A time to do elaborate food projects

Now that we are a little more rested and settled down here in Indiana, we have embarked on some rather large food related projects. Rachel's parents had a couple of hogs slaughtered and had the bacon and hams from one of them left fresh (not cured and made into bacon as you know it or ham as you might think of it), with the idea that I could use them for practice for my budding interest in making Charcuterie. (I have had a long standing interest in eating from this illustrious food group.)

The first step in being able to do anything of this sort was to build a much improved smoker. The little Smoky Joe that many of us are familiar with from hot smoking a fish or two at the cabin in the summer doesn't offer the control of the smoke or temperature required for making bacon, ham and other products. We built our "cold cabinet" from a shipping container and attached it to the Smoky Joe with some drier vent tubing. The journey through this tubing allows the smoke to cool and makes "cold smoking" possible. Most of us are familiar with the smoked salmon or lox you get on a bagel with a schmeer and onions and capers. Cold smoking is what allows that salmon to remain essentially raw while picking up the smoke flavor. It simply isn't cooked. Curing, or treating with salt, sugar and other preserving agents (pink salt or nitrates/nitrites) is what prevents the growth of pathogens in such food items. And, of course, these items originated as preservation of necessities rather than the manufacture of something tasty. They are the meat equivalents of pickles and sauerkraut, a way to stretch the seasonal availability of certain foods.

While the bacon underwent its curing process (more on that in a later post), we decided to smoke some cheese to test out our cold smoker. My sister was visiting and enthusiastically contributed four good size pieces of cheese: Jarlsberg Swiss, Mild Cheddar, Young Gouda and Danish Havarti. With a rack in the center of the cold box for the cheese, we mixed apple (80%) and Hickory (20%) in a bucket, got them wet to guarantee a smoky fire and added them to the hot box fire pan. We learned that the Smoky Joe's element didn't have the power to make enough smoke so that got replaced by a hot plate and with that small improvement we had more smoke than we needed. Placing the hot box below the cold box caused plenty of updraft and our smoke was pulled through to the cold box without using the back up fan we had installed. Most importantly, our cold box temperature was easily maintained in the mid-80s, a good cold smoking or non-cooking temperature.

We smoked the cheese for almost 6 hours and then wiped off the butter fat that had leached from the blocks and followed this with a rinse in water to make sure no soot had accumulated at the surface. At first taste, the smoke was over powering on one hand, but had poorly penetrated the cheese on the other. All the flavor was on the surface. After 24 hours loosely wrapped in the walk-in cooler and another day wrapped in plastic wrap, we broke back into it today and were pleasantly surprised. The smokiness had evened and mellowed considerably in those two days. The two softer cheeses, gouda and havarti, could have been smoked a little less, but both carried the flavor nicely. The swiss which had rind on one side, could have taken more time in the smoker and the cheddar was just about perfect with even flavor that didn't over power the cheese.

Got Here

This post is just to let everyone know that we made it to the midwest and share a few pics and stories from the journey. Before I get down to the fun stuff, and by that I mean pictures of Ellis pretending to drive the 26' truck, Rachel and I want to express our undying gratitude to the many who helped us: Ben and Elissa for helping us into and out of Boston; Aunt Carol and the Christen-derived clan of western Pennsylvania for making room at the inn and sharing their Easter with us; Donna, Cheryl and Steff for serving as the first shift of unloading help in Ann Arbor; my Dad for corralling Ellis and help getting unloaded and getting us part way to the farm; Kellie and Larry for heavy lifting, unpacking, house visiting and sharing internet access with us; Darryl and Katherine for much help extending to the loan of a car and Mike and Lise for retrieving us to the farm, among other things. We feel a little like we relied on you all a little too much, but it was very comforting to eject ourselves from a though time in Boston with the help of friends and with welcoming arms along the way and at the end of the journey.

