I fully understand the "fossilized meat in the freezer" issue Jack. A few days ago I found two unidentifiable vacuum-packed and somewhat freezer-burned blocks in my freezer that looked like they might be birds. After staring at them for a while, I recalled..."oh yeah, the Huntsman in Michigan about 2002, was it?? Or was it '98??". Oh well, might as well have a go at cooking them. One package contained two chukars. I put them still frozen into a small baking dish with water and potatoes and after a day of simmering away on the woodstove, had at them. Surprisingly, they were excellent! There was nothing left but small bone scraps when I was finished with them. The broth was so good that I made gravy of it and saved it in the frig. The next package was a rather nasty looking feather and pellet-ridden bloodshot pheasant. I tried the same treatment but it stunk up the house and absolutely refused to 'tenderize' one single bit after an entire long day on the woodstove; might as well have been simmering a piece of firewood. Eventually I gave up and ate all of one leg, which was fine, then part of the other, which was most definitely not so fine, and tossed the obviously fossilized Pteradactyl-like remains into the woodstove and ate the potatoes for dinner, without the smelly gravy from the pan. I have a very high tolerance for old stuff in the freezer and for bones in fish like pike; if I kill it, I eat it, all of it, even if I've been stupid enough to lose it in the freezer for a decade or more, but that pheasant was beyond my limits.....End of story. Not sure what the lesson is here beyond doing as Jack does and digging out the freezer on an annual basis. Now I'm left to wonder what else is hiding down there under all those bags of stuff in the freezer as I descend into the basement to reload another 5-gallon bucket of 12 ga target loads.....
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