The Vegetarian Butcher Makes Sausage

Every other Tuesday throughout the summer, Matt helps with the processing of a batch of chickens at a friend's farm. They call him The Vegetarian Butcher.

Matt has been a vegetarian for all of his adult life, and involved in the food business in one way or another for even longer. So while he has no taste for poultry, he helps with chicken dispatch because he has a deep, reaching interest in food and farming. And also, he just likes hanging out with Farmer Pete.

These days, Matt's vegetarianism is broken by exactly one pig a year. Said pig grows up where the chickens do - on a mountaintop farm with 360-degree views of blue horizon, steep cloud banks, and pasture that is thick and deep like water.

Our friends Pete and Eliza own Clodhopper Farm. Each year they host a gathering of friends called Sausagefest, which begins with an ending (pig's). Pig becomes pork, while men wield spices and knives and beers.

Todd and Pete grinding fat

This year I saw the pig hanging in the back room, and it was oddly lovely. Clean and pink and ripply. Granted it had no head or guts or skin, which I expect makes the experience of seeing it strung from the ceiling sort of G-rated.

In the weeks leading up to Sausagefest, if I notice a faraway look in Matt's eye and ask what's on his mind, he answers, "chorizo." There are recipes going on - adding, subtracting, curing, aging. Little pinches of smoked paprika going in and slugs of red wine coming out. Minced garlic is whirling around in his skull like a snow flurry.

Bacon in waiting

In two days, a pig was divvied up into Mexican chorizo, sweet and hot Italian sausage, breakfast sausage, salami, Spanish chorizo, bacon, ribs, and pate.

The bulk of Matt's share is in our freezer, except for the salami and dry chorizo, which are hanging in the coldest corner of the house, atop the bedroom wardrobe. Sometimes the dog sits in her bed at the foot of the wardrobe, gazing up with longing.

Spanish chorizo and salami curing

You can read about last year's Sausagefest at Pete's blog.
You can find a couple of the recipes Matt used here: Spanish chorizo and pate

The Princess and the Pea

Say it's a breezy June afternoon, and I've got paperwork to catch up on. This is the view from my desk.

We like to remember such times, now that we are confined to our chairs... nothing but our dearest friend, blanky, to warm us.

The Ice Skater

When we left Scranton for a whirlwind holiday drive-a-thon, I was looking forward to wilder lands - deeper forest, taller trees, more birds... the smell of ice and bark and thaw, instead of the stink of city.

We returned home a few days ago, and I felt the mountain calling. We walked up the hill, past where the guinea hens live, past the projects and the oyster mushroom log and the muddy path. Matt stopped to see if the (possibly useful) gas tank had been stripped out of the recently-bonfired, upside-down Jeep in the creek. We walked up to the ridgeline, where there are oaks and hawks and wild blueberries, and I sighed an "oh, is it good to be home" sort of sigh.

Every place I've ever lived, I've connected with the nature there. I can close my eyes and call it all up: train trestles and cherry trees, bone piles and bear scat, boreal bogs and seaweed beaches.

Here in Scranton, I've spent too much time pining for countryside, and not appreciating that I have come to love the two wild mountains that flank route 81. They are far from unspoiled, even further from quiet, but they are home, nonetheless.

Occasionally, we run into a hunter or a scrap metal collector out there. Less often, some kids. (The last ones gleefully greeted us with "we fell through the ice into the lake!" They held out their arms to display the entirely soaked state of their clothes, and the relieving fact that they were alive, and ambulatory. I expect their adrenaline-induced glee subsided when their mothers got a load of all this.) But usually, it's just us, the roar from above (the wind) and the roar from below (the highway).

Today there was an ice skater. He was sitting on a rock, tugging on a pair of battered old skates. He had gray hair and a snow shovel, and just enough light left in the day to clear off the tiny frozen swamp, which is swaddled in greenbriar. He was surprised to see us, but seemed pleased to match the people to the footprints.

He told us the wild highlights of a whole life spent observing this slim strip of woods. Foxes, fishers, bears. A young bobcat that he feels remorse over: He brought chicken wings left over from the Saint Joe's picnic out here and put them in a pile. The next day the pile was gone, but in its place was blood, and the bobcat's tail.

the skating rink, a day later

What I'd assumed were just deer trails are actually maintained by the ice skater: worn ruts through the lowbush blueberries to overlooks atop the boulders. He once saw a smoke ring in the air, near the cave. He attributes it to god.