I need to stick in one more thank you, to Rachel, for the way she prepared for 20 hours on the road with Ellis and how well he behaved he as a result. She had snacks; she had wrapped up little toys; she had sticker books; she had coloring books; she had conventional books....you get the picture.

From the very start, Ellis was extremely enthusiastic about the truck.

"I'm drivin' the hell out of this truck, aren't I dad?"

After a 14 hour first day we arrived at Rachel's Aunt Carol's farm house in western Pennsylvania. The day wasn't too bad other than nearly being forced over a bridge onto Long Island (clearly not the right direction!) and then the feeling that we were trapped in New Jersey as we sought out diesel before heading into Pennsylavania. Ellis really enjoyed the tunnels on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, asking repeatedly, "Moh dunnos?, moh?"

We had a lovely Easter with family and friend's of Carol's and spent a day recovering before moving on to Ann Arbor. After many years as part of the family, I finally met Rachel's cousin Jacob and his wife Jessica and Ellis got to tool around the 1830's era stone farmhouse. It was also my first visit and chance to see the piece of family and American history that is this house. There are many more pictures than this one that we will upload once we are settled.


Finally, we got up early on Monday morning and headed for good old Ann Arbor where we found our new home quite satisfactory (pictures in coming weeks) and after a day to get settled we headed down to the the Indiana farm where we are regaining our energy and engaging in several projects, some of which might get detailed here.

Smell ya' later

Rachel insisted that I title a post in this manner. We are heading out in the morning, leaving Boston before we ever got to know her. Better things await though, including a little house for our family back in the vicinity of extended family.
Today I went and picked up a pretty big truck, bigger than we needed by a factor of 1.5, because that is how big of a truck you had to get in order to have a bench seat with room for the baby seat. For a rental truck it is pretty comfy and the cab is pretty roomy. Indeed there is plenty of room for Ellis and Rachel. It is an automatic transmission, but I have to say that the shifts shake the crap out of you pretty good. I drove it through downtown Medford without incident to get back to the apartment. I suspect once we are rolling and I have had a little more time to get comfortable with it, the highway driving will be a whole lot easier. On the other hand, I am a little awe struck that one can drive such an animal with out a CDL. That might just be the the mark of our time in Germany speaking, where you have to have a special license to pick strawberries.
Our friends Ben and Elissa came to help us load. Elissa primarily kept Ellis happy while we took the boxes down. We hired two professional helpers, B-movers (the "B" is for "Bulgarian"). We paid for two hours and in that two hours they took down all of the heavy stuff (washer, dryer, freezer, butcher block, beds) and a lot of the little stuff and had time to pack the truck remarkably tight. So tomorrow we take the last few boxes and our big mattress which will be used to help tie all of the rest in.
After the packing we went to Tu Y Yo and had some excellent Mexican food. The menu even had "prehispanic" dishes, one of which was a pork cake in a cactus fruit sauce that Rachel found to be excellent. I had a braised beef dish that Ellis highly approved of. Also of note, today Ellis had his last Amici's meatball. Amici's is the pizza place around the corner and in addition to the pizza they make a few things homemade including killer tennis-ball-size meatballs that Ellis really likes. According to Rachel, he ate his last one like an apple taking big bites right from the ball.

life won't clickety clack down a straight line track

We haven't blogged too much about it, but Trey's job has pretty rapidly gone downhill from difficult to troubling to intolerable. Maybe someday he'll feel like writing about it. At any rate, we are leaving Boston and moving back to Michigan. Trey has a great new job in Ann Arbor and I have a good lead as well. This sounds very neat and optimistic, but really it's been a sad, hard time out here. We pictured a certain type of work and life for our family here and when it became clear that our reality wasn't even close, it was hard to know what to do. Keep trying? Look elsewhere in Boston for work? Start a whole new job search for one or both of us? What does a smart compromise look like? What does giving up mean?

