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I must say I agree, wholeheartedly. Well, if you’ve read my last entry (which was quite lengthy and I will understand if you did not), you’ll know that I have a book of charcuterie and, being the food nerd I am, I’ll be exploring all the wonders of preserved meats. Well, that day has arrived and I have begun my journey, beginning with (as astute readers will have already surmised) bacon.

I am lucky. Not in the gambling sense (I’m too miserly for that), but in the “blessed” sense. No, that sounds too churchy. What the hell is the term? I don’t know, so I guess lucky will have to fit. Anyway, there is a locally owned/operated business called “The Piggery” (www.thepiggery.net) that raises and butchers fantastic hogs (any pig over 160 pounds is considered mature and, therefore, a hog). All their hogs are pasture-raised and organic, which means they are allowed to forage for much of their own food and live a happily organic existence (seriously, check out The Piggery’s website). Well, I spoke with the owners and ordered a four pound slab of pork belly, to be picked up at their booth at the Ithaca Farmer’s Market on this Sunday past. When Heather pulled the slab out of the cooler, it was beautiful…truly, it was a nice piece of meat.

The next day, I began the curing process for my fresh bacon. I dredged the beast in the basic cure (kosher salt, dextrose (which is corn sugar…a bit finer than granulated), and a small amount of pink salt – sodium nitrite…to prevent botulism) and popped it in the fridge, where it will live for the next week or so. It’s a pretty low-maintenance process, requiring a flip every couple of days until the meat firms up to a uniform density at which point, it’s off to the smoker. Yes, I have a smoker which is technically a “hot smoker” meaning that the temperature in the smoking chamber will be above 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Later, when I tackle more involved meat-curing, I will have to figure out some sort of cold-smoking apparatus (no worries, I have an idea or two), which requires that the meat be smoked is in a chamber that stays below 100 degrees (preferably WELL below), allowing the meat to smoke much longer, without cooking it. The bacon will cook and smoke until it hits an internal temperature of 150 degrees. And then…well, the sky is the limit…

Thus far, I have flipped my meat once, happy with the progress of the cure pulling liquid from the meat and creating its own brine…all looks well. I have some photos of the meat-in-progress which I will post, eventually – probably in a montage of the whole process. In a week(ish), we’re looking forward to having some BLTs that are entirely home-made – lettuce and tomatoes from our garden, my bacon, and some of Louise’s magnificent bread……….drool.

Hmmm….what else? My trip to Buffalo to hang out with Mulligan and the Hoff was great. We made one foray to the Anchor Bar to try their wings (good, but not the most amazing things ever), then went back to his house to drink homebrew and talk “all night” (or until about midnight…we’re such old farts).

On the cheese front, I’m currently making some yogurt cheese. What is yogurt cheese, you ask? It’s easy and tasty. Take a large container of plain yogurt and put it into some cheesecloth, tie the corners and hang the package to drain. How long? However long you want – the longer it hangs, the firmer the texture. I let mine go for four or five hours at a time. After that, you can eat it as is, or what I do it drop it in a bowl and add some salt and herbs – it makes and awesome soft, even spreadable, cheese. Or, you could add a touch of sugar and some dried fruits for a tasty sweet spread.

More to come soon.

So, let me try to catch you up on my life. I have made no cheese recently, as the thought of trying to keep milk at a constant temperature for upwards of an hour and a half has not been the most appealing, so I have been avoiding. No worries, though – I shall be starting up again soon, I assure you. I’ve brewed two batches of beer – one is tentatively being called “Liberty Lager” as it was brewed around the 4th of July and is a honey-ginger lager. I tasted it on my birthday (August 2, for those of you keeping track) and it was still awfully harsh (as it had only bottle-aged for a scant four days….and generally you want it in there for at least ten days). Also in the works is a Steam Beer, which hopefully turns out as well as the one I brewed for my friend’s birthday a few months back (and it was my best beer to date….well, I like my wicked dark beers, but they’re not for every palate).

For my birthday, my lovin’ wife purchased me a book. Woo-hoo, I’m sure you’re all thinking, but this book is a special kind of book, which will help me become an even more eccentric foodie – it’s a book of charcuterie. CharWHAT? Charcuterie is a French term (I know, you can almost hear my nose start to rise further into the air) that basically boils down to the process of preserving meats through salting, curing, smoking, etc. Yes, folks, that’s right…I’m going to start making sausage and jerky and other awesome nosh. I’m sure it’ll go great with Weas’s bread and my cheese, washed down with wicked good beer.

