Mulligan Stew

A week ago I got a phone call from my neighbor.  Our neighbors are great.  We love them.  It is such a blessing to have good neighbors.  They allow us to pick figs, satsumas, grapes, muscadines and lemons off their trees and we'll give them milk and eggs.  We also assist one another with yard work or limb pick-up after storms. They are great cooks and we'll often get a knock at the door and will be greeted with a warm loaf of Amish bread or a plate lunch of fresh fried catfish, lima beans and coleslaw.

So it was nothing out of the ordinary when they called and asked if we had any plans for the Saints game.  I said no and they invited us to come over to their outdoor kitchen to help them eat Mulligan Stew and watch the Saints play.  Tricia made some homemade cookies and we eased over Sunday after we got back from church.

Now, I had no clue what mulligan stew was.  It sounded Irish, so I assumed that it had potatoes in it. I was right - partially.  When we opened the screen door, my neighbor asked if we had ever eaten mulligan stew and we said, "No."  He sort of smiled.  He was browning a huge pile of meat in a pot on the stove.  It smelled great!  He said that every Fall before hunting season, it was customary in their house to make Mulligan Stew.

Mulligan Stew is something that his Daddy started as a tradition, of sorts, to clean out the freezer to make room for the wild game that was about to be killed during this hunting season.  All different types of meat would be thrown in the pot, browned with onions and garlic and then have stock and chopped mixed vegetables and pasta shells thrown in and stewed down.  When done it would be served over rice.  I searched for a picture and it best looks like this one I found on a Google search:

Image Credit

According to Wikipedia, Mulligan stew was served in hobo camps in the early 1900's and was made with whatever could be "begged, scavenged, found, or stolen." So the aroma filled the outdoor kitchen in the shop and at around 2 pm, it was time to eat.  We lined up, got our bowls, filled them with rice, ladled a heaping portion of mulligan stew over our rice and went and sat down.

When we sat down, our neighbor's wife and her sister, smiled and said, "Y'all eat that?  We're not big on eating squirrel heads.  We're gonna eat something else."  I looked down in my bowl and saw something that looked very similar to this staring back up at me:

Image Credit

They would take the handle-end of a butter knife and crack the little skull and then pull out the brains and eat them.  Now, I'm fine eating squirrel.  And I enjoyed the taste of Mulligan Stew.  I just can't bring myself to eat the head or squirrel brains!  I politely ate around the head until it was the only thing left in my bowl.  I think I heard my neighbor's son say, "Aw man, you left the best part!"

Benjamin and I will be doing some squirrel hunting in our yard to thin out the squirrels so they don't get all our pecans.  We will skin and clean the ones we kill, but the heads won't make it into our bowls.  They'll be buried in the garden along with the skin, guts and tail.