Monthly Archives: March 2010

Makin’ Bacon

Posted on March 29, 2010 by Annette Cottrell| 44 Comments

You’ve probably figured out by now this is a not post for the vegetarian reader.

But if you like bacon then I’m talking to you. And if you’ve ever thought even for a second about curing your own bacon then I’m beseeching you. Because this bacon brought tears to my eyes it was so amazing. Without a doubt this was the best bacon I’ve ever eaten. I give 100% of the credit not to the cures or the smoke but to the farmer. He was the one that chose these particular pigs for their meat flavor, pastured them in what sunshine we get here in Seattle, and fed them an all natural diet.

More reading of a slightly more graphic nature on that.

When you get a pig there is but one belly and a whole lot of ham to eat before you can get another pig for more belly. My house is filled with bacon lovers. So I made bacon from non-traditional cuts as well.

Anatomy of a Pig

The primal cuts from a pig are the hams (rear leg and behind), the picnic hams (front leg), the shoulders (also called the Boston Butt), the lower legs (hocks), the belly (bacon), the ribs, the small tenderloin just inside the ribs and the loin which is much larger than the tenderloin and just outside of the ribs. The loin is the section sometimes cut as pork chops when not removed from the ribs. If not handled correctly it can become dry and tough. We found that we aren’t actually that fond of pork chops but we sure do like bacon.

Increasing the Cured Meats

Cured meat is tasty but it’s also very flexible and can make a ho hum dish into an amazing dish simply by the addition of some chopped bacon or ham. It’s also one of the few homemade lunchmeats and makes a mean breakfast sammy. And then what would sun ripened tomatoes be without that first BLT of the year? So rather than cut the loin into steaks I decided to cure it like ham. I’m calling it cottage bacon. Not that we live in a cottage but it sounds more quaint to me than “war box bacon” or “tiny 1 toilet house bacon.” I’m quite pleased with the results and so is the rest of the family.

I cured the Canadian bacon, cottage bacon and breakfast bacon for about a week in the fridge before hot smoking it all on Sunday.

I find it interesting that there were only slight variations in the cures, which were all water with kosher salt and mostly one other ingredient, but the cuts all tasted so different. The Canadian bacon had garlic and thyme in the salt brine. The cottage bacon had brown sugar in the salt brine. The breakfast bacon had a salt and maple syrup rub on it. The ratio of fat to meat in each cut is really the distinguishing factor here, as well as how large the cut was since the flatter cuts absorbed more smoke and brine than the larger ones.

Each one was succulent and flavorful beyond belief in it’s own way. Each one will be the perfect addition to oh so many good meals for us into fall.

When you do your own meat you can choose how much you want to grind up into sausage versus how much you want to leave uncured for later smoking or braising versus how much you want to cure into salted, aged goodness.

I have a feeling we finally have enough bacon in the house to keep Pickle Man happy. And the really nice thing about this is that all of the bacons and ham are hot smoked so I felt completely comfortable using just kosher salt and no nitrates or nitrites or flavorings or preservatives of any kind. I know the conditions the pigs lived in, I know that they were all happy enough to still have curly tails (feedlot pigs do not because they are so stressed out they would chew each others tails off), and I know firsthand that the pig was treated with respect even in death.

All these recipes are from Charcuterie by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn which covers not only smoking but salt curing, fresh sausages, dry curing, pates and confits. It makes all this completely approachable for the home cook and I highly recommend this book.

Maple Cured Smoked Bacon

1/4 cup kosher salt
1/4 cup maple sugar or brown sugar
1/4 cup maple syrup
1 – 5 pound pork belly, skin on (mine was off) and cut to fit into 2-1 gallon Ziploc bags

Combine the first 3 ingredients and rub on the pork bellies then place the bellies in the bags in a refrigerator for 7 days, turning to distribute the cure daily until the meat is firm to the touch.

Remove the belly from the brine, rinse and pat dry (I didn’t actually rinse off that maple syrup) and place it on a rack over a plate in the fridge for 24 hours. Hot smoke at 180 degrees Fahrenheit to an internal temperature of 150 degrees Fahrenheit. Refrigerate the bacon overnight to firm it up before slicing as thinly as possible. Fry up a taster piece and weep like a girl. Oh wait, that was me.

