison recipes are that mule deer and so, like you kind of piece that kind of stuff together. Um and so, yeah, I spent a long time and then it was supposed to release last year but we were still in the midst of like the effects of COVID and the supply chain issues, and so there was a paper shortage and I had to basically get pushed, pushed back a whole year on publication. So this book has been in the making for, yeah, a good three years or more.

Speaker 1: 25:42

Oh, wow, and so that's quite a journey. I didn't realize about the paper shortage too, but I'm sure that that affected a lot of people in the midst of writing and so hit the pause button. There there's some amazing obviously amazing dishes, great recipes, but I also really enjoyed a lot of the photography. And you worked with Angie Mosier and I was curious how did you guys end up, you know, working together, is it somebody you knew ahead of time? You know how did, because that's a big thing. I mean, I've chatted a lot with other you know wild game chefs, you know Jesse Griffiths, mutual friend, and you know choosing what photographer to work with is a big deal and I was just kind of curious how that came about, how y'all did shooting. Was this something where they came to your house, or did you guys go to a kitchen where you're preparing and had everything?

Speaker 2: 26:24

kind of lit up. That's a great question. There was one a big, a big debate on how we were going to shoot this, because I wanted morels, I wanted chanterelles, I wanted to like and you can't have one cookbook shoot and have a bunch of seasonal ingredients. It was so challenging. So Angie Mosier was a good friend of Kevin Gillespie's, who used to be with me at Eater, and I'm still friends with Kevin, and she shot a ton of cookbooks and so we decided to go with her and she's very, very talented.

Speaker 2: 27:00

And the biggest challenge was figuring out when we were going to do the shoot. And we decided to do two shoots. So one was in the summer that would photograph spring and summer, and then the other was, um, like in january for the fall and the winter chapters. So so yeah, it was hard to to to figure out how to how to shoot it, because I had to, I had to pick my favorite things, basically like if I did it in the spring I'm going to miss out on the beautiful heirloom tomatoes.

Speaker 2: 27:33

So, and I actually did the first shoot in Atlanta and I like the tomatoes in my garden were popping and I had just green zebras and black crim and like everything, and so I I boxed them all up and like, patted it and kept. I didn't want to close the box because they needed debris, so I kept the box open and put it in a carry-on bag like it was like totally ridiculous carry-on bag of boxed tomatoes and like all all this stuff from my garden and flew with it to Atlanta for the cookbook shoot, um, and then some of the photos actually a handful of photos I I did myself, um, most of a lot of the ones in the field, especially like bird hunting, um, some of the food photography I did myself, um, and a lot of the just moments in the field were were my photos yeah, well, there's some amazing shots in there.

Speaker 1: 28:29

um, and one of the things that I I was kind of taken back by as well was that this is not only just wild game and some things that are like you know, know, obviously, things you can forage or in your garden, I mean. I usually think about meals that are, you know, kind of protein based there too. There's also some desserts in there as well, for those to you know, have that final bite. Some amazing things there you have, like sweet corn ice cream chai spice parsnip cake with cream cheese frosting.

Speaker 1: 28:58

There are some amazing dishes, which is just cool because there's not. I haven't seen a lot of dessert stuff in Wild Game associated cookbooks, so I thought that was kind of a fun, you know kind of. You got your appetizer type thing, main meal, and you know there's a lot of diversity there.

Speaker 2: 29:12

This book is not just Wild Game recipes. That's a good thing to bring up the desserts like I like, I love like a duck fat chocolate chip cookie and you know, do there's a dewberry dessert. I wanted to sort of incorporate other ingredients that I frequently cook with, because in real life I don't just cook with wild game only, and I also included domestic animals for that reason that I was saying before that I think agriculture plays a really important part of our wildlife and for a long time I only ate wild game as our protein. And it wasn't until I started this book that I realized that it was really important to support farmers who shared the same common goal that I did. And so I introduced and I met with uh Will Harris at White Oak Pastures in Georgia, and and so for me it was like the first time in 10 years that I had cooked like beef, chicken or pork, and I had like a really weirdly difficult time doing so.

