Pot-roast for the economically challenged chef

Dinner for the start into the new year, an economically challenged year, if I may say so, may have to be on the lean and readily available side..
Here is a possibility that is rarely considered:

Squirrel

Read the NY times article, it is definitely interesting to hear what british chefs came up with and why. :)

In Wisconsin, it is a more common entertainment for fall to hunt squirrels for dinner - read the details of how to track, shoot and field-dress them, and how to finally prepare them for tasty consumption.
I'm sure there are many other ways to deal with them - I heard Kentucky-Tennnessee traditions that involve baking the head - but they carry a Creutzfeldt-Jakob variant that I personally would rather no want to ingest.

Either way, be prepared for the lean times, look out for those little pot-roasts! :)

Aeppelkeschd

Talking to Joe last night reminded me on the fruit trees in my home area - he was telling me about small apple trees that friends of his are planning to put into their backyard. The trees are basically hybrids, i.e. set on top of a different tree that does not get very large. This way, one can have a full-fledged apple orchard in a relatively confined space. Yield is similar to full-size trees, but with the hybridization come also fortitudes of the tree partner into play - the new tree might be small, but also more hardy in different climates, more robust against different diseases etc.
Germany has a very long tradition of hybridization of trees. Saarland, specifically, also named the "apple box of Germany" (in the local dialect: "Aeppel kischt"), has hills full with apple, but also pear, and plum trees, most of them hybrids.

Every local family used to have a little piece of land somewhere on the hills surrounding the respective village, with a couple of nice, old trees on them (Streuobstwiesen). Comes fall, one can go and harvest, collecting the fruit on the tree, but also those that have already fallen to the ground. It was normal for us as kids to go for a walk with the parents on these hills in fall, collect fruit, pick some berries, eat some apples and plums on the way, and mostly we would not stick to our own families piece of land, but picked fruit, pretty much only for direct consumption, from any tree that had something nice to offer.

Lots of the apple varieties there are not commercially available in a normal grocery store. Some are very small and sour ("Viezaepfel") and used exclusively for Viez-production. Some have a very strong skin, tough texture, and a not very sweet, but really great flavor, like "Boskop"; those are used a lot in apple pies, or apple sauce, where they are mostly mixed with other varieties as well, or as Bratapfel.
One can harvest all the apples on one's own land, bring them to Merziger, the fruit juice company, stand in line with all the other locals with their boxes and barrels and baskets full of fruit, get the harvest weighed, and according to yield, trade it in against fresh apple juice and Viez. The company receives the harvest of the year for nothing, all locally grown, fresh, and basically organic, and we, the apple tree owners, don't have to deal with fruit press and bottling and, if having only the sour and tart Viezaepfel, receive sweet apple juice we'd never get out of these fruit.
A perfect deal.

Apple, 'shrooms & game

It's fall! I've been craving all the good things that come this time of the year

...like my favorite mushrooms, “Steinpilze”, that I've never seen in the US other than dried, but, alas, they don't grow yet in Germany either right now; although I may have encountered a few first pieces in my Risotto funghi di bosco that I had in Saarlouis..

...the apple wine called “Viez” (the Viez wiki is only in german so far), important product of this region with all its fruit trees in meadow orchards, and so good because the local apple scene is unimpressed by the mass-product culture that knows only four apple types or five - Vice Vinum, the substitute wine, as the romans probably named it, is largely made from Viez-apples, sometimes special pears are added as well; it can be very sour but refreshing, but there are also sweet types, dependent on how far along the fermentation has progressed. There is nothing better on a winter or cold fall evening to drink sweet Viez that has been warmed up with a cinnamon stick...

...the very young wine, “Federweisser”, still white and milky looking, and, very early, heavy and sweet as pear juice, but with light foaming and fine bubbles and definitely having some alcohol even if you can't taste it - be aware!...

...and eating dinner in the “Scheune”, in Perl-Nennig, right at the french-german border, I discover the perfect cliché german food on the daily special menu:

fried sausage (like a 'Bratwurst') from wild boar!
with a side of red cabbage, fried potatoes, battered and crispy fried onions, and a pear with Preiselbeeren, the european sibling to cranberries. The mustard appears to be mellowed by an addition of apple sauce to give the fruits in the dish a last chance to provide an enjoyable transition between the seasons...

Asterix & Obelix would have been delighted.