Canadian Bacon

1 gallon water
1 1/2 cup kosher salt
1 cup sugar
1 bunch sage
1 bunch thyme
2 smashed garlic cloves
1 – 4 pound pork loin

Combine the first 6 ingredients in a large pot and bring it to a simmer, stirring until all the ingredients have dissolved. Cool the brine then place the pork loin in it and use an overturned plate to keep it submerged in the brine for 48 hours. Remove the loin from the brine, rinse and pat dry and place it on a rack over a plate in the fridge for 24 hours. Hot smoke at 180 degrees Fahrenheit until it reaches an internal temperature of 150 Fahrenheit.

Cottage Bacon

1/2 gallon water
3/4 cup kosher salt
1 cup brown sugar
1 loin, cut into 2 or 3 pieces

Combine the first 3 ingredients in a large pot and bring to a simmer, stirring until all the ingredients have dissolved. Cool the brine then place the loin pieces in the brine and use an overturned plate to keep them submerged in the brine for 3-4 days. Remove the loins, rinse and pat dry and place them on a rack over a plate in the fridge for 24 hours. Hot smoke at 180 degrees Fahrenheit until they reach an internal temperature of 150 Fahrenheit.

I’ll leave you with an image of a gargantuan 20 pound bone-in ham which I’m hoping my friend the serious wood smoker will do a post on. And yes, it fills a full length cookie sheet.

Happy Easter!

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Posted in Curing Meat, Pastured Pork

Tagged curing bacon, curing ham, making bacon, smoking bacon

Growing in Coffee Bags

Posted on March 29, 2010 by Annette Cottrell| 32 Comments

This weekend I planted my potatoes in recycled coffee bags just like I did last year.

What I love about this method is it allows you to grow bonus food by simply finding a few square feet anywhere in the right light conditions, even over concrete. If you aren’t using your driveway to park the car or have unused patio space you can turn it into grow space!

Here are other bonuses:

Inexpensive compared to raised beds or pots
Re-use existing materials rather than increase consumer demand for plastics or wood
All natural materials can be composted at the end of the grow season so nothing to store over winter
Easier to hill late variety potatoes by simply unrolling the bags sides and adding more dirt
Excellent drainage during wet and soggy springs keeps your potatoes healthier
At harvest time simply dump the whole thing into a wheel barrel and sort for potatoes, no more cutting into them with the spade or stabbing with a garden fork
Growing in bags around the base of young fruit trees allows you to use that space without disturbing the tree’s root zone and the tree roots will benefit from the mulch effect and any draining water from the burlap bags (sort of a slow release watering.)

Where can you get some coffee bags? You can check with your local coffee roaster but if you live in Seattle you’re in luck. You can get them from Upcycle NW. And while you are there you can pick up free coffee chaff to use either as organic matter and browns to your compost pile, as a top layer for your worm compost bin to keep fruit flies at bay, or as chicken bedding (which then gets added to your compost pile as the brown organic matter layer.)

They also have roasted coffee grounds to add nitrogen to your compost pile or soil mixes and roasted and unroasted beans to use decoratively in the garden or as a top mulch layer that will slowly release nitrogen into the garden. And if you are container gardening adding a few inches of beans at the bottom of the container will help improve drainage.

Can you tell I’m a huge fan?

As an added bonus if you reply in the comments that you want any organic coffee bags to use as containers I can have them at my open garden on April 17 for you to purchase.

The no cut are $3 each (have not been sliced open) and the top cut bags are $2.25 each. I’ve used both as planters and either work fine.

So if you weren’t planning to grow potatoes (or squash) because they take up too much valuable garden space go outside and look around for any possible spot to put a coffee bag and then reply below or email UpcycleNW for their hours so you can pick some up.

Now go grow some food already!

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Posted in Growing Groceries - Plants, Seeds and Growing Tips, Potatoes

Dark Days Week 19

Posted on March 29, 2010 by Annette Cottrell| 6 Comments

Hello Spring! I’ve gone dark myself busy starting seeds, planting out previously started seedlings, harvesting nearly the last of the winter crops and prepping garden beds. I was getting so turned around I finally made a seed starting schedule for myself and was stunned to realize I am starting 144 varieties of herbs and veggies this year! These are just the annuals and don’t count any perennial veggies or fruits I have on the property.