Speaker 2: 30:17

Like I felt like I had made this like moral pact with myself that I only wanted to eat an animal in which I had, like we had intimate like connection to like through hunting, but so like I had a hard time just going to buy meat, um, and so it took me some time to like it sounds really silly, but it took me a little time to kind of get used to that idea. But it really came from the fact that, like, these small farmers were really making an impact and I wanted my dollar to support them and what they were doing, and so that became really important. So you will find recipes like there's a really great pork chop recipe in there, there's one for beef cheeks in the winter chapter, so it's a very it. And there's a vegetarians. There's a vegetarian recipe in every chapter because I like, really love vegetables, like I cannot get enough vegetables. It's not a popular thing I share a lot on on social media, but yeah, it'll be the only wild game cookbook with a vegetarian recipe.

Speaker 1: 31:25

Well, it's important.

Speaker 1: 31:26

I think it is.

Speaker 1: 31:27

You know, you kind of talk about this idea like what we eat is like what our food eats, right, and you're incorporating some of that.

Speaker 1: 31:34

I know that when, you know, in the spring I'm picking dewberries and I'm trying to make some type of you know buttery glaze sauce to incorporate with my turkey, you know, in the summertime if I'm getting a squirrel and there's maybe wild persimmons trying to do some type of or even cactus fruit, like different things that incorporate what's there in that point in time and I think it's a fun thing to just kind of tie in, but especially when it might be the food that you know are these animals are eating too and sometimes just highlighting those. So I think that's a really fun thing to see that and to think about it like that. And I kind of wanted to, you know, you know you talked about that excitement of the different types of the season, because obviously you have spring, summer, fall, winter and you know if you can maybe kind of expand on that ideas and maybe what are some of those that, uh, you're most excited about in each of those seasons that you kind of highlight here in your book?

Speaker 2: 32:23

Um, gosh, that's a hard question. I I should have my cookbook out near me. Um, I'll make a whole box of a hundred of them over there. But, um, I'd say, in the spring I have a recipe for a turkey cutlet with asparagus and morels, and and I made them. I made this like okay, the turkey cutlet is breaded and fried, because I mean it's just good, like right, like nobody gets upset about a turkey cutlet, uh, but I wanted something to like really acidic, to kind of like just make it pop something fresh.

Speaker 2: 33:00

Asparagus is in season in the spring and it's really it's got a lot of lemons in it, and one thing that I think is really interesting is that morels and asparagus have really similar earthy kind of quality to it. And even though morels are very notoriously difficult to find in Texas, maybe if you're in Northeast Texas, middle East and Dallas, you're probably more frequently to find them. But I tested this recipe with fresh morels and also dried morels. They both worked fantastically and that's a side dish that I make all the time with venison, like in the spring with venison steak on repeat. And that's what I wanted to this book to have those like go-to recipes that are like a weeknight staple because it's just, it's only it sounds fancy but it's only a handful of ingredients that come together very fast.

Speaker 2: 33:53

Um, the summer, um, uh, we do a lot of fishing here. I live in rockport, texas now. Um, we love to sightcast redfish and I talk a little bit about about that in the book and there's a recipe that's kind of a riff on paul prudhomme's uh, blackened redfish and tell the story if anybody's familiar with, like the, the red fish, the red drum fishery going to the brink of extinction, um, and the height of of blackened redfish and restaurants, uh, because of Paul Prudhomme in Louisiana. Um, so I have a kind of a riff on that story, but it's a Tex-Mex style. Um, it's not seasoned with Creole, it's seasoned with, like chili, ancho, cumin and oregano and, um, it's on a bed of sweet corn grits or, yeah, sweet corn grits. So you basically take corn, you grate it into grits as you're making it, so it's it's a really lovely pairing. Uh, do you want me to go through every season?

Speaker 1: 34:57

yeah, well, yeah, so we got fall game season bird dogs, brown butter fall is a hard one to pick too, um, gosh, yeah.

Speaker 2: 35:08

So I'll say that my favorite fall dish is a venison steak with sage and brown butter, and this goes back to kind of what you were saying earlier of like things that animals eat and the habitat they live in pair well together. Stage brush is like my favorite native plant that grows all the way. You know. You find them quail hunting in South Texas all the way up into Canada, and they're more in the arid climates you know of the western part of the US, but they're just really important to the ecosystems and a lot of those animals browse on that brush and so this recipe pays homage to that with garden sage and it's just sage seasoned on the steak and then you just baste it with brown butter. It couldn't be any easier and it's just those two combination is just like quintessential fall and brown butter. I mean I just it's fall right now, so I mean I'm just like drilling thinking about it.

