I'm NEVER Buying Bacon Again!

For my birthday last month I bought myself the perfect present: Half a hog! I have purchased locker pork before but I usually have the processor make me ham, bacon and sausage from it. He does an awesome job of curing and smoking his customers' pork but I decided this time around to have him just cut it up for me and do all the curing, smoking and sausage making myself.

I have been making sausage for almost 3 years now but last year I tried my hand at curing and smoking my own ham. The butcher at our local grocery store ordered an 22 pound pork leg and sawed it to a butt and shank portion. For Easter I cured and smoked my first ham and it came out wonderful and I was sold on curing my own ham from then on out.

So, now I'm trying my hand at curing and smoking my own slab of bacon. The piece of pork belly that I'm working with came from the processor with skin removed and it weighs 5 pounds. The recipe choice is 10.5's Maple Cured Bacon from the Bradley Recipe Site.

Here's the ingredients needed:

• 2 oz. Kosher salt (about 1/4 cup)
• 2 tsp. Cure #1 (aka pink salt, InstaCure #1, Prague Powder #1)
• 1/4 C. Maple sugar or packed brown sugar
• 1/4 C. Maple syrup
  
• 5 lb. fresh pork belly
  (Makes enough for a 5 lb. belly)

The prep was actually pretty easy. I mixed together the dry ingredients (salt, sugar, cure)

Then added the maple syrup to the dry ingredients to make a paste which was spread all over the piece of pork belly.

After the paste is applied, it goes into a 2 gallon ZipLoc bag (I love these big ones!) Squeeze out as much air as you can out of the bag to insure good contact with the meat. Place it in the frig to cure for 5 to 7 days, turning once a day.

After curing, the pork belly needs to be rinsed to remove excess cure. It was placed on an inverted smoker rack sitting on a cookie sheet then returned to the frig to air-dry over night. The next morning it was removed from the frig and allowed to rest on the kitchen counter for an hour and a half.

Into my preheated Bradley Smoker it goes. I smoked it with 2 hours of maple smoke at 130F with the vent opened half way. After the first 2 hours, I increased the temperature to 150-160F until the meat hit an internal temperature of 140F.

It came out just beautiful!

I planned on getting it sliced at the meat processors (since I don't own a meat slicer) but I did take a slice to fry up a sample for the family to try. It tasted as good as it looked, too.

After taking it to get it sliced. (Picture at the top) I vacuum-sealed four pounds of it.

I cannot tell you enough how easy and rewarding it was to make my own bacon. It took less time and labor than a batch of jerky takes. Go for it! And do let us know how it comes out.

So, Where Have I Been All This Time?

I have been hiding in the trunk of a giant cedar tree...just kidding!

Well, I'm not exactly sure how to explain my absence from my own blog. It's my blog, I write and share my life with you in it. If you are reading my blog you are obvious kind enough to show up so I really do not have any excuse valid enough to support my reason for not writing in my own blog.

But I do apologize for not writing in over a years time. I was posting on the Bradley Smoker Forum yesterday and a member mentioned that he liked my blog and I felt so embarrassed for having not written in it for over a year. The only excuse I could come up with was that had been too busy doing the things I normally write about to write about them. Does that make a lick of sense? Not really, huh?

So, I am now going to attempt to make the time to write in my blog again. I have so many new things that I want to share with you all and I am so grateful that anyone is interested in what I love to do.

A Kreativ Blogging Award!

Jeanie of Cowgirl's Country Life as so graciously awarded this blog a Kreativ Blogging Award!
Thank you Jeanie! :)
The rules for accepting this award are:

1. Post the award.
2. Thank and mention the person who gave you the award.
3. Pass the award on to seven bloggers who you think embody the spirit of the Kreativ Blogger Award.
4. Name seven things about yourself that others don’t know.
5. Don’t forget to notify the seven Kreativ Bloggers about their award and post a link to their blog.

I was hard to pick just seven bloggers because all the ones I follow are fantastic but here goes:

Small Farm Girl
3 Acre Homestead
On Ponderosa Lane
Cow Patty Surprise
The Photographic World of Swedgatch
Need for Shutter Speed
View from the Green Barn

Now what to say about myself?

1. My favorite fiction book is "Gone with the Wind"
2. I have a brindle boxer named "Bentley"
3. I love Dean Martin for some reason.
4. Even though I love to make homemade food, I'm addicted to highly processed junk like Pop Tarts, Moonpies and Oreos. :o)
5. I'm great at shooting moving targets but horrible at hitting something that is standing still.
6. "Good Fellas" is my favorite movie.
7. I can't swim. :(

Thinning the Flock

Since we purchased our first incubator last year and started hatching chicks from eggs we were faced with the dilemma (if you want to call it that) of what to do with extra roosters we hatch. Do you give them away? Do you slaughter them? Do you collect them and go broke feeding them?

Well, if you give them away most likely your a giving someone a free chicken dinner. There's nothing wrong with this if you don't mind all the food and expense that went into the birds doing down the drain. Sometimes you know the person and you know they really want a rooster to be a companion (or stud!) for their hens. I gave away a cuckoo maran rooster to a family last year to live with the 20 Rhode Island Red pullets they had raised. They are still enjoying this rooster and their four kids just adore him. The rooster I gave away made a friend's life happier so it did not seem like money down the drain to me.

This week I had to cull a few spare roosters. I try putting it off because it does make me a little sad and the laying breed roosters are a little more difficult to process than the meat birds are. They are much more heavily feathered and because they are not broad-breasted like the Cornish crosses, they a have a narrow cavity which I find getting my big hands into a bit more difficult.

