Here’s the beginning of the pancetta. I had to buy commercial pork, which is kind of a bummer, but our local organic pork people won’t have another pork belly until the next time they butcher (in about a month) and I wanted to get going. So, here it is, the five pound section of my whole commercial pork belly that seemed to have the most even thickness. It’s pretty thick — I think rolling it might be more of a challenge than I’d anticipated, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there. So far this was really easy. I…
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I got a little carried away at Lowe’s last weekend and bought this ginormous pile of bulbs. There are 80 King Arthur daffodils (the really big ones), 160 mixed tulips, 100 scilla and almost 100 crocus bulbs. Oh, and some narcissus — most of which I’ll put away for winter because I like to force them in the house — Patrick used to hate the smell of them, but since it’s four years today that he made that terrible error in judgement (don’t drive drunk, people), I guess one upside is that I can force as many narcissus bulbs in…
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I stopped by to get some moose liver yesterday and look what’s hanging in the garage — a moose in quarters! It’ll be there for about ten days or two weeks while the MH is in Michigan hunting grouse with a client. I know a lot of people are grossed out by this part, but what can I say? I think there’s a part of me that must always have wanted to be a butcher — I find the process of breaking down carcasses into something lovely to eat fascinating. It’s part of the reason I’m looking forward to making…
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“Do you want some moose liver?” the MH asked this weekend. “I’ve got 30 pounds of it.” “Sure,” I answered. “I’ll take some — I’ll probably just make paté though.” I mean, I was game for antelope liver last fall, but moose? Moose are enormous — the one that the MH’s son shot this weekend was six hundred pounds! And it wasn’t even a particularly large moose. I have to admit, I have mixed feelings about the moose. The MH was so excited when Robbie won the tag in the lottery this year, and the photo he sent me of…
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I don’t think my point-and-shoot does justice to the glory of these beans. These are runner cannelini beans that I grew from the package I ordered from Steve Sando at Rancho Gordo back last spring when we were all discussing Carlo Petrini’s ill-advised and ill-considered remarks about the Ferry Plaza Farmer’s Market. I’ve had terrible luck with beans since I moved here. I couldn’t figure it out — who can’t grow a bean for goodness sake? But something kept skeletonizing my beans every spring — and so this year I pulled out a whole bed of hollyhock and sunflower that…
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Just called to order a pork belly and it’s going to be a week or so — Matt’s Meats, my local butcher, is making bacon in 2 weeks, so they’re putting in an order for pork belly and are going to set one aside for me. Stay tuned — since Ruhlman himself has ordered me to make the pancetta, I guess I’m making a pancetta. (I hope he’s willing to take email questions if I get stuck).
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I’ve been in a frenzy of food preservation here at LivingSmall. Saturday I pulled and washed and cut and blanched and drained two six-gallon trash cans full of endive. I then wrapped the blanched endive in towels to squeeze out the water and sealed it in bags using my vaccuum sealer and froze them for later this winter. I also shredded the outer leaves that looked okay but not really nice enough to put up for winter and I’m experimenting with making sauerkraut from them — we’ll see how it works out. Right now, it looks like wet salty leaves…
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Because it’s Friday, and because we ate and drank just a tiny bit too much last night at Patrick’s Posthumous Birthday party (which was delightful and jolly and because our friend Jim hung Patrick’s picture on the restaurant wall, it sort of felt like he was among us) — this morning LivingSmall brings you that staple of the exhausted blogger: a list of links. Hugh Fearnly-Wittingstall expounds on the joys of hunting mushrooms (and I wish I lived in England so I could have gotten the free mushroom guide with my copy of the Guardian). If it ever manages to…
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Somehow we’ve managed to live a little too large here at LivingSmall, the debt-to-savings ratio has gotten itself upside down, and so we’re trying to cut back wherever we can. I’m the kind of person who buys pantry staples when I’m feeling existentially anxious, and so, in the spirit of economizing, I’ve found myself looking in the pantry and remembering that I can feed myself a whole week’s worth of lunches, for example, off a nice pot of pea soup. Pea soup costs almost nothing. Today I made a batch — I pulled a couple of carrots and a late…
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Somehow the subject of canning is everywhere on the interenets, and it’s spawned a bastardized version of “Surfin Safari” inside my head. You’ve got a lot of time to think of things like this while waiting for water to boil. On the home front — I put up a couple of jars of marinated eggplant last night. Our local truck farm had these gorgeous mottled purple eggplants, and since the eggplants in my garden are not going to win the annual race with frost, I snapped up a bunch. I bought that big Silver Spoon cookbook when it was all…