I have been having troubles saving anything but images but I’m hoping next week to get my seeds starting spreadsheet up so you can see what all I’m planting because the list is pretty long and that way you can see my starting dates, both for spring/summer crops and for my fall/winter harvest and early spring eats 2011.

Because I’ve been so busy in the garden this week I haven’t actually done much cooking. I know it’s ironic but during peak planting and peak harvest I don’t have time to cook! At times like these it’s nice to have things in the freezer or make up huge batches of other things so that family members can fend for themselves.

I managed to squeeze a few things in though. In addition to my regular sandwich bread with Bluebird grain hard red wheat I made the world’s worst brioche using Azure AP flour and white whole wheat. The reason I say it was the world’s worst brioche was because apparently I picked the only recipe in the book with a major typo. I’ve been curious about vital wheat gluten because I know so many other bakers who swear by it but I’ve always been a little suspicious of it. How do they make it? Nobody knows.

But I bought some once in the name of thorough testing and honestly didn’t notice much of a difference using it in my sandwich bread so it’s been languishing in a cupboard. When the recipe called for 2 1/4 cups of it I figured it was a good way to get rid of it. But once the bread was baking I started thinking how odd it was that all the other recipes in the Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day book only called for 1/4 cup of it so I went to their website and saw that indeed it was a typo. Leave it to me. Incidentally if you ever want a product tested for failure I can help you out there. New automated postal machine? Broke it. Countless software systems? Broke them. My blog? Broke it. I should have been a software tester.

I made some of the brioche into what was supposed to be cinnamon crescents but the dough had so much spring that they all uncurled and ended up like squares of tough, chewy bread with cinnamon topping. The kids ate most of them anyway. The rest of this loaf ended up French toast.

I had to make up for the bread flop with a loaf of dark rye using Azure rye berries and Bluebird Grain hard red wheat.

The kids have been clamoring for crackers lately so I made some wheat thins from Bluebird Grain soft wheat using the King Arthur Flour recipe. I took some down to the man lair and offered them to my husband who immediately sat upright and popped one in his mouth. “Wheat thins!” he exclaimed right off the bat. When I asked him how they tasted he said “All I can see is Sandy Duncan in a wheat field eating them right out of the box, one after another.” In case you don’t remember this was the commercial for wheat thins in the late 70′s, early 80′s. My husband was a latch key kid and watched a little too much tv. I had to stop taking him shopping early in our relationship because he would sing the jingles for every product we would pass.

Finally today a major storm system blew in and I wasn’t able to keep working outside so I got around to cooking again. I harvested some front yard rhubarb and gathered some backyard eggs to make an old standby, rhubarb custard pie.

This recipe is from my mother in law and it’s superb. I used to think the best way to eat rhubarb was in a crumble with homemade vanilla ice cream on top but this pie converted me. The creamy mace and nutmeg scented custard wraps around those little tart rhubarb pieces for a match made in heaven. It might not look like much but it tastes divine!

And of course the fact that rhubarb follows hot on the footsteps of chives means it heralds spring in my garden so it will always hold a dear spot in my heart.

I had also saved a large bag of beet greens from my overwintered beets and made a gratin with them using Golden Glen milk, Skeeter’s garlic which I had previously roasted and froze, fresh Bay Leaf off my tree and Greek oregano and English Thyme from the garden and Lentz spelt breadcrumbs from a 100% spelt bread flop. The recipe was from my Herb Farm cookbook which I will be using heavily this year in an effort to learn to cook with all the amazing herbs I have growing in my garden.

And today was the day all of Chubby’s finery was ready for the smoker. You recall that a few weeks ago I went to try my hand at butchering a pig on Ebey Farm. I’ve been carefully salting or brining and air drying the meats and loaded them all up in the smoker today. Oh my bacon goodness. Pickle Man wanted bacon for dinner and dessert and of course requested more for breakfast. The trick will be freezing it before he eats it all.

