Inspired by Laurence (see comment below) I altered this post to reflect a more positive outlook towards the future. The original post, in which I revealed my true feelings about the universes’ efforts to turn us all into compost, was too dark. So Happy New Year! I’ll all be over soon!
 |
||
| X Blog |
Filed under: The Reductionist | 5 Comments »
Inspired by Laurence (see comment below) I altered this post to reflect a more positive outlook towards the future. The original post, in which I revealed my true feelings about the universes’ efforts to turn us all into compost, was too dark. So Happy New Year! I’ll all be over soon!
|
||
| X Blog |
Filed under: The Reductionist | 5 Comments »
 |
| From Xmas 2008 |
I don’t know anything about where any of you are at as we sink ever more deeply into the holiday season. But I’m already six gallons of murky Frymax in a Fry-O-Lator jammed into the corner of a kitchen at a neighborhood dive. Not only do I have nothing constructive to add to the dialectic, but I’m so whipped that the only thing I can bring myself to post are these photos of a couple of things that I made for my family over the past week.
The first group of photos is of a loaf of bread that started out as a mixture (poolish) of mashed table grapes, wheat berries, rye flour, flax seeds and water. The second group is of ham (Sliced version, above left, added 12.30.08) that I served for Xmas dinner at my brother’s house. The ham was made from a round from one of the Berkshire hogs born in March of this year.
On November 13 I put the ham down in a brine made from male (should read maple: see comments and correction below) sugar, salt, dextrose, nitrate, clove, peppercorns and cinnamon bark (All of the spices were cooked in a small portion of the brine, then added to the brine proper.) and held it under refrigeration until December 24.
After driving the ham up to New York on Christmas morning, I roasted it for a couple of hours in a 350 degree oven before sticking it with fresh pineapple (A classic combination) and basting it for another hour with a mixture of brown sugar, butter and water. After it was done, I let it sit for a half hour while I made a sauce from the drippings, water and shaved apple flesh.
It was good. Damned good. It was especially gratifying to hear the older folks (my parents’ generation) waxing rhapsodic about how long it had been since they had ham like that.
(Of course, that was exactly why I made it.)
Correction: Sorry folks; the ham was cured with “maple” not “male” sugar. LOL
Filed under: slow food | 8 Comments »
|
| From Xmas 2008 |
I don’t know anything about where any of you are at as we sink ever more deeply into the holiday season. But I’m already six gallons of murky Frymax in a Fry-O-Lator jammed into the corner of a kitchen at a neighborhood dive. Not only do I have nothing constructive to add to the dialectic, but I’m so whipped that the only thing I can bring myself to post are these photos of a couple of things that I made for my family over the past week.
The first group of photos is of a loaf of bread that started out as a mixture (poolish) of mashed table grapes, wheat berries, rye flour, flax seeds and water. The second group is of ham (Sliced version, above left, added 12.30.08) that I served for Xmas dinner at my brother’s house. The ham was made from a round from one of the Berkshire hogs born in March of this year.
On November 13 I put the ham down in a brine made from male (should read maple: see comments and correction below) sugar, salt, dextrose, nitrate, clove, peppercorns and cinnamon bark (All of the spices were cooked in a small portion of the brine, then added to the brine proper.) and held it under refrigeration until December 24.
After driving the ham up to New York on Christmas morning, I roasted it for a couple of hours in a 350 degree oven before sticking it with fresh pineapple (A classic combination) and basting it for another hour with a mixture of brown sugar, butter and water. After it was done, I let it sit for a half hour while I made a sauce from the drippings, water and shaved apple flesh.
It was good. Damned good. It was especially gratifying to hear the older folks (my parents’ generation) waxing rhapsodic about how long it had been since they had ham like that.
(Of course, that was exactly why I made it.)
Correction: Sorry folks; the ham was cured with “maple” not “male” sugar. LOL
Filed under: slow food | 8 Comments »
I’ve been working on a personal version of the message in this video for about a week and will post it when I’ve gotten rid of the many rhetorical bugs. In the meantime, consider it a primer on something from me that in all probability will be much ruder and with more finely convoluted reasoning.
I don’t know what prompted Gary Allen to send this to me. I suppose he knows me better than I imagined he did.
Filed under: farming, gardening | 3 Comments »
I’ve been working on a personal version of the message in this video for about a week and will post it when I’ve gotten rid of the many rhetorical bugs. In the meantime, consider it a primer on something from me that in all probability will be much ruder and with more finely convoluted reasoning.
I don’t know what prompted Gary Allen to send this to me. I suppose he knows me better than I imagined he did.
Filed under: farming, gardening | 3 Comments »
These are rib eye roasts from the bull that we slaughtered two weeks ago. I’d originally intended to dry age the rib longer, but decided to sell it in response to lots of customer traffic. The roasts are barded with pork fat to moderate the rate of heat infiltration and provide a bit of lubricity. I would have wrapped them 360 degrees but I did not have enough fat to do the job.
Filed under: butchery, farm stuff | 2 Comments »
These are rib eye roasts from the bull that we slaughtered two weeks ago. I’d originally intended to dry age the rib longer, but decided to sell it in response to lots of customer traffic. The roasts are barded with pork fat to moderate the rate of heat infiltration and provide a bit of lubricity. I would have wrapped them 360 degrees but I did not have enough fat to do the job.
Filed under: butchery, Hendricks Farms | 2 Comments »
The other day I realized that I rarely post anything about what is the major part of the business of the farm where I make my salumi and other stuff. Hendricks Farms and Dairy is fundamentally a raw milk and cheese producing operation, whereas what I do counts as only a fraction of the output of the farm. Trent Hendricks, the farm’s founder and owner, is in charge of all the day to day operation of the farm and milk and cheese production. He has help, of course, yet I cannot quite get my head around how he does it. His job is 24/7/365. He rarely leaves the farm and when he isn’t building, fixing, sowing or reaping something he’s on the phone with whoever working out whatever.
The man is a force of nature whose devotion to his craft would make little sense to those who believe that the ultimate measure of success is cash-in-hand. I admit, there are moments when I think he is out of his mind to work as hard as he does to earn a comfortable, yet hardly lavish, living. But those moments are fleeting because even though we are superficially very different kinds of people, there is one thing that we both have in common: a deep and abiding love of the process of producing food and the concomitant feeling of aptitude that follows the realization that we know how to feed ourselves and our families.
Filed under: farm stuff | 1 Comment »
The other day I realized that I rarely post anything about what is the major part of the business of the farm where I make my salumi and other stuff. Hendricks Farms and Dairy is fundamentally a raw milk and cheese producing operation, whereas what I do counts as only a fraction of the output of the farm. Trent Hendricks, the farm’s founder and owner, is in charge of all the day to day operation of the farm and milk and cheese production. He has help, of course, yet I cannot quite get my head around how he does it. His job is 24/7/365. He rarely leaves the farm and when he isn’t building, fixing, sowing or reaping something he’s on the phone with whoever working out whatever.
The man is a force of nature whose devotion to his craft would make little sense to those who believe that the ultimate measure of success is cash-in-hand. I admit, there are moments when I think he is out of his mind to work as hard as he does to earn a comfortable, yet hardly lavish, living. But those moments are fleeting because even though we are superficially very different kinds of people, there is one thing that we both have in common: a deep and abiding love of the process of producing food and the concomitant feeling of aptitude that follows the realization that we know how to feed ourselves and our families.
Filed under: Hendricks Farms | 1 Comment »
A Hunger Aritist (Redux) 
You must be logged in to post a comment.