The Pancetta Project

Call me crazy... my wife certainly does. But I got to thinking that pancetta is pretty tasty, and with a little practice maybe I could make my own just the way I wanted it. So thus was born the Pancetta Project, a nearly 4 week adventure with pork, salt and spices.

Step 1, talk to your local butcher and order a pork belly. In the first picture you can see that it looks like one side of the pig's "abs" but since pigs don't do a lot of crunches there is a lot of fat.

Picture #2, I used half the pork belly, and cured it for 10 days in the salt and spices. It looks a bit darker, feels firmer, and emits the combined odors of meat, sweet, and spicy.

In picture 3 the belly has been rolled and bound, and is hanging from the shower rod in the extra bedroom. It loitered here for 2 weeks, drying peacefully and avoiding the cats.

Finally, success! The final product is sliced and ready for the frying pan. It looks delicious. It smells delicious. Only its not delicious. It's too salty, really too salty to eat. I must have over salted it, and brined it for too long. No worries, there is still the second half of the belly waiting its turn!

Some Garden Progress

We've had a little progress at the garden.... The pea plants are growing and picking up speed everyday. The asparagus has sprouted, and a few skinny little spears seem to have survived the slugs. And the strawberries are growing enthusiastically, there are even berries forming already!

More Computer Death and Destruction!

Autopsy results from our recently deceased desktop PC were inconclusive. Despite attempts to swap hard drives, attempts to install an old copy of Windows 2000, and attempts to boot a second hard drive into Linux, there are still no real signs of life.

And then today the MacBook jumped off the couch and thereafter was unable to charge the battery (which only lasts for 10 minutes anyway). The Apple store was unable to find a problem, but for $280 would send it away for a week to get fixed. So adding that bill to the fact that we are do for a new battery ($139) and a RAM upgrade ($100-150) we decided to just buy a new laptop for $1099, which had all that good stuff, plus the bigger hard drive, faster processor, new OS, etc.

But before opening the new box at home I tried one more thing-I re-dropped the previous laptop-and voila, it charges again! Prying the lid off revealed a loose connection at the plug which was easily remedied, and we're back up and running. So I guess we'll head back to the Apple store again to return the new computer and get the battery and RAM like we originally planned....

Computer Problems

Unfortunately our computer is down, so we haven't been able to upload any pictures lately. Hopefully we'll be back online soon....

Meat on the Hoof

Mmmm..... Meat..... Elk are tough to find during hunting season, but they're not much easier to find in the summer either. Here are 20+ of them resting in a stream bed. If you look closely at the pictures, you can tell that they've seen me and are trotting back into the woods.

First Steak off the Grill for the Season

Ok, this is a little off topic, as nothing in this picture has anything to do with the garden. But we had our first steak of the season, grilled on the back porch. The significance of that is that it was finally sunny and warm and perfect grilling weather. Can summer be here? No, really it can't. But because of that we'll appreciate every single sunny day that much more until "real" summer gets here.

May 1st Skiing

Ok, we fell a bit behind on the blog, but there has been a lot going on. Mostly a lot of work actually, punctuated by the rare day off. This time of year we face a tough decision regarding the use of our free time: work at the farm or go outside and have fun?

May 1st was a beautiful day, so Tim and I opted for skiing. So it was up to Timberline Lodge for some great runs above the clouds.