Spring – 2010

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In This Edition:

• 2010 Annual Dinner & Auction, May 14
• Game Feed Wrap-up
• Wine Tasting Dinner Wrap-up
• Puddle Hopper Parmesan Recipe

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Annual Dinner & Auction Set For Friday, May 14th.

Mark your calendars for Friday, May 14th when we’ll be holding our Annual Dinner & Auction at the Barker Tavern. Doors will open at 5:30 PM for cocktails, prize viewing and conversation.
The main attraction of the evening will be the live auction. Arrayed across the front of the room will be the auction items and a number of bucket raffle and silent auction items. During the course of the evening we’ll also feature a “Pick-of-the-Litter” drawing where the winner gets to choose their prize from a selection of the auction items, plus a Sponsor-raffle and the drawing for the Door Prize.

Dinner service starts promptly at 7:00 PM and will be buffet-style featuring Duck, Steamship Roast and Shrimp & Scallops Provençal with an accompaniment of Caesar Salad, Vegetable Medley and Rice. Don’t forget to leave room for some of the Barker’s yummy deserts.

Following dinner we’ll start by playing “Heads or Tails” to determine who gets the “Pick-of-the-Litter&rdquo — don’t forget to buy your beads — then follow on with pulling half the winning raffle tickets. Next comes the silent auctions, live auction, door prize drawing and sponsor raffles. The evening concludes with the pulling of the remaining raffle tickets. Somewhere along the way we’ll have a very quick Blitz-raffle, hence the name.

Tickets are $140.00/couple or $75.00/single and available from your favorite Minots Ledge Committee Member. You can also reserve tickets by clicking the button below and we’ll contact you regarding payment methods or you can just send us a check. Please send your check to our postal address: P.O. Box 155, Scituate, MA 02066.

Last year, the highlight of the auction was a Labrador puppy. This year we’ll have another pup from Win-Wood Kennel in Tiverton, RI; color choice is dependant on availability in mid-May when we hold our event, but could be chocolate or black with an outside chance of yellow.

With over 30-years experience under their belts, Win-Wood Kennel breeds very calm intelligent Labradors that makes an excellent family pet, companion, or hunting dog. Although Win-Wood Labradors are extremely calm by nature, they are aggressive retrievers, when it comes to retrieving a tennis ball, training dummy or actual game bird. Your puppy comes with full AKC registration, a written health and hip guaranty, will have had its first shots and have been de-wormed.

We’re still hard at work securing auction and raffle items; as we get close to our event date, we’ll update you with our auction items.

At last year’s dinner & auction we raised $22,000 for the ducks; please help us surpass that figure this year.

Don’t miss out on this gala event, seating is limited to just 200. To avoid disappointment, click the “Reserve Tickets” button below — we’ll contact you regarding payment.

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Casey’s Game Feed

There was just one word for our Casey’s Game Feed on February 6th — COLD! Air temperatures hovered around 23º with a brisk northerly breeze blowing at a steady 10 MPH giving a wind chill of 12º for the entire afternoon; the snow flurries just added atmosphere. Needless to say, the food tent and the clubhouse were packed all afternoon.

But we’re hearty New Englanders and can take whatever Mother Nature dishes out. Everyone bundled up warmly and enjoyed the day with attendance on a par with warmer events.

Miss Piggy put in a delicious guest appearance and, once cooked, disappeared very quickly.

Three Minots Ledge committee members made a special trip to Florida to harvest Miss Piggy and experienced the coldest temperatures in decades while they were there. Hmm, was this a portent of the game feed weather?

Guys, next year if you go down for the pig, please choose warmer weather — we’ll all thank you.

The wild hogs we cook at the game feed come from 20,000 acres of agricultural land where the hogs and deer are competing for the same crops. There are so many hogs that the lease holders are required to harvest a considerable number of hogs per year to keep in check the damage caused by hogs.

A hearty bunch of Greenwings had a blast shooting BB guns, paint-ball guns and bows and arrows, all under the close supervision of Ernie Foster and a group of adults.

By far the most popular were the paint-ball guns; some of the little tykes sounded like Machine Gun Kelly they were pulling the trigger so fast and, surprisingly, staying mostly on target.

