Tennis season is in full swing. This means that every Tuesday and Thursday until mid-May are scheduled for tennis matches. My son is a senior and our exchange student is also playing tennis. The matches start at four PM and end when they end so I am going to try and make meals that require zero preparation after we get home. Out comes the crock pot.

I don’t know if we are weird or just didn’t get the memo but we are usually the only parents at most matches. I figure, you watch football, basketball, wrestling and even track. It is odd that parents generally do not come to their kid’s tennis matches. Fortunately, I am done with work with plenty of time to travel if I have to. Maybe it is a match timing thing? Ultimately, no matter how good they are, we support our kids and that means meal planning.

Chili is on the menu today. I would really prefer to use a tough cut that I cut down to a smaller pieces. The other option was hamburger. When was looking into the freezer to figure out how I wanted to proceed, I thought that I did not want to spend the extra prep time to start with a solid piece of meat. I saw this package of ground bear that the neighbors had gave me several years ago and that was the ticket.

I thought that I was saving it for something special, but then I realized that I had no idea what that was, hence it had been in the freezer for several years. My mom didn’t like game meat and she always tried to ‘disguise’ it in highly spiced meals. There were a lot of Elk burritos in my day.

I am no expert in game meat. From what I have heard, all meat is a reflection of how it was handled. You can imagine that an animal shot in early Fall and out in the field for four or five days may not be the best. People I listen to say that ‘gamey’ is not a flavor of the meat but an indication of meat spoilage.

I think that this bear was shot in late August. I could not detect any off flavors in the chili. But, I know that my neighbors ate the meat all year so I imagine that they got on processing it and handling properly. As far as usage, I just substituted one to one with beef.

Conventional wisdom says that a fall bear is a fatty bear. But, because I live in a very temperate climate I don’t think that they do much hibernating which means that there is no need to fatten up before a long winter. This meat had almost zero fat on it.

Most game can be treated exactly like domestic meat. With bear, you do need to use Trichinosis protocol. The means it has to be cooked well done to prevent parasites. Nearly every single bear has it and it is no joke. Apparently, unlike pork (which almost never has it today) freezing does not kill the parasite.

Trichinosis is a parasite that is transmitted by eating dead animals. While the fear of pork having it is real, factory farmed pigs have no access to eat dead animals which is why that fear is largely overblown. I have heard that freezing pork for five days will take care of any potential contamination which I almost always do anyways. Best to be safe and just cook to well done.

The recipe got no special treatment. I wish that I had a super secret recipe but I don’t. I just followed a Food Network recipe that exactly matched others I saw online, so I know that it is kind of tried and true. My wife insists on kidney beans in it. I really would rather use something like pintos instead. But then again I don’t have a super secret recipe so I go with what pleases her.

All the planning was great. What I wish I did better was taste for seasoning. I was very hungry and sat down for a meal when we got home. It needed salt in a major way. It definitely could have benefitted from more depth of flavor, so it needed more seasoning as well. But hey, dinner was ready when we got home.

End Your Programming Routine: We try to plan every meal. What gets us is always the day after a big meal or busy day where we went out to eat. Tennis puts an extra emphasis on that planning unless we want to eat a nine PM. Expect a lot of crockpot cooking in the next month. With that, don’t be afraid of something that you don’t see everyday, like bear meat.