The Way to a Woman’s Heart is Through Her Stomach

     Well, I’ll be honest with you. August is my least-favorite month of the year, and always has been. I detest heat, and where I live most years August is about sweat-soaked clothes and acres of parched lawns, to say nothing of algae blooms on the lakes and low flows on the trout streams. But if there is consolation for me when August does roll around, it’s that following it are the cool days of autumn. And autumn means deer hunting and salmon fishing, and calls to my parents in Sherwood following Packer victories (didn’t talk to the folks much last fall.) The prospect of venison and smoked salmon fillets make August a month of freezer cleaning in order to make way for the new. I’ve said before in this column that I do most of the cooking in my little family, so I’m happy to fry the last batch of bluegill fillets or toss marinated venison chops on the grill.
     Though I like cooking, I can’t be said to have any natural talent at it, and am in charge, more or less, of our deer camp fish fries because it’s my fryer—kind of like picking the uncoordinated neighborhood kid in basketball because it’s his ball. But I am persistent, and have been ever since I got my real start in cooking while I was a senior at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. I lived with three friends—all of us were students in the College of Natural Resources—and we took turns cooking a sit-down dinner for each other once a week. Despite some early successes (see toast) my night was not highly anticipated. How was I to know that you have to brown the hamburger first when you make spaghetti sauce? (Ground venison was a staple in our bachelor household, and I used it so much with a popular boxed pasta/sauce mix that my nickname was “Helper.”)
     Which is not to say that my cooking night was the only one where roommates suddenly invented reasons to stay late at the library, or to go at all. My friend Garmen, a forestry major from Washburn, presented us each with a plate of goat tacos one evening. Now, Stevens Point is as cosmopolitan as the next town, but not once during my time there did I see goat meat offered in any of the supermarkets—which led me to wonder where Garmen obtained it.
     Petting zoo?
     I thought of asking, but in the end I kept my mouth shut and ate my goat tacos. It was either that, or cook for myself. And after all, dinner wasn’t the road-killed raccoon that resided in our refrigerator for a couple of weeks. Garmen claimed he was saving it for a class on wildlife diseases, but we all knew it was earmarked as an entrée. I’m not squeamish—anyone who stores waxworms in his cheek to keep them lively can’t be considered squeamish—it’s just that I kind of got attached to that raccoon, and seeing its little bandit face every morning when I opened the fridge looking for a slice of bread or a shot of O.J.
     Eventually, I graduated, and now I look back with fondness at the fifteen years which have intervened between now and then. Those years, as you might guess by glancing at my photograph above, were marked by intense feminine interest in yours truly. I cut a wide swath in those days, dating as many as one woman every three or four years, and so I frequently entertained, whether it was at my Michigan slum, my California slum, or the slum of a farmhouse here in Wisconsin which housed so many flies that I was able to observe the insect actuarial tables at work. I’d be at the stove cooking, and while I was doing so invariably a few airborne flies would give up the ghost, having reached the end of their natural lifespans, and plummet into the sauce.
     I ate out a lot.
     Back to the womenfolk. I was fond of serving Cornish Game Hens with Wild Rice to dates, because it looked elegant and was easy to make. And if the first date was successful, I could expand my repertoire on following dates:  Partridge with Wild Rice, Chicken with Wild Rice, Guinea Fowl with Wild Rice, Emu with Wild Rice…well, you get the idea. It’s a good thing the dodo bird is extinct, as it saved itself the final indignity of being flogged alongside wild rice to one of my dates.
     I’m married now, of course—six years and counting, provided I keep up on the monthly payments—and I still remember when I realized that my then-girlfriend Lori was the woman I wanted to marry. I was cooking goose breast for her at my apartment in Whitewater, and selected the recipe from a wild-game cookbook because I had the ingredients it called for, namely, A.) a goose, and B.) flour (I’ve learned since then to marinate goose strips and grill them just like venison. Cook ‘em hot, cook ‘em fast, eat ‘em quick.) I parboiled the breast in water with a little vinegar added, and while that procedure lasted I continually skimmed off a noxious layer of brown foam, which may be completely normal but which is probably rather alarming to the woman you are attempting to impress. The next step in the recipe called for tenderizing the goose with a meat mallet. I did not own a meat mallet, because I was in my twenties, and male. But I did own a hammer, and you haven’t lived until you’ve seen the look on a woman’s face as you assault her dinner with a blunt object.
     The final step called for rolling the goose in flour and frying it, which I did. After it was done I took a bite of mine and promptly slid it to my oldest cat, which lives on moths, crickets, dustbunnies, cellophane, and discarded batteries.
     He sniffed at it disdainfully.
     I looked over at Lori. She chewed silently; eyes closed in transcendent bliss.
     It amazes me now, to think that my cooking played such a role in developing our relationship. It also amazes me how close the feelings of transcendent bliss and utter nausea really are.