The kids were well fed with hot dogs to keep their energy levels up and keep them warm.

Every year at the Gamefeed an award is given to the Minot’s Ledge committee member who made an outstanding effort during the previous 12-months — the award is known as the Duckman Award.

The recipient of the award is chosen by Kenny Crowell, who has been the driving force behind the Gamefeed since its inception when Kenny was only knee-high to a puddle duck, actually he was 19-years-old when the first Gamefeed was held in Casey’s barn in Cohasset.

Kenny does his magic out of the glare of the public spotlight, that’s why you rarely see him behind the microphone at our events; we have other “voices” for those duties.

This year the committee conspired behind Kenny’s back to circumvent the award and give our own award to Kenny for the countless hours, sweat and toil that he’s put in over the past 31 years in organizing the Gamefeed. Kenny also happened to be celebrating his 50th birthday around the time of the Gamefeed.

To honour Kenny’s dedication to the ducks and celebrate his birthday, the Minot’s Ledge committee voted to rename the event from Casey’s Gamefeed to KC’s Gamefeed; we also presented Kenny with a new compound bow. Kenny’s family were also on hand to present the birthday boy with a cake.

A complete set of photos taken at the Game Feed can be viewed here.

Minots Ledge would like to thank the following companies and individuals who made this Game Feed possible: After the bills had been paid, Minots Ledge sent a check to DU National in Memphis for $5,000.00. We’re looking forward to seeing you next Super Bowl Saturday, come rain, shine or snow!

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Wine Tasting & Dinner At Hatherly CC

We wrapped up 2009’s fund-raising activities with a Wine Tasting & Dinner at Hatherly Country Club on October 16th. This was the first time we’ve held an event at Hatherly CC; unfortunately the Barker Tavern was not able to give us a Friday evening thus precipitating the move.

We were a tad apprehensive going in, but we had several meetings with Clubhouse Manager Bob Tremblay and Chef Clark Pevey who worked with us down to the last detail and came up with a superb menu that was elegantly paired to the wines. All in all, the Hatherly surpassed our expectations.

For the past couple of years we featured California wines for our Wine Tasting Dinners; this year we crossed the Atlantic to Italy to sample the award winning Tuscan and Umbrian wines of Villa Antinori; they've been making wine since 1385 — that’s over 600 years and 26 generations!

As in past years, the wine was supplied by Marsh's Wine & Spirits of Norwell who also made the arrangements for our guest speaker of the night; Tim Clark, a nationally renowned wine educator. Tim took us through the characteristics of each of the wines we sampled and gave us insight into how Antinori consistently produces top notch wines. Heck, they’ve been at it for 600+ years so they’ve had a lot of practice.

If you missed this four course, epicurean and oenophilian event, the evening’s menu and wines can can be viewed here (PDF). The Confit of Duck Tamale was particularly yummy and carefully paired with Villa Antinori Chianti Classico Reserva Marchese.

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Puddle Hopper Parmesan Recipe

Ingredients

• 4 duck breasts (soaked in salt water, cut into chunks)
• ½ c. milk
• 1 jar spaghetti sauce
• 1 can diced tomatoes
• 1 2-lb. package shredded mozzarella cheese (or a blend of shredded cheeses)
• 4 servings spaghetti noodles, partially cooked
• Italian-seasoned bread crumbs or homemade Italian-seasoned batter (flour and milk)
• Vegetable oil

Cooking Instructions

1. Rinse and drain duck. Soak in milk.
2. Heat oil to 350 degrees in deep fryer or skillet.
3. Remove duck from milk and coat each piece with bread crumbs or batter.
4. Fry duck pieces until golden and crispy.
5. In a medium-sized glass baking dish, layer partially cooked noodles, diced tomatoes, about ¼ of the spaghetti sauce, fried duck breast and cheese. Put remainder of spaghetti sauce on top.
6. Bake at 350° for about 25 minutes or until cheese is melted and bubbly.

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Minots Ledge Chapter
P.O. Box 155
Scituate, MA 02066
Chairman: Bill Blake – 617-448-0962
www.mlcdu.org
wblakeboston@gmail.com