Tuesday, March 8, 2005

Suspense novels and Home-cured ham

                                 

I took a couple of months to read the first half of this book, with so many distractions; I read the whole second half today, between household chores.  At one point, it got so tense and scary I had to lay it down and do something else.  My goodness, James Patterson has a wicked mind!  This is one of his older Alex Cross novels, but I'd say one of the better ones.

As pictured and chronicled in a previous entry, we home-butchered our two fine hogs recently.  We made cutlets of two of the hams, since Cliff wasn't sure how easy it would be to cure and smoke hams at home, and if we ruined them, we didn't want all four of them wasted.  The hams and bacon lay in the cure solution for two weeks.  Saturday, Cliff decided to do the smoking in a big, home-made smoker he'd borrowed.

We had some hickory chips soaked in water to use, but Cliff didn't think that was enough.  Since there's a hickory tree growing north of his shop, and there were a couple broken limbs on it, he decided to toss bits of those branches in from time to time.  The smoker was going all day long, and into the evening.

The smell was divine, but the green wood made a resinous, black coating all over the hams and bacon.  Nasty!  I had very little  hope of the meat being edible.

However, Cliff trimmed the sooty stuff off the hams, and I cooked one today.  It's delicious!  He scrubbed the tarry stuff off the slabs of bacon, and took them up the road to a butchery to have them slice and wrap it.  I hope the bacon is as good as the ham.

I'll freeze the ham I cooked today in meal-size portions.  Now that we know it's OK, Cliff will wrap the remaining one and put it in the freezer for later.  Anybody for a ham sandwich?

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sounds wonderful!  Smoked bacon is the best!

Anonymous said...

::Amy waves her hands wildly::  I'll have some!  Sounds delicious!!!!  I like ham, but bacon.....::sigh:: I LOVE bacon...  :)  My motto:  EVERYTHING tastes better with bacon.  Hee hee...
~Amy

Anonymous said...

Ohhh.... I'm so hungry now :( Think I'll go look in the fridge and see if there is any bacon <g>
http://journals.aol.com/astaryth/AdventuresofanEclecticMind

Anonymous said...

oh, the ham sounds sooooooooo delicious! Glad it turned out ok!
My daughter loves James Patterson and has read the book you read too!
Carlene

Anonymous said...

Oh, that really sounds good....NOT the book, but the Bacon and Ham!  LOL!

Anonymous said...

You bring some of that ham to Georgia!

Anonymous said...

I can actually smell the bacon frying!  Anne

Anonymous said...

Or ham and eggs................  :: holding plate ::

Bnana

Anonymous said...

As Meg Ryan once said "YES YES YES ! ! !

Anonymous said...

You keep the book, I'll have the ham sandwich!! rich

Anonymous said...

http://journals.aol.com/deveil/PictureoftheDay/

thanks for visiting my journal and your comment.  I miss my country life.  But still like to go back and visit.  I think I'm going to put a aeriel view of our farm in one of my next entries.  I love your journal, you remind me very much of one of my favorite aunts.  She was a wonderful hard working woman, she was a beekeeper also along with many other things.

Derek

Anonymous said...

I'm also
http://journals.aol.com/deveil/CelebrationofMyExhistance/
derek

I love blogging