Though little known in the U.S., the Dakar is a sports juggernaut in Europe, where France's state broadcasting company runs more than 25 hours of coverage, and the leading drivers and riders are accorded the same status we give to Super Bowl quarterbacks.
The booming popularity of alligator hunting, sparked by reality shows like the History Channel's 'Swamp People,' is easy to understand: It's an exotic blast of adrenaline. But there's a culinary upside as well, with gator boasting a delicate light-pink meat that, to me, falls somewhere between veal and wild turkey.
Bermuda's beaches are justly famed for their pink sands, colored by the pulverized shells of single-celled organisms called foraminifera. When occupied by bikini-clad sunbathers, the beaches, with Victorian primness, appear to be blushing.
The South's cuisine is often likened to gumbo - a thick and bubbling melange, spiked with a little bit of this, a little bit of that - yet the metaphor, like the dish, comes from West Africa.
Poyha is a venison dish handed down from the Cherokee tribe. You can think of it as a meatloaf, which it is, or as a skillet of cornbread that some venison sneaked into, which it also is. Either way, it's a simple and satisfying meal.
An early remedy for malaria called for tossing the sufferer, Br'er Rabbit-style, into a prickly bush; in his hasty retreat, went the thinking, he might leave the fever behind. Orally-administered cobwebs were also deemed effective.
Not long ago, in an excruciatingly remote village in the Australian Outback, I was startled to see a bartender in a cowboy hat measuring out a classically proportioned French 75 - something he'd picked up on the Internet, he told me.
It's often said that doves provide valuable practice for duck season, but this strikes me as upside down. With their tiny profiles, wicked speed, and fighter-plane acrobatics, doves are more difficult to take down.
In the South, dove hunts do not draw quietly to a close. Sometimes, at the simplest end, a grill and cooler are hauled to the edge of the field, and the doves' breasts are grilled - usually swaddled in bacon, maybe with a jalapeno tucked inside - as the hunters tell and retell tales of the day's shooting.
You can't rent a car in Bermuda; about twenty miles long and two miles wide at its fattest, it deems itself too small for surplus traffic.
Ask any deer camp old-timer for a foolproof recipe, and you're likely to encounter a lot of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup. There is a reason for that: Mushrooms plus cream plus game meat adds up to a perfect trinity of flavors.
The enemy of successful long-term freezing is air. When air meets food, dehydration occurs, leading to freezer burn. With delicate proteins like fish, freezer burn can be downright fatal, ruining both texture and flavor.
Technically, fish can last up to half a year in a freezer, but their quality starts to slide after the first month.
Wild geese have so much less fat than their domestic brethren that, as far as the kitchen is concerned, the two birds should be considered different species altogether - so much so that they require opposite roasting methods.
Of course, there's nothing wrong with deer burgers and venison chili, but with a little gusto, those stalwarts can go from satisfying to sublime.
The spectacle of a good bar fight, properly executed and healthily ended, is not merely annoying boorishness. The best of them - an admittedly minor slice - are shaded with the elements of high art.
Except for a very few elite pro racers up front, the Dakar Rally is not, at heart, a contest among the competitors; the battle, instead, is between mankind - more precisely, Western mankind, with all its fire-breathing machinery and inexorable arrogance - and Africa, which has been proving itself untamable for centuries now.
After a solid day of fishing, I'm craving something hearty. That's where a jug of buttermilk comes in. Poaching fish in buttermilk yields the luscious texture and pure flavor, but with a more substantial richness and a poaching liquid you'll want to lap up with a spoon.
For centuries, pates have been one of the greatest vehicles for wild game. But making a pate, which is nothing more than a meatloaf, has tended to be a laborious task, with ingredient lists as long as a shotgun barrel.
Paddleboarding is what happens when you want to kayak on a surfboard or surf a kayak: You stand atop a board paddling yourself around. It's a leisurely good time.