I’m quickly becoming strongly enamored of the “locavore” movement and its related movements (Slow Food, etc.), as it really is a lot of fun to grow and prepare your own food, or at the least buy it from somewhere near your house. The quality of the food is amazing, especially when compared with the produce at some of the supermarkets; granted, many larger supermarkets are offering locally-grown (and often organic) produce, which helps the local economy and provides us, the consumers, with much higher-quality goods. It’s a win-win! I don’t want to toot my own horn (at least not too often – that leads to chafing), but I wrote quite a bit about this subject on my visitithaca blog (which is referenced above)…so I won’t spend much time or space here…

So, in a completely non sequitur turn, I’d like to thank the general populace of Cortland County for bringing rudeness back and elevating it to the point of being an art form. It’s been quite awhile since I’ve experienced as much rudeness, both in number of rude behaviors and the depth of rudeness contained thereing, as I have in the past month or so in Cortland. I won’t bore you with the details, as I’m sure everyone in the world has their fair share of stories about this a-hole or that one, but I must share one of the most frequent occurrences in my life. The scene is, more often than not, a parking lot of a large store such as Tops or Wal-Mart (yes, despite my somewhat “crunchy” life view, I still go to Wal-mart). I pride myself on being a good, steady driver; yes, I get angry; yes, I make mistakes; yes, I understand that everyone does and that even the best driver have bad days. However, my issue happens so frequently that it’s beyond a mere bad day – it’s reaching epidemic. What’s so under my skin? People who drive across parking spaces. “That’s it?” you may inquire? Yes, that’s it. Let me explain why: First, it’s not that much farther to proceed to the end of the row you’re in and make a ninety degree turn toward the exit. Second, generally speaking, the people cutting across the lots are going upwards of twenty miles an hour, which is just plain ridiculous in a parking lot (I know for a fact that you didn’t buy a freshly-removed heart and are on your way to an important surgery…at least that you did not buy a heart there…). And finally, and most importantly, many of the a-holes of which I speak have the audacity to look at me incredulously (“How DARE you follow the rules of the parking lot!?!?”) and/or gesture (rudely) and/or make horribly pissed-off faces at me. My favorite drivers are those that slam on the brakes, coming to a screeching halt right next to my car in order to “teach me a lesson”….for all of them, I just smile and say “Fuck you” in my head…and off I go to find my space.

Do I honestly think that my blog is going to change the driving habits of the general populace of Cortland? No. Mainly because I’m fairly certain that those to whom my comments are directed cannot read, or if they can they probably wouldn’t bother to read something as long as this blog entry – they’ve obviously got someplace to be.

On a lighter note, my birthday party was a success – it rained, it thundered, there was sun, gardens were toured, meat was charred, dishes were passed, good friends were all around and I could not, really, have asked for much more (though the charcuterie book was a nice topper on the day). The next big thing on my agenda is a four-day weekend coming up next week, during which time my wife and I will be doing some “agri-tourism” and taking part in the area’s Farm Trail weekend, which allows you to visit local farms and sample some of their offerings (we’re geeks, okay, it’s cool). The weekend after, my wife and I go our separate ways for a few days – she is off to Philadelphia with an old friend, for cheese steaks, beads and good times, whereas I am off to Buffalo with a couple of friends to visit Dave (also previously referenced above) and to enjoy some quality homebrews (as he also has a couple of batches in the works).

It seems like July lingered quickly this year, or slowly sped by…not sure which is more appropriate. But here is is, the second week of August, and I’m already staring down the barrel of another busy school year (and yes, they’re all busy). I’m hoping to keep up with my blog this year, and share my experiences with you, my favorite people.

Did that last bit sound like shameless flattery? Good.

Now, it is with a heavy heart that I must say that this entry has not the rosy demeanor you’ve come to expect from me – oh no, it is filled with anguish and loathing, for I must have a root canal. Wait, strike that, make that two root canals. Yes, apparently not going to a dentist for several years is not the best thing for your dental health and an infected abscess is just the remedy. When suddenly it feels like all the pain in the whole world resides in your face and that someone may have just hit you across the jaw with a 2×8, you know something’s wrong and it’s time for professional help. So, I went today and found that over the next two months, starting on June 25th, I will be the lucky recipient of: 2 rounds of endodontic therapy (root canals), 2 crowns, 2 new fillings and a 2-step gingivitis treatment (upon which subject they were less-than-forthcoming, thereby filling me with the old familiar dentist-dread). Yay.

In happier news, our garden looks fan-fucking-tastic. I cannot be more proud than I am of how well our efforts are being rewarded with the wee to not-so-wee shoots of green that have SHOT up in our yard. I hope to document in pictures the p’tite ferme in coming entries…you know, a little photojournalism piece. We do have a furry little visitor to the farm, though, who goes by the street name of “Pedro Conejo” and has been seen in the wee hours of the morning, skulking about our bean shoots. Needless to say, we’ve put a small bounty on the little bastard’s head. And by “put a bounty on the little bastard’s head”, I mean I reinforced the fence around the garden today. Though I do love the taste of rabbit, I doubt I could ever kill one myself, let alone strip it of its skin and all that nastihood.

I’ve had no time recently for beer nor cheese…but soon, my friends. Soon.

Ciao.

And, if my faithful readers had not figured it out or heard it directly, it is official: I have completed my Master’s Degree in Secondary Foreign Language Education – French. I have my diploma. Here. In my house. And I am done. Finally. Whew.

And, just as a quick addendum, I have ordered supplies for a couple more batches of beer – an Anchor Steamer clone for Eric (the long-awaited birthday brew) and a funky Ginger-Honey Lager that sounds incredibly good to me…more to come!

