Mo Derp

I got off farm yesterday - it was fantastic. I had a terrific time and a darn good meal.

Mo was a little derp-y yesterday. His little tongue hanging out slays me

Today I need to set up The Grand Palais for Nibbles.... she's looking extremely large. I understand her arch rival - Gidget - had quads so now Nibs is gonna have five babies just to show her up. Goats = crazy.

Happy Wednesday everyone!

Holy Buckets of Bacon!

It's a bacon overload! It's a ham hysteria!  I went and got our bacon and hams from the butcher yesterday. It was glorious.

A huge ham haul.

I really like our butcher - he started laughing right when I walked into his office.  It's not entirely unusual for folks to greet me like that so I wasn't surprised.  You'll remember that we've had a laugh or two before.

A bucket of bacon.

Turns out he gave us a deal on my extra big bacon. He had to trim off part of it to make it fit into the slicer.  This is how the "good" end of the bacon turned out:

He said he felt bad because that what the fatty end and he didn't think it was much use... but I didn't mind at all. This was the "bad" stuff - are you kidding? It's perfect! This is great for chopping into chunks and using to make beans - or cook up some onions.

I'll use that for when I need bacon and fat as the base for a stew or meat sauce. It worked out perfectly for me. So I happily drove right home with my huge ham haul.

That's my regular sized skillet - look how huge the bacon slices are!

We might, however, need another freezer..... or I'll just have to keep cooking up skillet full of bacony goodness.

Happy Tuesday everyone!

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter!

I love to pic of a peep from several years ago - come on, spring!

Have a great day, everyone!

Scenes from the First Work Day

Finally! Yesterday I got to work outside - the whole day. It was sunny and not snowing! The Never Ending Winter is losing its grip.....

 Nibbles lookin' very large indeed.

My biggest priority was shoveling out the right side of the Turkey House so we can install Nibbles. She's due to have her babies on our about April 6. But she's looking pretty darn large right now. I don't know if she'll make it that long.

Nibs' little legs are about to buckle under all that weight.

Of course we are doing The Critter Shuffle.... the ducks got evicted from that side of the Turkey House and they are pretty mad about it. But that will be short lived. Very soon our visiting drake will go to his new home. The lady ducks need to get acquainted with the very dapper runner drakes so those gals need to move back to the hen yard.

Keep it up, TZ, and you will be the star of Easter dinner.

The turkeys will stay where they are - for now. TurkZilla has been super aggressive and always on display lately. He's starting to give the ladies a little of the ol' 23-Skiddo... if you know what I mean. We are on the lookout for turkey eggs.  But TZ had better watch his P's & Q's.. I'm about sick of him coming after me. I'm not above having a turkey for Easter dinner.

I love Cindy's beautiful nest.

Next in line for the "Oh Please Pick Me For the Pot" are the geese. Our head gander, OD, and That Speckled One are chasing me all over the darn place. Cindy Lou has started a nest so the ganders are all in a lather. Bunch of hissing galoots! I had just about enough of them and locked them all (except for Cindy) in the turkey coop just so I could get some peace and get my work done. Cindy sat on her beautiful nest.

There was a lot to shovel out of the Turkey House - a long winter's worth of bedding. I had some combination of dogs with me at all time because I knew what lurked deep in the piles of barnyard litter..... When those rats finally made their move they were verily smited and their ruin was thrown down before me. Titan was well pleased with himself - and got a huge meaty bone for this efforts.

The ones that got away will soon meet their doom. Zander and Kai will see what they can dig up today. We need to get all those stupid rats out of the Turkey House before Nibble's little MoneyMakers.... I mean... adorable baby goats arrive. I'm thinking she has at least 4 babies this time. And no we do NOT need to go for another record breaking, boat sinking, net busting haul of babies this time.

Looks like we just got above freezing so I'm gonna get saddled up and head out - we are going to hunt some rats.

Happy Saturday everyone!  Anyone else working outside today?

So the butcher called....

You'll recall that we sent a ham and a couple of the bacons from our recent hog harvest out to the local butcher to be cured and smoked. Mostly we did it because I don't have a smoke house - but one day I will.... Until then we just have too much meat for me to handle. So it's easy to find a "custom butcher" in your area and take some of the meat in to be professional smoked. I really like our butcher, he's something else.

Well, yesterday the butcher called.... he said my bacon was too big for his equipment.

Is that right?

You can imagine that I'm not mature enough for some conversations....... All y'all can take that how ever you'd like but I started to snort.....

I lost it when I heard he had to trim it off a bit to make it fit.

That'll do, pig. That'll do. 

Happy Friday everyone! And not I gotta go and get my big bacons.....

