Hunting TV and a TV Snack
So Kat just changed our cable service again.
The last time she did this, I lost all my hunting channels (along with most anything else worth watching), but since I refuse to pay for television, I had to go with her decision. It was with some trepidation when she told me the other day that she’d be cancelling DISH and switching to DirectTV… but really, it couldn’t be much worse than it already was. Heck, the best thing to watch on a lazy Saturday since then has been hilariously bad movies on the Science Fiction channel. I do occasionally get to watch Versus, but in between “Paid Programming”, shows about gold panning, and the endless loop of the same four or five episodes of “Winchester Legends”, “Beretta’s Under Wild Skies”, and “The Bucks of Tecomate,” it wasn’t much to get excited about.
Anyway, she made the change, they installed the service on the Friday after Thanksgiving, and I started scanning the guide. Sure enough, we were now getting the Pursuit Channel and The Sportsmen’s Channel. (The Outdoor Channel, one of my favorites, is not available with the package she selected).
At first, I thought I’d be like an addict falling off the wagon, but honestly, outdoor programming hasn’t really improved all that much. While there are occasional gems in the mix, there’s still a lot of the same old thing… glorification of the kill over the experience of the hunt, bad shots disguised by quick camera and editing work, and a total emphasis on “trophy” hunting.
Even so, it’s hunting! So I still watch… even as I grumble and mumble and armchair quarterback.
And what goes better while sitting on the couch, watching the idiot box, than a tasty meat snack!
Yeah, I got that segue right off of the hunting shows… sorry about that.
But seriously, I do want to mention a product I had the opportunity to sample recently. The good folks at Pop’s Authentic Artisan Meat Snacks recently contacted a handful of bloggers with a pretty nice offer. They’d send us a sample of their meat sticks to try and review, and also offer our readers a discount for online purchases.
If you’re interested in what I thought… well, I’ll be honest. I’m not a huge fan of meat sticks or commercially made jerky. I like to make my own, largely because I know exactly what’s in it and what’s NOT in it. Most of those factory products contain ingredients I can’t even pronounce. I sure as heck don’t want to put that in my system.
But Pop’s are not Slim Jims. According to their literature, they’re made from locally sourced beef and pork and spiced with real, select spices. So I tried them.
And they really weren’t bad at all!
In fact, I stuck the rest of the sample supply in my food box in Petunia, and ate off of them during my recent pig hunt at the Hedgepeth Ranch. They sent me two sticks of each flavor: Original, Peppered, and Habanero (they advertise a Bacon snack stick too, but I didn’t get any of those). As a lover of spicy food, I jumped on the habanero flavor. It wasn’t nearly hot enough for me, but the flavor was good. The peppered were also good, but honestly, I think I liked the original flavor best.
I can see munching on these things in front of the TV, or out in the field. I think it would be awesome to see them produce some meat snacks using some wild game meats, but hey… one step at a time, right? If you’re interested in trying them for yourself, just type the discount code OSCAR into the appropriate field when you place your order on the website. You can get a free box of 12 meat sticks with the purchase of two boxes.
If you do order some, let me know what you thought of them.