Hops plants can grow up to (and occasionally beyond) 25 feet in a single season, before dying back down to the ground for winter, only to come back strong the next year.  So, obviously, it would be hard to have a big-ass hop plant, let alone four, in the back yard in the middle of Homer; due to this fact, I’ve inlisted the help of my father, who owns several acres next to his house in a more countryfied setting.  I plan to build a nice little pergola up on a hill, in a field, overlooking his house.  I will plant one type of hops at each corner and train the vine to climb the corner post and spread out across the roof of the pergola.  I think if it comes to play out as I hope, it should look pretty damn nice.

So, yeah…that’s about it.  More to come.

As the good book says, “Relax!  Have a homebrew!”

“Nothing worth having comes without some kind of a fight.
You gotta kick at the darkness ’til it bleeds daylight.” ~Barenaked Ladies

“Home. Home again. I like to be here when I can.” ~Pink Floyd

“As life gets longer, awful feels softer
and it feels pretty soft to me.
And if it takes shit to make bliss,
well I feel pretty blissfully.
And if life’s not beautiful without a little pain,
well I’d just rather never ever even see beauty again.” ~Modest Mouse

“We are the music makers and we are the dreamers of dreams.”  ~Willy Wonka

I am a bit old for the part, but I am going to give it my all.  I attended my first rehearsal on Tuesday and we ran through Act I several times and I think I’ve already got my lines down.  AND, since I am only in Acts I, III, and IV, I only have to stay through half of the rehearsal most nights…which is NICE.  It’s the usual group of folks doing this play, with some new additions…which is nice.  It’s comfortable.  However, I must say that I am sick of actors that direct while acting.  Just do your part and get the hell off the stage.  Why can’t people just take direction and be happy with it…I mean, I know that sometimes the direction is not the best in the world and an actor may have a great idea and when properly proposed this can really help a play.  Unfortunately, there are too many people in this cast who are “overly helpful” to other members of the cast and can be downright argumentative with the director while explaining why s/he changed something from the way it was directed.  Oy.

For anyone who knows Homerians, I’ll list the cast as I remember them…Ahley Huyge is Eliza, Paul Yaman is Mr. Doolittle, Tom Corey is Higgins, Alan something-or-other is Pickering, Carl Moses is a bit player, Ellen Rahner is Mrs. Eynsford-Hill (me mum), Britney (Brittany?) Corduck is Clara (me sis), some other people so some other things…I’ll try harder next time I blog

The batch fermented for a solid 8 days before the bubbles slowed to the point that I thought it was safe to bottle without risking explosions.  So this morning, the call came that school was canceled and I thought, “PERFECT!”  I set about nice and early sanitizing and drying all my bottles and hoses and filling apparatuses, etc.  With all pieces of the puzzle clean as the proverbial whistle, I opened the fermenter.  WHEW!  It smelled like the strong stout I had hoped for.  Black gold, Texas tea….it was gorgeous.  Unfortunately, as it was a one-stage fermentation recipe, I had to add the second lot of priming sugar to the bottling bucket and give it a solid stir to mix and aerate, thereby stirring up some of my dead yeasties.  SO, patience again, waiting ’til the sediment had settled again.  From there it was just a half hour to fully bottled and clean-up time.  From there, it’s down to the basement for a couple of weeks and then, IN MY BELLY!  I shall call it:

Black-Ass Stout.  Delicious.

The heating, holding, curding and molding were all fine. It was really just the time-scale of trying to get it all done on a Wednesday night that was difficult. I finally got my curd into the mold around 9:45, pressed it, pulled it from the mold, redressed it, repressed it, pulled it from the mold, redressed it, repressed it, pulled it from the mold, redressed it in new butter muslin, and repressed it until later today, when it comes out and has a little brine bath, for another 12 hours. SO, tomorrow morning, I will pull the parm out of the brine and send it down to the cheesery to age for the next 10 months. Good times. I did take pictures this time, of most steps in the process. If ever I do anything with them, I shall post that here.

It’s rapidly approaching Valentine’s Day, which is the unofficial “Hey-My-Cheddar-Is-Ready” day, as it started aging on 1/1/08. I will most likely let it continue aging for at least another month, as I am a fan of sharp cheddar….and I am afraid that it might suck. I mean, I am only human and I do make mistakes. Who’s to say that my first batch of cheese ever had SOMEthing go wrong? So, let’s say I am cautiously optimistic.

Well, so far so good.  The Parm is looking good – floating in its brine until this evening when I remove it, and it begins the long, boring aging period.  Granted, it’s only boring to non-cheesemakers…I find it riveting, going down to the cheesery daily to flip over the cheese for the first few weeks, then only once a week…but I’ll still visit.  Okay, I’m lying, it’s not riveting.  BUT, since it ages best in higher humidity, I rigged up a pretty sweet humidifier-on-a-timer system.  Okay, that’s boring too.  So, yeah…I’m boring.  I’ll deal with it