One of the fun things with having all these cuts of pork in the freezer is that we get to prepare them how we want to, and we get to experiment with flavors, seasoning, cooking method, etc. Our first experimentation was with the best, most important cut from a pig:  bacon.

Sarah shared a good base bacon recipe with us, and suggested one riff on the recipe. Here’s what I did.

• 1lb 13oz piece of pork belly
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1 tbsp blackstrap molasses
• 2 tbsp kosher salt
• 1 tsp curing salt
• 1 tsp fresh ground black pepper

Mix the brown sugar and molasses, then add the salts and pepper.

Spread the mix (rub?) on the slab, and rub it in.

Place the glorious piece of meat in a zip top bag, and place it flat in your fridge, flipping it once a day.

After seven days (or so) the meat will be firm to the touch. The bag will have accumulated liquid over the week; these are the juices from inside the meat.

Extract the cured bacon from the bag, and rinse it well with water. Discard everything but the bacon itself. Dry it completely when you are done.

This can be the end of the exercise. You may slice up your slab of bacon and fry it up. Or you can continue on and go one more step. For our first go around I decided to go all the way with it.

You can either roast it in the oven, smoke it on the grill, or both. For this one I choose to roast it in the oven. I brushed on some Stubb’s Hickory Liquid Smoke, put it on a rack, and roasted it at 200 degrees for 2 hours.

Roasting done, I cut off a couple of slices and fried it up.

I was surprised at how simple the process was. And the result was amazing! I’m looking forward to the other 13 pounds of pork belly we have in the freezer, and curious about what other flavors we could try.

What’s new? Well, three kids is a lot of kids. Not as many as five, but definitely more than two. The little miss is so different than the boys, and yet like them in so many ways.

Work is busy, as always. I don’t know if I could handle it if it wasn’t busy, so I count it as a good thing. Definitely keeps me excited / entertained. That, and I just enjoy the work that I’m doing.

You’d think that I’d have more to say after eight months off, but this all I got at the moment.

• Rid the backyard of dog poo
• Pruned two of our trees
• Mowed (for the second time)
• Washed and vacuumed the car
• Grilled!

Spring is here!

Their deck is a few feet up from the ground, so we piled the snow up, and covered the steps to make a sledding slope. We also packed down a “trail” across the length of the deck. The trail starts on top of some deck benches, traverses the deck, down the stairs, and across the yard. Enjoy the footage.

Click here to view the embedded video.

September 12, 2004 – Judah born. October 27, 2004 – Red Sox beat St. Louis to win the 2004 World Series.

June 11, 2007 – Abel born. October 28, 2007 – Red Sox beat Colorado to win the 2007 World Series.

Since it is a Mac Mini it is a little harder to work on, let alone get into it. After I got it open I had to figure out how to “service” the optical drive. After finding some guides online I was able to free the drive from the chassis, and open it up to find…Fred Bear stickers! Apparently Judah stuck them in at the same time as the CDs.

Fred Bear stickers + optical drive = no workie = unhappy dad

Stickers out, everything back together, and working again. He lives to wake another day.

• Dirty Jobs, and host Mike Rowe; this is often presented as one word, “DirtyJobsMikeRowe”
• Mythbusters, complete with a countdown (3..2..1..) and explosion noises
• Alton Brown

The last one is a bit of a recent phenomenon, but we enjoy Alton as well, so it’s all good.