Nothing to me says Forth of July, like grilling out with family and friends. So I thought that I would do something a little special this year and make my own sausages for the Forth. But what really spurred the decision to make fresh sausage was when I found out that Fareway sells fresh casing packed in brine for $14.99 a pound. So after I bought a 1/2 lbs worth of casing, it kind of pushed me in the direction of making fresh sausages. Continue reading
Tag: pork
Smoking Homemade Bacon – 05/01/2010
This was one of those projects that should have been completed at least a couple of weeks back. But each free weekend that I had in March & April, would somehow get booked.
So a little bit of back story on this project. Around mid-March I ended up being part of a syndicate that was going to purchase a whole pig from The Slagel Family Farm down in central Illinois. Well something went sideways in the order, and instead of a whole pig (~200lbs, dressed) being delivered to Mado they delivered half a pig (~100lbs, dressed) instead. It was kind of a bummer to get half a pig, since we were splitting this pig four ways. But in the end, half a pig worked out better, since we were struggling just to refrigerate half a pig. So I don’t even know where we would have stored another 100lbs of pork meat and bones. Continue reading
Chili Cook-off recipe – v4
At work the Friday before the Super Bowl, we ended up having a chili cook-off contest for our department. The entry fee was $5.00 and first prize was $70.00 plus a bunch of other misc stuff (small trophy, pizza party for your team, etc.) There ended up being over 30 entries for the contest, and the types of chili entered by competitors were all over the board (white chili, vegetarian chili, wild game chili, extra tomato chili, etc.) After a few weeks of back and forth conversations with JRR to hash out a recipe, here was the chili that I entered into the contest. This recipe didn’t make the top three (and they only listed the top three finishers.) But as the VP that sits next to me kidded, that maybe I got 4th place. So enjoy this recipe for 4th Place Chili: Continue reading