makin' bacon

ummmmmm. bacon. food of the god(less). no really - all that luscious pork-belly fat is not pious - it is much more adapted to the savoury salivatory depraved depths. yum.

we have been the very fortunate and very delighted recipients of a cold smoker, built by a friend of our friends. it is a thing of beauty, modeled below by the ever lovely n with his eager, but confused assistant, humphrey:


yesterday at the farmers market we picked up 1.3 k of pork belly. we've split in in half. one half we are brining (wet cure) and one half we are dry-curing. we're sticking to very basic cure recipes, in order to compare and contrast - just salt, sugar, and maple syrup.



this piggy needs to cure for about 4-5 days and we will smoke both sides of belly probably next saturday (as long as the weather doesn't get too hot).

this other piggy (ahem) is happily guzzling the "bit that didn't make a whole bottle" of last summer's gooseberry wine, bottled this afternoon. there's a chicken roasting in the oven and all is well.