We put up 20 Irvings Farm Fresh pork jowls December 11, and it’s finally at a place I’d hope it would get – nearly 2 months later. Dense, with a light high-toned loveliness imparted by dry curing pork. The verdict? Sliced thinly and fried is a bacon-like experience that is lovely indeed.  It fried up [...]

Normally I tackle this when the first hints of mild weather hit in February, but having had my nose buried in seed catalogs for a while, it was nice to get out in the garden buried in snow [see below] and do a job that needed doing for the coming growing season. My objective with [...]

Jerky has become a repertoire item around our home – something that reappears over, and over, and over – like bacon. At risk of offending all parties, jerky pleases food snobs, picky eaters, and red necks equally – and I actually don’t quite understand why.  Not many foods can transcend those gaping holes in preference, [...]

Finally. After screwing it up, then waiting more than a year to give it another go, I’ve got it. Yes, I walked around my kitchen with my arms up in the air declaring to all my victory. See, I love this stuff. Deeply. Not only that, my otherwise vegetarian daughters love this stuff. And bacon. [...]

I’ve been really grateful for the abundance around me lately. I feel a little like I’ve won the lottery [I don't buy tickets]. This soup kind of summed up my happiness of late. It’s a purée of winter squashes from my former lawned front yard, with celery and leek from my backyard garden + a [...]

I was going to cure and rotisserie some pork hocks. I was going to make a slab of bacon. But I did neither, and ended up here. Being sick has the odd virtue. My cold-laziness opted out of curing and smoking, and instead threw the whole whack in the oven so I could quit thinking [...]

The following is a summary of our monthly wine tasting group evening. Wines are tasted blind [brown bagged], food is paired to the varietal, we score the wines, have some good fun talking about them, and unbag them at the end. More details in a Q&A here. Sauvignon Blanc had been on the to-do list [...]

There’s not much to say here. It’s a pizza, with bacon and egg. In this case, with some other veg stuff. The point is it’s really good, and despite seeing a lot of egg atop pizzas while traveling in Europe, I don’t do it much here. My bad. And well, bacon. Lardons are awesome on [...]

I’m starting to find it charming how small producers of food stuffs often could use a hand in the marketing department. Smoky Valley Goat Cheese lacks a slick veneer of branding, and their website’s lovely description of their St. Maure seems to come directly from another website. Their sales pitch at their new place at [...]

It was the last pack from the 2008 antelope – an animal that had become revered as the game meat of choice over the past couple years around here, so tying into it was an event. A ‘leg roast’, which in this case meant the whole leg below the hip and above the knee [think [...]