I could eat a Goose Moose Burger

Never has a childhood ditty rung so true as the last week of 2006, when my family and I vacationed in a poetic, snowy cabin in the woods. Tucked in the forests of Montana, this quaint cabin offered a small bit of respite, a pile of snow-filled memories and my first experience cooking moose.

Here is the ditty:

I am hungry
I am hungry
table, table, here I come
I could eat a goose-moose burger,
15 pickles and a purple plum.

If you know the tune, so sorry because now it will be in your mind all day, popping up out of nowhere. If you don’t know it, just know that it is genuinely cute, silly and quite fun to sing loudly and haphazardly while seeking inspiration for cooking a moose—burger or otherwise.
The Montana neighbors offered us moose steaks for dinner. I had never cooked moose, but luckily I have an uncle who eats moose as often as he fills his gas tank. I called him for a step by step (think: cooking moose for dummies). He suggested I treat this lean, tough meat like Veal Picatta: sliced just over quarter of an inch, pounded with the grain, lightly floured with salt and pepper and flash fried. I didn’t cut it thin enough, though the rub I made wasn’t bad.

But I didn’t want to tell you about the moose, save for the fact that I had this ditty in my head while I was cooking the moose steaks. Though I was singing about Goose Moose Burgers, we had also received a package of ground Elk which I DID turn into burgers.

Now granted, I am probably losing friends left and right, eating all sorts of red meat, probably endangering species as I speak. The elk and moose were genuinely wild, organic and part of the natural food chain (what is a girl to do, they were already on a platter!). So, instead of Goose Moose Burgers, we ate Blue Cheese Fennel Elk Burgers; they were moist, bursting with flavor and truly cabin-in-the-woods worthy:

Blue Cheese Fennel Elk Burgers
1 LB ground Elk (okay, all you wooses can substitute beef)
3 T sauteed minced onion
3 T sauteed minced fennel
1/2-2/3 cup crumbled blue cheese

Mix all of the above ingredients, throw in a Tablespoon of Worcestershire or herbs if desired, and some salt and pepper. Then, grill away as you would any other burger.

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