Speaker 2: 36:16

And the winter, um, one of my favorites is a very understated recipe for rabbit and, um, some root vegetables. It's like it's just such a simple hearty soup with um, primarily potato, but I use turnips a lot because I think a lot of people don't think about cooking with turnips and you can treat it just like a potato, but it's. But it's got a lot of leeks in it and some cream. It's just a really nice, hearty, comforting soup.

Speaker 1: 36:50

And that's the rabbit leek and root vegetable dish. That is incredible and I know you talked to a little bit about some squirrel inclusion in certain things and I know you talked about you had like garden revenge squirrels, right, they take out some of the stuff that you guys grow and so you got to throw those in and there's some interchangeability in different things that you kind of talk about too. But that that definitely was a a a quite an interesting dish. I highlighted that one as well. I know we know what I was. Actually my wife had sent me a Meg. She sent me. It was a video you did recently and I think you called it the summer on a plate. Now I know that's not in the book here, but it was a balsamic grilled venison and heirloom tomato with I think it was like a miso honey in there. Can you tell me a little bit about that dish, because that's one that we've circled as? We're definitely going to be trying that one out.

Speaker 2: 37:37

Yeah. So tomatoes, we can grow them for a huge part of the year here in Texas, and so I like pairing them with venison steak in the summer or any of the hotter times of the month, like right now, even though it's fall, it's still like summer food to me. It's fall everywhere else, but so yeah, so I make a balsamic reduction and you can buy that already made like a balsamic glaze. But it's very easy to do. You basically just take balsamic vinegar and reduce it on the soap top. I don't add any sugar. It actually naturally has enough sugar that you can get it down to a glaze, that recipe you were talking about.

Speaker 2: 38:20

I just add a little bit of miso to it to kind of give it this like extra umami flair and flavor, because it's the recipe itself is sort of um, inspired by oh gosh there, what's the name of that restaurant on the river and green oh um, they do their famous balsamic grilled steak, and so that's kind of what it what the riff is. And so I basically make that balsamic glaze, put it on the grill like I sear it, season it, sear it, baste it with that glaze and keep, keep, um, keep on, like flipping it on the grill until that glaze sort of caramelizes a little bit, um, and then you pair it with your tomatoes and a little extra glaze, and then I um have some really good olive oil with some toasted garlic, and it's in basil. It's like a caprese steak, caprese salad with steak. That's what it is.

Speaker 1: 39:21

Nice.

Speaker 1: 39:22

Well, you know, moving back to the cookbook, at the tail end of the cookbook, after you've kind of gone through the seasonal dishes, and you have a section two about things better homemade, where you got mayo, pickles, sausages, rub, seasoning stocks, and I think that's a definite highlight that people need to check out because there's a lot of things you can make on your own.

Speaker 1: 39:43

You just might need to go good and give it a little try and and kind of experiment a bit. Um, and one of the things that you know, it struck me there was a post that you talked about this might've been about a year ago, even though you're talking about when you're making stocks and that you roast a lot of the things before you, you know, make a stock. Now, I've always kind of just taken, you know, if I have, uh, you know, some leftovers, bones and carcass, whatever, something I kind of throw in the water and I'm making my own stock. But it had never occurred to me, or I just didn't know about the idea of roasting it and I was kind of curious about what that changes for you, how that might enhance flavors, what was it that you know? How is that beneficial for those who are making their own stocks?

Speaker 2: 40:24

So think of it like cooking meat, say. You've got a recipe and almost every recipe involving meat involves searing, sauteing or frying, grilling, high heat the meat first, like if you're going to make a stew, you're going to sear that meat and then you add all those liquids, because searing that is what you're doing. They call it's called the meyer reaction, where the proteins and the sugars in that heat they sort of caramelize into this like really meaty flavor. That makes it's the thing that makes you drool and it's, they say, like it's an, it's an evolutionary thing. That uh, happens like that's how we used to know that food was safe to eat is whenever you smell that and and you get hungry, um, so that's like what you're doing first.

