Between hunting seasons, I have time to catch up on all the tasks that come from hunting hard. I pass my time stitching my vests and shooting shirts; cleaning my e-collars, bells and beepers; reloading shells and shooting some sporting clays; and patching and waxing jackets. Truth be told, I’d rather be wearing out my chaps than rewaxing them, but it’s part of the process and that process gives me time to think. I think about days in the woods, about my family and friends, and about my dogs, living and deceased. I’m sure you do the same.
I pulled out some ragged chaps and started to stitch. I thought of my dogs, and my memories of them were both flagging and staunch. When I was a kid, I had inbred Irish setters that looked great but were impossible to train and handle. If you were to combine their weakened genetics with my inexperience as a dog handler, you’d quickly realize that mine was an exercise in futility. Over time, my quest for a great bird dog moved me to change over to English setters. I also learned from my mistakes…

Those who know Chef Frank Stitt, whether personally or by way of his brilliant cooking, conjure thoughts about him with a smile. As for me-I smile too and I’m also thankful. Thankful not just for his skilled culinary creations, but for all his qualities that sweeten the world he creates in his restaurants-four of which he operates in Birmingham, Alabama-and make them a cut above the rest. The people of Birmingham are thankful, too. Lucky for them, Stitt returned home to Alabama after spending time away becoming rich in skills on and approaches to food.

Recipes include

1 -Pickled and Marinated Vegetable Salad

2 -Fried Chicken Livers with Coosa Valley Grits

3 -Frisee, Lardoons, and Bourbon-aged Sherry Vinegar

4 -Braised Duck with Turnips, Swiss Chard, and Potato Dumplings

5 -Quail Stuffed with Cornbread and Figs

6 -Grilled Quail with Rosemary and Garlic

There is a rough stone wall at the bottom of the Blackmer place in Massachusetts that runs north to south along the forest edge. In New England fashion, it is straight and true despite its age, three stones wide and another three high, a dry-laid bulwark of native schist. The slab-handed dairyman on the place claims that the width implies the boundary of a long-forgotten garden, as the pasture walls of his forebears were built upon the width of a single stone. But that garden is gone now and the flint corn and squash and drying beans that once grew there, like the farm itself, are New England heirlooms. As for the wall, I dare say in the last hundred years it has contained nothing at all except a grown-over section of bittersweet tangle…and a steadfast supply of grouse and woodcock for the unlikely likes of me.