There are probably less than a handful of people reading this blog who will get the titular reference, but to those that do, I salute you 
After a slight delivery snafu on my part last weekend, I finally took possession of my side of pork on Wednesday night from Bob, our friendly organic grocer.
Well, most of it.
It turns out that the slaughter weight of my particular hog was slightly larger than the average I’d been quoted (80-100 lbs) so my fridge, freezer and all available space is now crammed full of 147.5 pounds of high quality porkiness. That includes one completely intact belly side, which I’ve been lusting after since I saw it and intend to use for a half dozen preparations of bacon, a whole boned out shoulder for grinding into various forms of charcuterie, a couple slabs of ribs, a bone in leg that I’m deliberating over turning into prosciutto (I’m not sure I’m experienced enough for that), plus a shitload of meat packaged into chops. There was also a full third box that did not get dropped off containing the fat from the animal to be used for charcuterie and rendering into lard. Luckily, Bob offered to hold it at his store for us for a few weeks while we get busy making some room, because after I put away what he did deliver, we are completely and totally full. And that includes the large upright second freezer that we keep in the basement just for things such as this.
Ah, but what a nice feeling of fullness it is. My mind is whirring full speed (no, it really isn’t just the godawful noise from the Indy cars) with all of the potential and possibilities ahead of me with this cache full of meat. Just this morning I stopped off at The Spice Trader to pick up supplies for other projects and was inspired to purchase some fennel pollen with the intent to use it on one of the versions of bacon, plus some grains of paradise, vanilla powder and exotic Saigon cinnamon that I thought would be fun to experiment with, aside from my regularly scheduled purchases. I always love going there because I come home with so many unique and interesting things to keep myself busy in the kitchen.
Stay tuned for more tales of pork possibilities.
Until next time…
Tags: New Projects, pork, Purveyors, spices, The Clean Food Connection, The Spice Trader
What about the head and feet?
Have fun with that freezer full of pork!
Hey DMS,
Actually, I completely forgot to mention those. I got the feet and the liver from my side of pork, but alas, no head this time. Given my space constraints at this point, that’s not necessarily a bad thing though. I guess I’ll have to wait until next time to experiment with headcheese.
Thanks Larbo, you know I will!
So, what’s it going to be first? Any lonzino planned? I’m about to post pics and results from my first prosciutto attempt. You should try the one I did with the boneless piece. All done in 8 weeks, give or take.
Well Scott,
First up was going to be bacon as many different ways as I could fathom over the weekend, but alas, all the Summerlicious dining this past week has not put a dent in our extremely full of produce fridge, thus negating any hope of storage space for curing bacon.
I imagine that by this weekend I should have enough room cleared to get going on that.
Stay tuned!
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