Bacon? No, Ham!

Ham can be made from any part of the pig, but traditionally the leg, the shoulder, and the belly.

This, above, could either be called bacon or ham, but it is specially made to be eaten raw; so I shall call it ham.

It is dry-salted for one week (with the addition of some brown sugar and roughly ground black pepper), then hung-up to dry for about a month; during which time it could also be cold smoked.

One could just fry it like bacon, but that subtle flavour of 'Parma' type ham (the delicious fat just melts in your mouth) would be lost. Best to eat it in thin slivers with bread and unsalted butter, and maybe a glass or two of rouge.

It's quite possible that such delights are unavailable where you live, but making it at home is child's-play! Just make sure you find a supplier of really good quality, naturally reared, pork belly; and buy the thinner fatty end.

Hugh Fearnley-Thing's recipe can be found here, or see his 2001 'River Cottage Cookbook'.

N.B. This is not the same 'bacon' that I posted about some time back; that was proper bacon, this is proper ham!

Biggest is Best?

                               

It is a well-known and well-documented phenomenon of 'new world' countries, that they compensate for a lack of 'oldest' or 'most exquisite', by substituting 'biggest' or 'tallest' or 'heaviest', etc. This, one imagines, stems from some kind of collective national complex, and they simply want to 'put matters right'.

The greatest exponent of the activity has to be the dear old USA. Who else would have cut a monument as outrageous as Mount Rushmore, created the biggest beefburger (above), or even constructed the biggest ever slice of watermelon.

But I was interested to hear recently that this is not limited to our trans-pond cousins, and that Australia now has it's own range of monstrous monuments, known as Australia's 'BIG THINGS'.

Amongst its extensive range of nonsense it claims to have the biggest banana, lobster, guitar, koala, pineapple, gum boot, paper clip, and.........

                             

axe.

If I had to chose between 'oldest' and 'biggest', I still think I'd go for the former.

Anticipation and Reality.

In Spring all our trees were overloaded with flowers, but only now can we see what fruit we'll actually be getting. This was the Bramley in April.

And here it is now. It never fails, and is fully loaded. Otherwise our harvest looks to be much smaller than anticipated.

We have a few Pears, not a bad crop of Apples, but not nearly as many Peaches as we'd hoped. Our Plums are dismal, most of our Greengages are wormy, and our table Grapes rather thin on the vine. The Figs, of course, are abundant (they always are).

I don't want to sound as if I'm moaning; we will have plenty of fruit, just not the huge amount we were expecting.

The worst bit is having to wait another WHOLE YEAR to see if the 2014 crop will do any better.

p.s. Still no ripe Tomatoes!

Goodbye Boys; Come Back Soon!

Cousin Camp has come to an end, silence reigns but the memories live-on. The boys will all miss each other, the dogs will only have us to amuse them, and the tree-house will be as quiet as a sunken galleon.

The next time they all meet-up, the 8 year olds will probably both be about 12, and they'll no doubt be sneaking off behind some shed for a cig', or lusting after the local girlies (or both). They will sit around giggling and grunting, and more than likely refuse to join in with the 'childish' games of their 10 year old siblings. Their hands will definitely be glued to an i-something.

In the meantime we'll keep saying how very quiet it is, and we'll return to sleeping in the 'tower'. We'll also return to eating simple pasta dishes and curries, and all those horrible tiny multi-coloured tubs of disgustingly sweet fruitex-flavoured yoghurts will be banished from the fridge. 

We'll smile at the best of the summer's photos, we'll be able to drive off to the shops without crushing much-loved toys, and Lady M will return to watching Eastenders.

With the child-tornado now having moved on (Harvey J and Ollie to Germany for 2 weeks, and GHG and Finn to Brighton for 3 weeks), it seems like the end of something; but I suppose in reality it just heralds the onset of Autumn.

Tomless Rat'.

This is the season when I usually begin to bottle all my excess vegetables.

I have courgettes,

I have aubergines,

I have peppers,

but NO RIPE BLOODY TOMATOES.

I refuse to buy-in my tomatoes so I'll just have to wait. I just hope all the courgettes, aubergines, and peppers will wait too!

'Ratatouille', and its derivatives, are my main bottling activities of summer; without a good stock in storage our winter could be dire.

England v Australia. Test Series 2013.

From left: Sun-blinded GHG, Triumphant Ollie, and face-screwing Harvey J.

It was a hot, bright, eye-squinting day at 'The Rectangle'. England opened the batting and eventually won the day with a splendid score of 8 runs to Australia's 4.

The main scorer for England was Harvey J, with a magnificent knock of 6 runs; a tricky curved ball brought an end to his otherwise gallant innings.

Australian GHG scored ALL the runs for his country; he was eventually caught out after an unfortunate forward stroke.  He received a special standing ovation from the pavilion.

So, 'The Ashes' remain in England's hands, and will be played for again when the Australian team next visits France. 

Well played both teams.

Bok-n-Harvey J.

Certain boy/dog relationships are just 'meant-to-be'.

I'm expecting tears when they have to leave each other. Parting will be such sweet sorrow.