And so we will move our family....again. Even our boxes have deja vu this time around. We had a few very good friends here and now we have to leave them. I had a promising part time research position with a great boss that would've been interesting and a great way to ease back into work. Exploring Boston and New England could've been really fun. Instead we get the comfort of family nearby, a familiar city and our favorite restaurants, more frequent visits to Ellis's grandparents, and camping trips in the UP. Cliche, though it may be, choosing one option is always NOT choosing something else. We hope we are choosing more fulfilling work for both of us and a happier, more settled life for our little family.

or it could've just been a fluke

Ellis has really gotten into his train set lately, especially since his papa demonstrated that placing them on a low table made it oh so much easier to run the trains around the track. Here I think he is singing Marrakesh Express or something:
Both the sets we have (zoo and safari) involve lots of African plains animals and cars to move them around. Ellis likes moving animals between cars and occasionally giving the giraffe a chance to drive the engine. But he's still working out all the kinks in how to get the track to work together. A particular nuisance to assemble, but his favorite piece to use, is the bridge. It has special sloped pieces that must be used and there are only two of them in the big box of track. The other day, we found that he'd attempted the following solution, when unable to find said pieces.

Could this be an early symptom of "the knack"?

i don't usually do this kind of linking thing....

But, having long been of the opinion that lawns are kinda dumb, I must note a mainstream, very moderate suggestion for those of you with yards- here.

A discerning eye

This evening, I took advantage of my status at work to get home early enough to take the boy and the dog to the park for some exercise. Ellis spends a lot of his time outside looking at the sky these days, but I was still pretty amazed when amid the birds, the clouds, the contrails, and the air planes, he pointed at a barely visible finger nail clipping of lunar landscape and said, "I see moon, da, moon."

My hope is that before his third birthday, I can knock his socks off with the Aurora Borealis.

and speaking of jackasses

On different continents in different seasons, the lack of appreciation for whimsy is unchanged:

myrtle the turtle and friends

On Sunday we took the commuter rail down into the city and met our friends Ben and Elissa for a visit to the New England Aquarium. I was afraid that Ellis's favorite part of the trip might have been the subway ride or at least the part where he heard and alerted us to trains entering the station. But I shouldn't have been worried...

The aquarium was actually pretty crowded for a Sunday morning and, tragically, a reduced number of penguins were available for viewing due to tank cleaning. Before actually entering the building, we checked out the seals, which Ellis recognized from his Baby Beluga book. However, none of those seals do this weird, somnambulist pole dancing thing:
Next stop....Amazing Jellies! Amazing indeed.
The aquarium also has three kinds of penguins: little blue, African, and Rockhoppers. I guess I've only even seen "plain" penguins before (okay, probably some kind of banded penguin, and by the way, what is up with 3 different species of penguins being known as "jackass penguins"?- some originality please, people). Anyway, here's a photo of the little blue kind:
The biggest hit, though, was the three story central tank. The tank had several giant sea turtles, sharks, rays, and plenty of other other things I (shamefully) could not identify. We really liked all the little viewing windows along the ramp that circled the tank. They were contained in little cubbies so it felt a little more intimate in the crowded halls.
You can also view the tank from the top, which is actually less interesting because of the distortion. Also, your husband will keep telling you not to drop the baby into the tank and asking if you have a tight enough hold on him. I will grant that it might be possible for a kid to squirm out and fall in, but it was feeding time. Feeding time should be the safest time to drop someone in, really, because there are already 2-3 people swimming around in there in wetsuits and scuba gear. The safety did seem a little lax, actually; a guy feeding the lettuce to the sea turtles just stepped right over the wall to get in and out on to his platform. Anyone could have followed him.
Ellis loved watching the fish so much that I suggested maybe we should get a small aquarium for the apartment. Trey found this idea revolting and made some disparaging remarks (which I do not agree with and will not publish here) about the general nature of people who own aquariums. I guess he didn't know I had an aquarium in middle school...