So, yeah, the voices are back.

[camwyn]

These are the voices I've mentioned in prior posts. I don't actually hear voices in my head, I just find it easier to characterize repeatedly returning thoughts and impulses as 'the voices'. The thing is that these particular impulses are almost always on the order of 'You should learn to make schnecken today.' Or 'Go buy some lye. You have to learn to make soap.' Or 'Fudge. You currently have no idea how to make it? GO FIND OUT AND THEN MAKE SOME. Even if you haven't eaten it in years GO MAKE SOME.' Some people get the overwhelming repeated urge to declare themselves the Messiah, some people get the overwhelming urge to go out and commit hideous crimes, I get orders to learn to make food and the occasional other domestic product. Go fig.

Anyway, this time the urge has been BUY A CHARCOAL GRILL. Not, you understand, for barbecuing- although I intend to use it for that, so at some point when I can invite people over to my place there will be a barbecue to use, although fair warning, the landlord's son is a fisherman and he keeps lobster traps in the backyard. No, this time the charcoal grill is because I need something to smoke bacon in, and since I'm not nearly as likely to smoke meats as I am to make jerky and fruit leather, a smoker would be a one-purpose-only item, whereas a charcoal grill would be a means to make dinner that I could serve to myself or my friends. And a means to produce bacon.

So, yeah. Ordered a small portable grill from the local Ace Hardware. They'll let me know when it's in stock. In the meantime I should probably find some kind of decent local farmer who sells pork belly or lamb belly, or at least check out the prices at the local butcher shop. (Yes, lamb. Turkey bacon is not bacon, it's turkey that's been chopped up and reformatted into bacon shape. Lamb bacon is made from lamb belly, aka lamb breast or lamb flap, because sheep are the only other agricultural mammal that have the same kind of striations of meat and fat as the part of pigs that gets made into bacon.) The meat will have to cure in the fridge for several days before I can smoke it.

Comments

[derien]

I had heard of mutton-ham in Master and Commander, but I didn't know why it was a thing. How odd, that the striations of fat should be the same in such different animals. I understand that the reason pork fat is used in so many things (added to goat chorizo sausage I get locally, for example) is because it is more stable than most other types of fat, and doesn't go off/rancid and ruin the sausage.

Incidentally, this also further gives the lie to the whole debate about whether the turkey legs they sell at King Richard's Faire are really turkey or actually ham. We used to get them all the time - one of the things I looked forward to when we went - but a couple of years ago they switched to what cyberquail agrees looks far more like ham. She raises birds and doesn't think the tendons and bone in these new 'turkey' legs look right, aside from the fact that they taste like ham. The thing that annoys me is not really that I hate this salty tasting 'turkey,' but that if they're going to be selling something under the name 'turkey' I would think there would be some kind of law that they can prove it really IS.

BTW, we don't have any plans as yet (usually we do by this point) to attend King Richard's Faire this year, but if we do make plans you're welcome to attend with us if you please. Meaning, if you're tempted to make plans with someone else don't feel constrained to wait upon us. :)

[camwyn]

Hrm. Unfortunately the only laws I know regarding what can be sold as what, off the top of my head, all pertain to seafood. That, and 'wild' meats have to come from farm-raised and farm-slaughtered animals of wild species- 'wild boar' for sale in a restaurant is basically pig that was allowed to live a feral life, not something that was shot in the wild, and venison isn't from deer that hunters brought down, it's from deer that were raised on a farm in some way and slaughtered there. The only wild-caught animal food legal for sale in the states, at least to the restaurant trade, is seafood. Dunno about sales to stores or to individuals, and I don't know what happens to companies that sell a blatantly mislabeled product in this age of food allergies and liability lawsuits.

When does King Richard's Faire run, anyway? I've never been there.

[derien]

I think KRF is Labor Day to Columbus Day. Or was, traditionally, but this year it starts August 30. Here's the site. Not a long season by some standards.

[hannah]

A couple of months ago Edible Boston ran on a feature on sheep raised for meat and various recipes, but didn't source any local farms. That said, there's definitely a market for what you're looking for, and best of luck finding it. (I'm stuck searching for unsweetened dessicated coconut for ANZAC biscuits - my best bet right now is to look around Chinatown.)