I didn't know anyone else was out there. I have seen his footprints, too, but what I mean is... I didn't know anyone else cared. I am so happy I know, now.

Happy New Year

May 2011 blow in on a wild, free wind, and may you feel earth's energy in your very own bones.

Hibiscus trionum

I spent way too many hours trying to figure out what this flower is. It is a relic of Nellie's Garden, a late self-seeder that pops out of the soil when it's good and ready, 'round about July.

I have only ever seen it in my garden, so I thought it was Rare and Wonderful. Then I saw it in seedling form in one of those dirty sidewalk-tree-holes in Wilkes-Barre, where it had somehow persevered past dog crap and cigarette ash. It was alive, which is more than I can say for the tree that had once been there.

This city street sighting deflated my hopes of Rare, but confirmed Wonderful. Anything that is fertilized, instead of fried, by the fluid that was once malt liquor and is now pee, is Wonderful.

What I like about this flower is a lot of things: It has pyramidal lanterns. It is a really dark, shiny, healthy green with unusual long, lobed leaves and sharp, angular stems. You can scamper out first thing in the morning to see it, and the bud is a tight, white scroll. You can fix your coffee and sit on the bottom step and watch it, and hang out the laundry and load up the truck and walk the dog, and there it sits. You can sigh and flick it, to inspire activity, but... nothing. You can think it is a little bit more unfurled, which it isn't, and go inside to get your this-and-that so you can leave for the day, and then when you come back out, you see: you missed it.

Which is why it is called flower-of-an-hour. Like I said, I spent forever trying to figure out what it is, and finally in exasperation posted a question at the Dave's Garden ID forum, and someone replied with the correct answer in, like, 7.5 seconds.

On further reading, the following words and phrases have been used to describe Hibiscus trionum in the Dave's Garden PlantFiles: terrible, evil, noxious, bugger, scraggly, Attila the Hun, invasive, kill them early and kill them often. If that isn't enough to knot the little bastards onto my heartstrings forever, I don't know what is.

Cold roses

So far, Garden Bloggers Bloom Day has been spent indoors, where the wind mostly isn't. I ducked out to document the roses, but fingers became unserviceable rather quickly.

Matt didn't even dive out the back door during breakfast to chuck kitchen implements at the squirrels eating all the suet, which means that it is very, very cold out there.

Happy winter Wednesday, everyone.

Smokin'

Sometimes, Matt comes home with other people's castoffs. The items are often related to food, and just a little bit broken (a cafeteria-sized stockpot with a tear in the bottom, a wine barrel with one busted stave). They could be used, Matt will say, because they can be fixed.

Matt is really good at fixing things, which I am grateful for. He fixes the important equipment in my life, like my truck and my wheelbarrow, as well as other niceties, like the toilet, the kitchen sink, and the water heater. So I know what he says is true: the miscellaneous kitchen implements could be used, because they can be fixed. Still, I am wary.

Matt's most recent acquisition was The Big Chief. It's a lightweight metal box, about two feet high and eighteen inches wide. It appeared in the entryway under the front porch, its identifying features partially obscured by a mess of other things. I eyed it dubiously. I decided what it was. I was so wrong that now I can't even remember what I decided. I passed it often, in a hurry, and furrowed my brow at it, in a disapproving sort of way. What are you, and are you broken?

At some point I learned that The Big Chief is an electric smoker, for smoking food. This did not elevate its reputation. I was brought up to believe that electric appliances should not smoke. And since it had not yet smoked any food, its state of repair or disrepair was undetermined. Think about it - an electric appliance that, when working properly, is supposed to smoke? If it's broken, the only possible outcome is that it will burst into flames and take the house with it.

I shifted my furrowed eyebrows from The Big Chief, to Matt, to The Big Chief, in order to convey my skepticism. Matt explained that any activity involving The Big Chief would be conducted outdoors, and under strict supervision.

Matt fired up The Big Chief, by flicking a switch and inserting a small pan of water-soaked cherry kindling. He smoked our jalapenos to perfection, along with some green tomatoes for omelets. Good old Matt.