Share-A-Swine, Month 3. (With Recipe!)

So, it's time for our third monthly pickup for the Share-A-Swine Program. 

And check it out.  We have a RECIPE!

First, this month's haul:

Chops:  Mostly rib chops this month, which are my personal favorite.  Love that fatty little tail on those suckers!

Bacon:  Most of you will find bacon in your Share this month.  However, we came to the end of the bacon supply for these two animals before all of the shares were filled.  So, for those who didn't get a share of bacon this month, you received an extra pack of pork chops as a consolation prize.  And we should have bacon again for the grand finale next month.

Sausage:  Three kinds of sausage this month.  Regular, Sweet Italian, and Hot Italian.  The regular works great in literally any dish, at any meal.  The Italians are generally used in pasta dishes around our house, but would love to hear how they are used in yours!

Minute Steaks:  We have these versatile little steaks again this month, representing the ham portion of our animal.  How did you use yours last month?  Read on to check out how one of our members used her Minute steaks.

We're really fortunate to have a recipe this month, from Amy L.  Amy is one of our Share-A-Swine members, and she sent me the following recipe that she developed to prepare the Minute Steak. She also mentioned that the recipe works just as well using plain ground pork that was in your share last month.  It sounds DELICIOUS! 

Here it is, courtesy of Amy:


TACOS AL PASTOR
2# pork chip (Minute) steak or ground pork
2 TBSP minced garlic
1 TBSP cumin
1 TBSP oregano
1 TBSP minced pineapple
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground Annatto ( Goya brand in the ethnic section of grocery store. It is an orange box. There are small pouches inside the box)
1/2 tsp pepper


If using the chip steak, place the steak in a large mixing bowl and add spices. Coat the pork with the seasonings,  (If using ground pork, mix all the ingredients together and shape into patties.)
Slice meat. It will crumble as you slice it. Heat a skillet on the stove with some olive oil. Add the chip steak and stir fry until cooked through. (If using ground pork, grill your ground pork patties until cooked through.)

You can add it to wraps or taco shells. Top with grilled pineapple, guacamole and salsa. You can also top it with sour cream.  (Amy makes a chipotle sour cream by chopping up one chipolte pepper in adobo sauce and mixing it into the sour cream.  Which sounds pretty tasty.)

There you have it, our first ever recipe shared by a SAS member.  How bout you?  Have you found any great recipes since we started Sharing the Swines?

Hope you all enjoy your shares.  See you next month!

The Joint Lard Adventure, Part 2

A few weeks back, you may remember, I mentioned a little partnership we had gotten into with our friend Christine, who had been interested in getting her hands on some lard.

You might also remember that Christine, after learning that we didn't sell lard for several reasons, willingly, innocently, agreed to make her own at home.  And as an added bonus, she agreed to document the process for all of the rest of us.

Confession time.  I have made lard before.  I KNEW it wasn't quite as easy peasy as all the rustic homesteader or the foodie snob websites made it out to be.  And I also knew that it was a little...odiferous.

Stink?  No, not really, at least not to me.  But imagine the most intense musky, meaty, porky smell you've ever experienced.  Now double it.  And NOW you're in the ball park.

Throughout history, lard was probably rendered outside in the summer kitchen of the farmstead or even in the open air, in the dead of winter (cause that's when hogs were butchered), in a big open kettle over an actual fire.  No intense odors in the house while rendering it, or lingering of said odors inside said house for days thereafter.  Trouble is, most folks these days don't have a summer kitchen, or feel the urge to cook pioneer style in a cast iron kettle over open fire.

So I had the idea of modernizing the process and using that ubiquitous household appliance, a slow cooker, to slowly render the lard.  By doing so, we'd be able to put the whole operation and all its' intense eau de porkiness, outside.

I made this suggestion to Christine, and she RAN with it.

And I have to say, I think she has written some of the best Food writing I've ever read. I sincerely hope that this post of hers gets thousands of hits, because it's the real deal when it comes to rendering lard.  Her theme of "Hey, making lard ain't pretty, easy, or fun.  But it's worth it." is spot on, in my humble opinion. 

Check out her full post here. And then add it to your favorites.

And one last note:  I've been playing this as some kind of partnership or joint venture between Christine  and I.  It's not.  She did all of the research and all of the work.  She was the one jarring up liquid pork fat at midnight a few weeks ago, not me.  I'm just some farmer guy who gave up some pork fat.

Thanks Christine!

Teaming Up for Lard, Part 1

I sometimes get requests from home cooks for lard.  We haven't had a processor that was willing to make lard for us for several years, and when we did, we couldn't guarantee that the lard we received was from OUR hogs.  That's a deal killer for me (for many reasons, some of which you'll soon learn), so we stopped having lard made.

So a week ago I got a similar request for lard from Christine, a great friend of the Farm.  I gave her the standard answer. "No, we don't sell lard.  But I have pork fat, and you can use that to make your own."  After I give most people that answer, they usually thank me kindly, and that's the end of that.

But not Christine.  She was up for the challenge. And further, she was willing to document the WHOLE process for me, so I could share it here for other people to use in future lard-rendering excursions.

And that added bonus is that Christine is a blogger herself, and so she knows all the cool tricks about inserting pictures and hyperlinks and all the other blogger tricks that make reading a blog more interactive.  (You might notice I'm not so good at those things myself.  But I'm working on it.  Promise)

So, check out Christine's first of several posts on the what's why's and how's of lard making. 

And stay tuned.