By Colin Kearns

Draper and I have been talking about adding another regular on the blog — something to help wash down all of the great game and fish that’s served here. So, we present The Toast. Every now and then we’ll bring reviews, recipes and stories of our favorite drinks (and, no, not all will be booze) to enjoy with a meal or just to celebrate a good day outdoors.

I’ll kick The Toast off with some notes about a new whiskey I was lucky to enjoy over the last month: Crown Royal Black. I’m definitely more of a bourbon and rye guy, but I enjoy Canadian whiskey now and then. I’ve always liked classic Crown — but now I like Black more.

by David Draper

We saw an incredible poached salmon display from food artist and Wild Chef reader Charlie Krause on last week’s Friday Food Fight. While Chef Charlie’s salmon didn’t win against Field & Stream Copy Chief Donna Ng’s classic stuffed brown trout, which currently has about 75 percent of the votes, that poached salmon tray was still impressive. So I caught up with Chef Charlie to ask him a few questions about what it takes to turn food into fine art—like the bread fish sculpture shown here.

by David Draper

Last Friday, at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas, while waiting for the weekend shift of working girls to deplane, I picked up a bottle of water and some reading material for my flight home. On the rack, there were the usual periodicals that often make their way into my carry-on: The Atlantic (which my swollen head couldn’t fathom at that moment); Surfer (not really the inspiration I needed for a trip home to Nebraska), and Esquire (didn’t want to be seen reading a magazine with a picture of Bill Clinton on the cover).

What I did find was a copy of Saveur, a food magazine whose Jan/Feb issue annually lists their Top 100 people, places, and ingredients for the food-obsessed. The Saveur 100 issue serves as great inspiration in the kitchen and fuels many a daydream for food-related road (and plane) trips should I ever win the lottery. It’s the kind of best-of list where you’ll find meatloaf next to something called mugua ji, or a treatise on the Czech Republic’s microbrews matched with Frito Pie.

by David Draper

When it comes to grilling, there are few things that foster fear like fish. Cooking fish well can be challenging indoors, and when you enter the variable nature of a hot fire into the equation, even the most experience backyard barbequer can go weak in the knees. The delicate nature of fish fillets, or even a whole fish, can cause a grilling disaster if it sticks to the grate or falls apart when you try to flip it.

I’ve heard all kinds of way to make grilling fish easier, including wrapping it in wet newspaper before you lay it on the flame. I don’t know about that one, but here are a few tips I’ve used to avert a fish and flame disaster.