Instead of saving the loin and the tenderloin since those cuts are very lean and quickly dry out when cooked I cured them for use as Canadian bacon and cottage bacon. And of course I cured the belly as breakfast bacon. It’s really interesting that just by changing from salt and maple syrup rub to liquid salt and sugar brine or omitting sugar and instead adding garlic and thyme you get completely different flavors.

Everything came out stupendously and oh so much better than any bacon I’ve ever had before. The salty sweet goodness and then hickory smoke is unreal. I just wanted to roll in it all. I will be posting on curing specifics over the next few days as my schedule allows but I think everyone needs to make their own bacon at least once just to see how easy it is. Since my friends and I slaughtered and butchered the pig it was amazingly cheap. You just can’t beat $2.40/# pastured all natural bacon. And from a gastronomical standpoint – priceless.

All in all it’s been a busy week but not much in the way of food photos. It’s supposed to rain all week so maybe I’ll make up for it.

Happy not quite as dark days!

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Posted in Dark Days Challenge

Guest Post – How I Fit Real Food Into My Busy Life and Tight Budget

Posted on March 26, 2010 by Annette Cottrell| 9 Comments

This guest post is from Becky of Becky’s Stockpot. This is a HUGE topic that I get a lot of comments about so thank you, Becky, for tackling it! And maybe could we get a link to that pie recipe?…

How I Fit Real Food Into My Busy Life And Tight Budget

I watched “Food Inc.” over New Year’s with my husband, my sister, and her husband. To say that it affected me would be an understatement. Though I have always been interested in feeding my family healthy foods, the movie inspired me to learn more about our food… where and how it was raised, how it’s processed, and simply what was in it. At the start of the year, I made a few resolutions or challenges for myself that had to do with feeding my family.
Resolution #1 – Buy/consume fewer processed foods
Resolution #2 – Buy local whenever possible.
Resolution #3 – Make the best use of my own garden
These resolutions gave me a focus. It’s been almost 4 months since I watched Food Inc. (and subsequently read “Omnivore’s Dilemma” and “In Defense Of Food”) and I’m really proud of the changes I’ve made…. both for myself and my family.

I’ve learned a few things over the past 4 months that have made it easier for me to stick to my resolutions while working from home and sticking to my budget.

My husband is a band director at a local high school and I do in-home daycare for a toddler and an infant. We make enough money to live what we consider to be a good life but there’s never a lot of wiggle room in the budget. I have always been a coupon clipper and a sale shopper. I was worried that buying whole foods and shopping locally was going to break the bank. On average, we spend about 18% of our income on groceries (including non-food items like toilet paper and toothpaste). We spend more then the national average (of 9%) on food but it’s worth it to me. I don’t own a cell phone, we only eat out once every two months or so, and our clothes come from a local Mega Thrift store whenever possible. I knew that we couldn’t spend more then our 18% on food so I had to find ways to buy healthier food while sticking to the same budget or less.

Here are some of the things I do to help to save money.

I’ve switched to shopping every 2 weeks for most items. I find that if I go weekly, I end up buying things we really don’t need just because I’m there. I sometimes have to make a quick stop on the non-shopping weekends for produce or a gallon of milk.

I make up a meal list and make a grocery list based on that meal list. If we’re only have pasta once during that 2 weeks, no reason to stock up on 5 boxes of pasta.

Buying my local, grass-fed meats is more expensive so I plan at least 2 meat-free meals each week. I also stretch the amount of meat by using only half as much in each recipe. One night I might make spaghetti with only a 1/2 lb. of ground beef. I’ll set the other 1/2 lb. aside until the next night and make tacos with it. I add a cup or two of cooked black beans to the taco meat to make up the difference.

We make sure to use leftovers. No sense in wasting food that you’ve spent money on. I make sure to put leftovers in clear containers so that we’re more likely to use them. I often ignore leftovers if they’re put in yogurt containers since I assume it’s yogurt. My husband loves taking leftovers to work for lunch.

Stocking up when produce is in season will save some serious money. Last fall I bought 2 huge pumpkins (since I didn’t have any luck with mine in the garden) and put about 50 cups of pumpkin puree in the freezer for $12! This year I’m planning on going to as many U-Pick farms locally as possible and filling my freezers with all kinds of wonderful produce. Nothing like blueberry muffins in December.

