Venison Anyone?

Perhaps it's a bit controversial, but we have a bunch of venison hanging out in our freezer. My Aunt Ann gave me some during our visit. She had gotten a bunch from my Uncle Sonny who lets people hunt on his property.

While, I don't like the idea of killing bambi, I don't like the idea of animals going to waste either. I'm also quite adventurous culinarily speaking and intrigued to see what can be done with the exotic fare (I've never had it except in a sausage form once.) I'm sure many are laughing at me calling it exotic, but that is what it is for me.

My husband assures me that if deer were not hunted they would overwhelm the forests and cause accidents on the roads so there is no sense in feeling sorry for the guys. I'm not a stranger to this. I have hit a deer and in so doing, destroyed my oh-so-awesome chevy chevette (seriously, I really liked the car because it ran better then any car I had ever had at that point). My brother was with me at the time. He was a freshman at Radford and I was a senior at VA tech so I was a good sister and picked him up. It was Thanksgiving Break, after all. I hit the deer pretty much head on at about 45 mph. It was dark and the deer came out of nowhere. It flew through the air. I stopped and looked at my brother.

me: Are you OK?

toas: yep.

toas: Are you OK?

me: Yep.

So I pressed on the gas hoping we could get far enough to reach a phone. Luckily, there was just enough gusto left in the car to drive it up to the nearest restaurant, a burger king. We went inside, called our parents and bought a beverage. As we sat to wait for our parents customers came running in and told the cashiers to call the police because there was a bloodied car sitting in the parking lot. If they had looked closely they'd have seen fur. Anyway, I told them there was no reason to be alarmed and why. After which, I was promptly asked, "Where and when did this happen?" I believe the man replied that he was planning to go out and find it.

Does anyone have good recipes to share for venison? We have some venison meat strips and some ground venison. I'm thinking of making a venison stew with the crock pot for the strips and I'm thinking about doing a venison meatloaf for the lean ground meat.