Tanner - Squirrel chef extraordinaire

Squirrel hunting is not a new adventure for Tanner. He's loved it for years.

However, he's gotten better this year and enjoyed quite a bit of time in the woods with his Papa Bud. The nice thing is that the squirrels are usually left at my parents house for my dad to cook and eat...until this past weekend. Tanner nonchalantly said, "So, I brought my squirrel home."  WHAT??  What am I supposed to do with that? My dad's equally nonchalant response was to throw it in the crock pot with some chicken broth, carrots, and diced up potatoes.  Oh yeah, and remember to cook it for a LONG time on medium.

So home we went with squirrel in hand. And I told Tanner it was his responsibility to cook the squirrel per his grandpa's directions. He threw the squirrel (pre-skinned and gutted thankfully) in the crock pot, filled it with chicken broth, threw in some baby carrots, and then he cut up the potatoes all by himself (managing to cut his thumb in the process). The crock pot he chose only has three settings - keep warm, low, and high. My dad had said medium, so we went with low instead.  Start the timer...the cooking process began at about 6:30pm.  Then we got busy with Sunday night football, getting school stuff ready, bedtime, etc. and completely forgot about what was cooking in the kitchen.  Forgotten until we all woke up at 6:30am to get our Monday started and noticed the whole upstairs smelled like yummy something.  I'd say we were successful in the "cook it a long time" part of the instructions - twelve hours long to be exact.

When we left for school/work, we threw the pot in the fridge and as soon as Tanner got home from football practice, he put the whole squirrel on his plate (the meat was falling off the bone) and then filled it with potatoes and carrots.  And he was in heaven!!  He even convinced Hayden to try it and he loved it too!

I'd say this picture sums it all up...he was pretty, stinkin' proud of himself for sure!