dinner at Wolfkeep!

I’ve been planning dinner at Wolfkeep all week, I was so excited about it. We made a veritable FEAST! I was aiming for between 8 - 12 people, and some very large canines =) Everything worked out swell, definitely not 12 people, but we sure had enough food!

Per Mariah’s father’s suggestions, we made a lamb roast on a bed of gold and purple potatoes, carrots, yams, and these funky oblong onions. Loaded with garlic and rosemary, all soaked in red burgundy wine.

We had a huge pot of garlic and butter mashed potatoes, a loaf of leek sourdough bread. Two crisp salads Maya made with all sorts of goodies. A pot of parsnip, leek and cracked pepper soup, baked asparagus and carrots brushed in pepper and olive oil, Maya’s fermented hummus, and a jar of my sesame sauerkraut.

A sweetpotato and yam pie with pecans for desert, I’ve never made a pie before, it wasn’t so bad! Owen and I went up early in the day, working on our elk hide. Built a frame out of some 10 ft 2×4’s we liberated at a nearby construction site, and nailed the elk hide up. Carl had a small antelope brain outside, and we had half a frozen whitetail brain in the car. Carl put them in a coffeecan and blended them into a gooey gunk. Owen and I then painted the blended elk brains all the grain side and the membrane side.

Carl has several teepee’s down by the enclosure. We chose the largest one to smoke the hide in. It had a deep firepit dug out of the center and a nordic frame rope bed on the side. We started a small cedar fire and warmed the place up a bit, after it had all burned down to a bed of coals, we took our bag of scavenged punk wood, or wood that is pretty well rotten, and covered the coals with it. The smoke came on fast and thick, we climbed outside and laced everything up.

Owen showed me how to manuever the poles to close the top flap, and we headed back up to the keep for dinner.

I had a headache most of the night, but it was so good to see everyone, and have a nice dinner. Lily and Rachel had never seen the wolves before, and Lily was really excited when she learned Carl was a boxer too. Lots of good gifts traded hands too, Carl gave Owen a book on natives and a leather needle, Owen gave carl a dogwood deer effigy, Carl gave me a thick carhart suit that was too small for him and shared some really nice pot with me. We left Carl a huge bowl of food in his fridge, and headed back to Missoula around nine.

I want to go and get close to the wolves next time. The blogger-pressure in my head told me to take pictures of EVERYTHING, and I told it to fuck off and leave me alone. I won.