The second obstacle I’m continuing to work to overcome is balancing preparing food from scratch with parenting, housework, and down-time. Luckily I’ve always enjoyed cooking and baking and thanks to my mom, I’m pretty good at it. Part of the fun for me is finding new recipes. I love to find recipes for foods that people can’t believe can be made at home. I mentioned to my daycare parent that the kids had homemade graham crackers for snack and she said, “I didn’t know you could make those at home.” It still amazes me that people think food processors are the only ones with the magic to make snack foods.

Here are a couple of things that I do to be able to make more homemade food without spending hours in the kitchen (not that I mind hours in the kitchen but the kids tend to need to be checked on occasionally).

Working from home gives me the added advantage of monitoring rising bread dough or to put on a pot of beans to cook while the kids play. I realize that not everyone can work from home but using the crockpot could work for those who aren’t home during the day. Nothing like having dinner ready when you get home.

I will sometimes bake during naptime but I find if I do that too often, I feel like I haven’t had a break. Knitting and catching up on Project Runway is my favorite naptime activity.

I’ve recently started baking in double or triple batches and freezing the extra. I don’t find it much more work to make 8 loaves of bread instead of 4 and that means that I’m only baking bread once a month or so. I freeze batches of muffins, cookies, banana bread, pizza dough, precooked beans… the list goes on. On a busy day when the toddlers have been cranky or the daycare baby has been fussy, it’s nice to be able to go th the freezer and pull something out that just needs to warm up instead of starting from scratch.

Doubled recipes don’t always head for the freezer. I make double batches of pizza dough so we can have pizza one night and maybe have calzones or “hot pockets” the next night. If I’m making rice, I’ll sometimes make a double batch to add to a casserole or stir fry for later in the week.

I’ve started trying to limit my baking to 2-3 times a week. Sometimes I just need a baking fix so I break my own rule but I’m allowed to…. I made the rule. I find that if I condense my baking to a few times a week, it saves time for laundry, cleaning, kid wrestling, knitting, etc and I don’t get so tired of being in the kitchen.

When I have the patience and the time, I involve my kids in the kitchen. My two year old, Evan, loves to stir ingredients. He’s anxious to crack eggs but those locally grown beauties are too precious. My five year old, Charlotte, is getting quite good at kneading dough and mixing batters together. Involving them in the process not only keeps them nearby where I know they’re not climbing on things they shouldn’t be, but it also gives them valuable skills and self- confidence. I want both of my children to feel comfortable in the kitchen and to be able to provide healthy food for themselves when they grow up.

This food journey continues to be an exciting one for me. I love every step of the process from ordering seeds in February, to sourcing local meats, to making hamburger buns.
Ooo… time to go find a great recipe for breakfast cookies! Gotta run!

More ways to save money by eating locally.

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Posted in I'm Looking for You, Saving Money

Tagged making time to cook, saving money by cooking from scratch

Lacto Fermentation Blog Carnival

Posted on March 24, 2010 by Annette Cottrell| 25 Comments

Brook inspired us with her lacto-fermented salsa so much that I’m doing a lacto-fermented blog carnival. Next Friday, April 2 I’ll try to figure out how to use Mr. Linky so anyone with a blog can participate with some link love. If you don’t have a blog I’d love for you to write a blog entry anyway and I’ll post it here then link into it for you.

I’d also love any links to other blogs with recipes that you’ve tried so that we can compile them all in one place.

Lacto-fermentation has been around for millenia and is nothing to be feared. Have you ever eaten real saurkraut or kosher dills? Lacto fermented. Cheese? Lacto fermented. Wine and beer? Originally lacto-fermented. It’s a wonderful, healthy way to preserve foods using no energy or special equipment.

So, do some googling to find recipes and get fermenting already! And please help me spread the word so we can get as many lacto-fermented recipes as possible.

Some Lacto-Fermented Recipe Ideas:

Lacto-fermented salsa
Lacto-fermented orange marmalade
Lacto-fermented beet kvass
Lacto-fermented soda
Lacto-fermented hits and misses by Millie
Lacto-fermented ketsup by Ren
Wardeh’s lacto-fermented turnips and beets
Sandorkraut’s Blog about wild fermentation, complete with support forum

My Favorite Books with Lacto Fermented Recipes:

Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods

Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats