Thawing

As Bob has posted, we picked up our hog at Vogets last night. Although (of course) I obeyed all posted speed limits, it was a race to get there before they went home for the weekend. We got there with no time to spare.

So our personal experiment in this mode of buying, storing, cooking and eating is going to start. We had Vogets package most of the cuts into one pound packages. That ought to work well since there are only two of us in the house and pound-size meat packs typically deliver a dinner and leftovers for lunch. The ham and roasts are larger but we'll somehow adapt.

The basic plan now is to eat and reflect on whether food purchased this way is tastier and less expensive. Cook up some old favorites so that we can tell whether the quality and taste are superior to store bought. I'll keep a semi-scientific record of the cost of meat at the grocery store... but this quarter hog has calc'd out to about $1.85 per pound so the stores are going to have a tough time competing (but we'll see).

This is also supposed to be a chance to attempt some new things. After submitting our processing instructions, I got the idea to try doing something with pork cheeks (a.k.a. hog jowls). Cheeks seem to be appearing on restaurant menus around Portland these days. Unfortunately, ours had already headed for the sausage maker. (Perhaps this will be a side project.) We did get about a 1/2 pound of liver which Julie does not like so I might be on my own there. And my own experience preparing or eating liver is pretty light. My goal is to do something more interesting with the liver than feed it to the cat. The cat disagrees.

I titled this blog post "Thawing"... every cut was frozen solid. So right now we have a pork shoulder roast in the fridge thawing along with a package of bacon. I hope to do some kind of braise with the shoulder cut and make up some polenta with that.

It's pretty clear that I like to cook and eat. Throughout this pork experience, I'll be training for a (hopefully offsetting)marathon this summer in Newport, Oregon. Time to go for a long run. Happy weekend.