Five things for Friday

Posted by louisa on Friday 3 February 2012 in chickens, growing, meta | 1 comment

One – COLD!

How can I start with anything other than a comment about the cold weather? I do like cold days – well, cold dry days like now, not cold wet ones – so I’m not complaining. The sun is shining – albeit weakly – and the sky is blue. I like wrapping up warm and walking on frozen mud while we’re out with Lily. However, we have timed all this rather badly – the replastering we’re having done (in the living room, kitchen & downstairs hallway) means we’re down two key radiators & a wood burning stove. Chilly!

Two – chilly chickens

Like last time it was chilly for a couple of days, the chickens don’t seem to be too bothered about the cold. I got a bwarky rant this morning – probably complaining about their water being solid and it being harder to scratch through the chippings because they’ve got a hard layer on top – but otherwise they’re doing fine. Earlier this week we had our first six egg (from six girls – a 100% lay rate) day since the beginning of September — and we’ve had another two six egg days since then. I wasn’t expecting a glut so early in the year!

Three – the 2012 growing season starts here (very soon)

I never really got over my growing “meh”ness from last summer but over the last week, as more people have been talking about their early sowings or plans for the year, I’ve started to form a few plans of my own. I had thought about getting another fruit tree or two in the ground this winter but I’m not sure that’s going to happen. I would like to get some more soft fruit bushes in though – some more red berries since the four blackcurrants look like they’ll be fine by themselves – probably following Tanya at Lovely Greens down the Wilkinsons cheap bush path as the ones from last year have grown well. I also want some more strawberries as half of last year’s lot are looking rather pathetic/dead. I must resist the rhubarb crown temptation though – everyone is always talking about how prolific it is at such an otherwise low-producing time of year but we don’t actually like rhubarb. It doesn’t matter how much it grows if we don’t want to eat it.

I am sticking to my “no potatoes” plan so there is nothing to chit but I think I’ll have to dig the heated propagator out of the garage soon to get started on tomatoes and what not.

Four – bacon progress

My bacon looks to be doing well. I am somewhat regretting starting it in a week when I don’t have good access to the kitchen – and also have sore/micro-cut hands so I’m not enjoying the salt rubs at all! But on the other hand, at least I’ve got it started and starting something for the first time is often such a big hurdle for me. This batch will be just about done in its cure this weekend then I’m going to look into the fridge hanging idea that PipneyJane mentioned the other day. I can’t wait to try it though :)

Five – and it’s the weekend

It’s the weekend, hurrah! We have nothing special planned – John was supposed to be away at a conference but is still having to take things easy with his bad back – but I am determined to start cleaning the plaster dust from EVERYWHERE in the house. Those who know me in person will know that I am never determined to clean anywhere: this should show how much dust there is around our house at the moment.

As well as that and the usual stuff that happens at weekends, I’m going to try to get started on my 2012 goals – I need to get going on the generating an extra £2012 in 2012 goal and the “make something cheaper, greener or simpler for us each month” one too. The problem with the latter is that nothing is screaming to be changed right now – so I’ll have to both find something and make it cheaper/greener/simpler. It’s very possible that the latter will be easier than the former!

Do you like – or hate – the cold weather? Have you made any growing plans for this year – or even started sowing? What are you up to this weekend? And finally, have you made anything cheaper, greener or simpler for your household recently? Yes, I just want to steal your ideas with the last question ;)

Getting my bac-on – dry curing bacon, stage one

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 31 January 2012 in preserving | 5 comments

(Title inspired by the fact I sang a meaty “Get your freak on” parody while doing my cure mixing and meat massaging. It was so bad that even the cats, who usually “enjoy” my silly songs and certainly love it whenever I’m doing anything with meat in the kitchen, left the room.)

I finally started my first load of homemade bacon last night. I got my bacon on.

I’ve been meaning to start a load for a couple of months but things kept happening and I didn’t do it. Then on Sunday, we had the best bacon we’ve eaten in a long, long, long time on Sunday (from the excellent Swillington Farm) – I doubt ours will compared but my desire for perfectly preserved pink pork products is strong enough to force me to give it a go. Conveniently our monthly meatbox from Swillington also contained a small slab of belly pork – about 750g/1.5lbs – so streaky here we come :)

(Mmm, soon-to-be streaky!)

I spent a lot of time looking at different cure recipes and was surprised by how many recipes missed out vital bits of information — carefully detailing how much of each thing to use in the cure but then missing out the weight of the meat (300g? 3000g?) — but I think I figured out the required ratios in the end. I’ll hold off posting anything about my cure now until we’ve tasted the finished product – I will say though that I’m reluctant to use saltpetre and haven’t used it this time around. I’m quite glad we’re only using a small piece of pork as I suspect the cure will need some tweaking, for example, there seems to be a lot of coriander seeds on the meat, even though they make up a tiny percentage of the cure mix and I forgot to include pepper, which had been in my original plan. This post is more for me so I can remember what I did for next time :)

(I did grind the salt up further after I took these pictures.)

What I did: I mixed my cure (NB FutureLouisa: the recipe is in your blue scrap paper notebook), scored the rind the opposite way to the existing scores, then massaged most of the dry cure into the meat. I plopped it into a conveniently correct-sized container, skin down, and within a few hours, liquid had already started leaking out. This evening – and every day for the next five-ish days, I’m going to pour off the liquid and apply more rub (if needed). Then after that, I’ll rinse off any excess cure, pat it dry, then you’re supposed to leave it to hang but I think we’ll probably end up going down the route which sees it wrapped and rested in the fridge. (In the future, I want to try wet-curing & cold-smoking too – but I’ll wait until I’ve finally got around to building another smoker cabinet.)

We’ll just have to see how it turns out!

(Apologies for the bad lighting/mega-shadows in the pictures – we’ve had our normal kitchen lights taken down so the plasterer can reboard and skim the ceiling in there, and have two nasty, very yellow bulbs on wires in their place. Given the disarray, it’s probably not the best time to try an culinary experiment but nevermind!)

Have you made/do you make your own bacon? If so, have you got any tips/advice for my next few days or for my cure next time?