Kristy Crabtree is a convert. In her words, she’s “a girl who met a hunter and then became one herself.” And now she’s turned that conversion into a career.
Kristy creates her own wild game cuisine, publishes it on her own website, self-published her own cookbook and had her first submission published in the November-December 2017 issue (pp. 119) of Bugle, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation’s magazine.
“I started the website years and years ago to showcase the memories in some way of the animals we harvested. It’s all we eat so I thought it was a great hobby to share my techniques and recipes with other folks,” said Kristy.
We’re hoping Bugle readers agree.
Here is Kristy’s story in her own words:
I never grew up in a family of hunters or outdoorsmen. I never knew what it was like to go fishing, camping, shoot a gun or even think of harvesting an animal for food.
Then at an early age I met a hunter who introduced me to an entirely new world I never knew existed. What can I say…I was hooked. Over the next decade we explored Nevada’s back roads photographing every day of each sunrise to the end of the day’s sunset. I learned how to cast a fly rod, how to clean a fish, how to spot-n-stalk, how to pull the trigger and then I quickly learned about respect.
I’ll admit, I’m not a trained culinary chef and I’m certainly not a professional huntress. I’m just an everyday woman who enjoys taking the time to showcase the harvests that we are fortunate to share with our family and friends.
I fell in love with cooking everything from elk, venison and pronghorn antelope to duck, goose, pheasant, quail as well as small game. I enjoyed introducing wild game to friends and neighbors who had never tried it and who readily admitted to always believing it was too ‘gamey’ to even consider.
I began documenting my recipes years ago after finding myself looking for additional inspiration in my own cooking. I looked for recipes in books, on the Internet and in magazines. I started to notice a lot of them were repetitive, bland or simply too complicated to replicate. If you think about it, there are 365 days in a year. That can be overwhelming to anyone who has to prepare the family dinner.
After years of cooking big game, upland game and waterfowl, I found success in crafting recipes in the kitchen that use simple steps and everyday ingredients. I hope that you will use my recipes to experiment, adapt, change and inspire others to find respect and passion for any harvests brought home to the table.
At the end of everyday there’s something special about enjoying your own home-cooked meal and reminiscing with family and friends.