Dog in Glasses

I might owe the LensMakerMart an apology......

 My Good Sir looking very sophisticated.

You'll remember our last foray into the eye glasses giant....well. We had to go back. This time it was for me. Saturday afternoon Kai stepped on and broke my reading glasses. I leaned over to kiss her and my expensive and well worn reading glasses fell out of my shirt. The next thing I knew I was standing over the shattered remains of my freedom. Then the screaming started. For those of you who depend on glasses you know what is like. For those of you who don't you'll just think that a little tape will solve everything.

The Big Man with his 20/20 vision, recognized by everyone but the DMV, suggested that I quit my bellyaching and he tried to fix them with duct tape. It didn't work. So we packed up and headed down to the LensMakerMart.

They totally fixed me up and I received excellent customer service - despite the fact that I was wild eyed and practically screaming. I think they have a training program to handle distraught customers. She didn't even flinch when I shook my broken frames at her and yelled for that poor gal to DO SOMETHING. She did - and in less than an hour. 

I was caterwauling about this over on 'the facebook' and my friend K. said they wanted to see me and my new glasses. So I posted the above picture.

Happy Wednesday everyone! Can you see me now?

Makin' Bacon! I got my cure on.....

I spent most of yesterday makin' bacon. It was epic - so much bacon was made that I was delirious by the end of the day.

Bacon day looks like love.... 

All four of those pieces  (in the picture above) were ONE side of bacon - and not even the whole thing! Can you believe it?  Those porkers earned their every dime when we saw how big the bacons were......so my pig hatin' has come to an end and now I have nothing but love for them hogs.

Look at all that fresh pork just waiting to become bacony goodness....

Can you make bacon at home? Sure you can! It's easy and fun. You can check out this post for everything you need to make bacon - except a fresh pork belly. You can either run right out and get your own or order one from the butcher.

The first step to making bacon is to go and get your copy of Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curingby Ruhlman. Then just follow the steps.

Our bacons (that's the side and belly of the hog) were so huge I had to cut them down to manageable pieces before I could put them in the "salt box" to be covered in a mixture of "pink salt" (Instacure #2 for Drying Meats 1 Pound), sugar, and kosher salt. The "pink salt" has nitrates in it and it makes bacon "bacony" and stops the formation of bacteria - but if you are concerned about nitrates then don't use it. (If you don't use the nitrates then mind how you make and smoke your bacon.)

No, that is not a kitty litter box - it's a small wash tub from the Dollar Store. It cost one dollar. 

Once coated with the basic cure I put each of the bacon pieces into a plastic bag and then added other spices or just left it plain.  These are a few of a varieties I made:

Maple bacon
Black pepper maple bacon
Garlic super savory bacon
Black pepper bacon
Mildly savory bacon
White and black pepper and thyme and red pepper bacon

The Black Pepper Bacon is especially peppery.

We were thrilled to use some of our very own maple syrup for some of the flavors - how fun is that?

I also started to cure some pancetta - some stunning pieces. Those pieces are flavored differently - much more savory and with a little brown sugar. They will be hung in the basement instead of being smoked - that's basically the difference between pancetta and bacon. You can read about making pancetta in this post.

But my day wasn't over yet - that's right, I started brining a ham! You'll remember I did this project a few months ago and it was fabulous. However I didn't take any pictures of the "how to" because I didn't think it would work. It totally worked.

Come to think of it - it's really not a very photogenic process. I mean... it's just a picture of a hunk of meat submerged in some brine. Gosh - I think I need to be more arty about it. I'll work on that. In the meantime, I made a brine, put it in a food grade bucket, submerged the hunk of meat, and got you this picture:

I told you - not very interesting. Next time I'll include Nicholas and that will be more amusing - it's always something with that guy. See that I weighted the ham with a non-reactive dish (glass bread pan) and a jar filled with water sealed in a plastic bag (so it didn't leak.). Yes, my kitchen floor is probably dirty.

The next step in bacon, pancetta, and ham making is..... waiting. The bacons/pancettas will cure for about a week or 10 days and the ham will brine for 3 or 4 days. I'll flip and flop the bacons and pancetta so the cure is evenly distributed just about everyday. Then they will be smoked or hung to dry. That's it - can you believe it?!? How easy and fun is that?

This really is a great project. It just goes to show that making your own food is easy and approachable. You don't need a ton of special equipment or secret powers - just you and some know how.

What do you think - are you ready to make some bacon?  Happy Tuesday everyone!

ps If you need a copy of Ruhlman's book you can get it - or anything else you need from Amazon by clicking on the link below, using the search box on the right of this page, or checking out my Store. I get a little bit of each sale and it doesn't cost you a dime more. Thanks for your support!