I've cleaned birds that I have hunted like waterfowl and wild turkeys dressing out a bird is not totally new to me. I do scald the chickens before I pluck them in 140F water for about a minute which makes them very easy to pluck.
The meat on these roosters is darker than your average meat chicken because of their maturity, more varied diet and the exercise they receive free-ranging. These birds are too tough for roasting or baking so I use them for stewing and make chicken with dumplings with them. They are way more flavorful than the average store-bought chicken.

So, even though it's a little bit of a pain to process them, I am rewarded with the wonder food they provide for us and my hens are grateful that they aren't being chased around by a bunch of roosters all day long.

My Iron Chef Bradley V Entry

Well, I'm at it again! This is my 4th attempt at an Iron Chef Bradley online cooking competition. The Bradley Forum created this great contest for it's forum members a few times a year. There are 3 "secret ingredients" that must be incorporated into your recipe and t 80% of the cooking must be done outside: BBQ, smoker, gas grill, open fire, etc.

I posted mine yesterday and so far I'm the only entry but there will be more. I cooked mine 10 days ago so I was eager to get it posted. There are a lot of nice prizes, too, which makes me even more eager. Voting is next week so I will let you all know how I did.

Twice-Baked Winter Squash Stuffed with Smokey Beef, Roasted Red
Pepper & Cornbread Stuffing

Ingredients:

1 1/2 red bell pepper
2 winter squash ( I used Carnival squash but Acorn would work the same)
1 pound beef stew meat diced into 1/2" squares
1 medium sweet onion diced
1 6oz package of seasoned corn bread stuffing (I used Mrs. Cubbenson's)
1/2 cup pecans chopped
1/2 tsp beef bouillon
1 TBS olive oil
4 TBS salted butter divided
salt
pepper
water

Chop and toast pecans at 350F for 15 minutes or until lightly browned. I did this in the oven but the rest of the cookin' was done outside

Dice the stew meat into 1/2" chunks

Cut the squash in half and scrap out the seeds.

Cold smoke the squash and stew meat for one hour using pecan smoke.

Roast whole peppers for 20 minutes over high heat on the grill.
Once slightly blackened place in a brown bag for about 20 minutes.
Remove from the bag, peel of the skin and seed.

Dice 1 1/2 of the roasted peppers.

After the squash are cold smoked place them face down in a roasting pan.
Add enough water to the roasting pan have 1/4" in the pan.
Bake in a gas grill for 30-40 mins at 400F with the grill lid shut.

Either on the grill or side burner heat up the olive oil then saute the diced onion until browned.
Remove the onion.

After the beef is cold smoked, salt and pepper the diced beef liberally and add to the hot pan.

Cook until well-browned then add enough water to cover.
Heat to boiling then back off to a simmer and cover.
To make the meat tender it needs to simmer for 45 mins.
Add water if needed.
Once tender pour drain the meat reserving 1 cup of the liquid.

After the squash is cooked, scrape them leaving about 1/4" remaining on the skin.
Add 2 TBS of the butter and 1/2 tsp beef bouillon to the squash that was scraped out and blend well.

To the corn bread stuffing mix add the reserved liquid from the beef, 2 TBS butter.
Then add the beef, the squash mixture, the sauted onion, the diced roasted pepper and the toasted pecans to the stuffing mixture. Blend well.

Salt and pepper the squash shells then add the stuffing mixture evenly distributed to each shell.

Bake at 400F in a closed gas grill for 20 to 30 minutes or until nicely browned.

They are ready to eat! Enjoy!

The Winter That Wasn't

With a technically a month of winter remaining I know I'm asking for trouble from Old Man Winter making a statement like that. In defense of my title, this winter (so far) has been the most un-winter-like we have ever experienced in our 13 years of living in North Idaho.

Our house

The last two winters were the snowiest on record for this area since they have kept records. The the year 2008 we received over 300" of the white stuff because January 2008 and December 2008 were both record breakers themselves. But weather like that here doesn't make the news like it does when it happens back East . I guess the media just expects us to deal with it or that we are used to it.

The barely frozen pond

We when walking around our property last week end. Our pond is still barely frozen but there is no snow anywhere. It's weird walking the back acreage with no snowshoes on.

Ants

Check out this ant hill we found, covered with ants, in February! Robins are out and daffodils are poking through the soil in our front yard.

Emma atop of moss

The moss on some of the rock outcroppings is so green it looks like grass. Grass is starting to sprout in the cattle pasture. I saw an elk out there last night when I tucked the chickens in for the night.

I looked at the forecast for next week and they are predicting snow for us. But right now we are enjoying highs in the low 40's. I'll keep you all posted...didn't that groundhog see his shadow?

The Silkie Saga

Probably "saga" is being a little too melodramatic but it was a bittersweet experience. The sweet part is that we ended up with two beautiful silkie babies from the three eggs that did develop. Bless their little pointed heads. :)

The bitter part was that my first little pipper that I blogged about in my previous post died. He zipped around the egg successfully and just stopped moving. (That's his egg in the foreground) We tapped on the incubator after a few minutes and he still did not move. I took the egg out and he was dead. Perfectly formed with no defects visible to the eye so I'm guessing he died from exhaustion going 40 hours from pip to zip.

The two other chicks hatched with no problems and are doing well. Hopefully I'll be setting more eggs very soon. Yes, it can be a bit of an emotional roller coaster but that's just how it is when you take on the challenge of raising anything: chickens, children or tomatoes they all make me want to cry at some point. ;) But the rewards far outweigh the tears!