Speaker 2: 41:22

It's the exact same thing with stock. It's the same application. You're roasting those bones because you're trying to create sort of those meaty brown flavors that sort of make that dish more savory. It adds more savoriness to it. So it's the same thing. Roasting is just an easy way. You can't really sear your bones because of the shape of it, so it's the same thing. Roasting is just an easy way. You can't really see your bones because of the shape of it, so it's easier to just coat it. Depending on what it is. Like venison, you can coat it with a little tomato paste and then roast it, and that tomato paste just sort of adds even more rich flavors to it Birds. I don't like to add tomato paste. I think some people like it. I think it makes it a little too rich and a little too heavy. I want it to be a little bit on the lighter side, but I still like to roast it and then you throw that in the pot with your veggies in the water.

Speaker 1: 42:16

Right on and I wanted to also real quick mention the book cover and I was curious what dish is that and why did that make the front cover? Because I mean, the cover of book is always a very important thing. What was it about that one does that, you're like I want to do that, or does the photograph and that meal just turned out so great? You're like I think that's the one we're going to go with.

Speaker 2: 42:34

curious about your approach on that I picked that one out before we photographed that. I wanted that recipe to be the cover. That recipe there's two roasted pheasants and the story on that is when we lived in North Dakota we had our tradition of going pheasant hunting every morning on Thanksgiving because nobody else was in the field.

Speaker 1: 42:57

Great time Sure.

Speaker 2: 42:58

By the way, if you're ever looking for like the best time to go hunting on public land, pick a holiday, christmas, thanksgiving. You got the place to yourself. That's like my hot tip. And so we used to do that and I would always. When we came back home, I had a pheasant already plucked and ready to go throw it in the oven. I had my sides prepped, so we'd go hunting. I'd come home, I'd shower, throw the it in the oven. I had my sides prepped, so we'd go hunting. I'd come home, I'd shower, throw the birds in the oven and we'd have our Thanksgiving that afternoon or evening, just the two of us.

Speaker 2: 43:35

And we did that for like four years, four or five years and it was a really special memory for me and I wanted that to be on the cover because the editors wanted something that like that you could look at it and say, okay, that's wild game and and so you know I was trying to think about venison is a hard one because it just looks like you know, red meat, um, and a bird is is much more iconic and I think, more specifically, you'll notice, the feet are still attached and that really bothers a lot of people, and I thought my editors were just going to say absolutely not, because some people are very turned off, and for me, I think a big part of what this book is all about is getting outside, connecting to your food and like the reminder that there was a life, there was an animal that died for your meal.

Speaker 2: 44:27

We don't like to be reminded of that when we go to the grocery store and buy something wrapped in plastic, and so I think, in a way, that those feet really sort of signify that notion of of um knowing this animal, this, this animal's life, um that that became your meal.

Speaker 1: 44:47

Well, and I I also like that. It kind of ties back in that first experience of you pheasant hunting and cooking your first meal for yourself.

Speaker 1: 44:54

It feels like a full 360 to come back around to that and I I liked that it kind of nods to that and obviously you tell that story. Um, you know, you, you talk about in the book too. There's like six ways to live and eat more consciously, and that was a very important thing. Obviously, we've talked a little bit about that and, um, what are some of the other things that you kind of really hope that settle in with, uh, your readers and that you hope to be able to convey, uh about the importance of you know while game cooking, of eating consciously, of you know working within your environment, whether it's you know foraging or you know what you're going in the garden. What is it that you hope that people can kind of take away when they pick up this book? And you know, go through that.

Speaker 2: 45:37

You know, I think you really hit on all the key points. I the one thing that I I want to caveat is that, while this book is meant to be something of an inspiration and a a glimpse into, like, like, what my personal lifestyle is, this is something that also took me years to get to a point of of living it. None of it happened overnight. I did not become a hunter and fisher 24-7, like year-round, and a gardener and all these things overnight, and I think it can be really overwhelming and very expensive, very expensive, to just say, hey, all my meat's going to, I'm going to hunt for all my meat. It's going to all come from a CSA basket.

Speaker 2: 46:21

What I want people to understand is that you can embrace this type of lifestyle without being 100%, all in all or nothing. You know you can take elements of this that work and fit your lifestyle, because it is very difficult to hunt and fish year round Like it's. There's not very many people who are able to do that and I feel extremely fortunate to to be able to have that opportunity and I think, to be able to, you know, say I'm putting this amount of money to the side and that's my CSA basket. It's a hard thing to do and I don't expect people to to be able to do it all the time, but what I want is to be able to do it all the time, but what I want is to be able to feel inspired, to take and find something, a part of that that works for their life.

