The camp chef was making his version of jalapeño poppers, using breast meat from Canada geese.
“Every time I make and eat these, I get sick,” he said happily.
I stood by watching, considering whether he meant it as a joke. I decided he did not.
He was Odd, but only regular Camp Cook Odd, which is a common garden variety of Odd. The outfit in question was in Saskatchewan, maybe 300 miles north of the international border. The camp was rural but not remote — the main lodge was a big house with electricity and running water, there was a store 45 minutes down the road that sold gas and basic supplies, and the road was one you could easily drive in any four wheel drive vehicle. The cook’s job for the fall was to prepare two hot meals a day for groups of hunters who’d be staying there in three- or four-day increments from September to November. To do this, he would be living on site and serving in the outfitter’s employ.
“Why do you think it makes you sick?” I eventually asked.
“I don’t know,” he said.
He assembled the poppers one at a time, laying a slice of goose breast onto a cleaned and de-seeded jalapeño, then adding a swath of cream cheese onto the meat. Then he would wrap the whole operation in bacon to keep it all together and secure it with a toothpick. Ultimately, these would be given a top coating of some kind of seasoning and cooked in an oven or a smoker.
As I watched, he stuck the spoon he was using to transfer a gob of cream cheese onto each slice of goose meat back into the pot of cream cheese. He did this repeatedly until all the poppers were made. Then he snapped the lid back onto the remaining cream cheese and put it back into the refrigerator.
I’m not usually one who fears food. I’ll try practically anything and, most likely, like it. If it doesn’t have sweet potatoes in it, or fermented kimchi in it, chances are great I’m going to like it. I also tend to believe people when they tell me things, though. Needless to say, I didn’t eat any of the poppers — he told me himself they upset his system, and yes, several of those who did try them reported notable results — but I also now had grave concern about the rest of what we were to eat that week.
Being a camp cook is important. For an outfitting business, it’s important up the food chain as well as down. Anyone who’s had much contact with the outdoors knows how unpredictable things can be. Game can be uncooperative and the weather can be terrible. The continuation of any outfitting business, then, depends as much as anything upon having good food — the one variable that can be expected to be reliably good. That’s the responsibility to the outfitter. The responsibility to the guests is much like the Hippocratic oath: First, do no harm. They need to be fed, both amply and in a timely fashion, but under no circumstance is it OK to risk making them sick.
Chef Goose Popper wasn’t even in a hurry though. He was just sloppy. I think about that afternoon any time we’re covering food safety in our Boy Scout training.
It probably extends to the rest of what goes on in our lives, too. It’s most likely something we’re doing to ourselves that’s making us sick.
Kevin Tate is a freelance writer. Email [email protected].
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