Making your own wild game stock sets you on the path to mastering game cookery, but making wild game consomme puts you on the path to becoming a Jedi Master of wild game. This stuff is mind-blowing!

Another foraging trip and another edible mushroom under my belt! Two good stashes of blewits last week gave me a great introduction to this mushroom.

The foie gras debate centers on whether it’s natural and humane: Do waterfowl fatten their own livers in the wild? They do. A liver from a duck I shot recently was so fatty it qualifies as wild foie gras.

I’ve been making mustard at home for years, but until I had a conversation with another food blogger last week, I never realized that making mustard is a mystery to most. It shouldn’t be.

Canada geese get a bad rap. Sky carp. Stinky, arrogant hissing birds. Yeah, Canadas can be nasty. But cooking a real, wild, Canada goose offers pleasures other waterfowl simply lack.

I’ve been restless lately. Unsatisfied. And, after a marathon cooking session in which I cooked doves six ways to Sunday, I am reminded that the path from craftsman to artist continues to evade me.

By attempting two signature dishes from two famous chefs, I managed to push myself well beyond my comfort zone — and I am a better cook because of it.

While I won the Best Blog award from the International Assn. of Culinary Professionals last week, the conference – especially a French butchery seminar – showed me how much I need to learn.

While watching the Olympics, I was struck by our ability to celebrate both similarities and differences, seemingly without contradiction. And the same holds true in food.