Speaker 1: 47:10

Well, I think you've done an amazing job with it. It's a phenomenal book. I'm very excited, everyone. It comes out October 8th, wherever books are sold. I know that there's a place that people can, you know, pre-order, you know barnesandnoblemeat, demeateatercom, and you know, for those who want to follow you a little bit more and kind of see you know, as this, you know, continues to evolve and you know the dishes that you have to share and you work with Meteor, where can people go ahead and follow you on your socials and you know websites there.

Speaker 2: 47:38

Yeah, I'm on the main social channels Instagram, facebook, even TikTok, although I'm not very active on TikTok. Danielle Pruitt is my handle, just my name, so I'm pretty easy to find. And then you can find a lot of stuff that I do for Meat Eater on our YouTube channel, yep channel.

Speaker 1: 47:59

Yep, and then also, if you go to the mediacom and you search your name there too, there will be a list of a ton of different articles and different recipes there too. So I highly suggest people go and check that out as well. You know, a question that I ask a lot of my you know guests and I was curious to get your take is one about legacy. You know, what is it that you hope to be able to leave behind? Obviously, you're involved in doing some amazing work in and of yourself and then working with, you know, the meat eater and all those that fall under the umbrella.

Speaker 1: 48:31

I mean, it's obviously a juggernaut of individuals that are really helping. You know education, entertaining. You know conservation, all the different things that are kind of underneath that. But I was kind of curious what it is that you kind of hope that you can. You know conservation, all the different things that are kind of underneath that but I was kind of curious what it is that you kind of hope that you can, you know, leave your mark by leaving, you know, behind some of these things. What is it you think about legacy at all? Obviously, you know, being a new parent too is, you know, as far as in a personal setting, what is it that you know, you hope to? You know, kind of be an example for, for, uh, you know your kiddo and I know it's a big question you can kind of tackle it however you want.

Speaker 2: 49:04

You know I mean food is. Food is great, right, like, recipes are wonderful. I I really like to cook or develop recipes for the home cook. I'm not here to be a Michelin star chef or work at a restaurant. I'm here to to help people um make the best of the food that they hunt or forage. Um, that's what the recipes are tailored to do.

Speaker 2: 49:31

But as far as legacy and now that I have a kid, you know I'm looking out my back window Um, we just bought like a little three acres um in Rockport and it backs up to a bird sanctuary, and one of the things I'm most excited about is getting to share with my son the excitement of just watching birds. Like I wanted to know the difference of hunting birds and appreciating wildlife without having to shoot them. I want them to understand what conservation means Um, and I want to like how hunting ties into that Um, but but the idea of just being able to sit back there and watch migration come in and and have that appreciation and know that you can enjoy this, this beautiful sanctuary. There's a, there's an alligator out there, um, I had, you know, all the native plants. Like I wanted to find that appreciation for, for this little piece that we have, that's that's been left alone and untouched and we get to watch it and I and know the difference between that and not needing to kill everything. But we're also going to take hunting and that's going to be a big deal.

Speaker 2: 50:51

But, um, I think so when I think of legacy, I think of cons, truly, I think of conservation and I think of of what we have to leave for the future behind, for for the future is all going to be rooted in how we take care of the things. Today, I'm very, very into planting native species of plants and preserving native habitats, which is it sounds strange. You know I'm a recipe developer, I wrote a cookbook but truly, at the heart of everything I do, it's all about the preservation of, of our wildlife and our resources, and so that's kind of the legacy that I want to pass is to pass that enthusiasm and love for, for the land.

Speaker 1: 51:40

Well said. Well, danielle, I really appreciate you joining me today. I'm really excited for your book to hit the shelves. I think everyone's going to love it. Uh, it's phenomenal. Um, once again, you know, we told you everyone where you can kind of pick it up. I will have some links in the show notes below. That is wild and whole seasonal recipes for the conscious cook comes out October 8th. Make sure you guys go ahead and make your pre-orders, order them and uh, yes, once again, I really appreciate it and all the best to you and uh, hope you have a great hunting season. It's upon us, right?

Speaker 2: 52:11

Yeah, yeah, thank you so much for having me on.

Speaker 1: 52:16

All right, you're welcome. We'll talk soon. You take care Thanks.