Mmmm bacon.... Part 2

I have decided to use the maple syrup option for my 1st attempt.

 The cure is

1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup salt
1/2 cup maple syrup

Having reviewed the comments at Curious Kai I decided to premix the cure in the bag.

This is the raw pork belly:

This is the cure mixed in the bag:

This is the belly in the bag all nicely mixed up.

I also decided that I would store the belly in a clip lock container to prevent any spill issues.

Into the fridge with it and I will see how it looks tomorrow.

Mmmm bacon....

I have just received half a pig from my in laws. I am pretty excited about the possibilities of what can be done with it. The first experiment will be home cured bacon. I have the pork belly ready to go and saw a great recipe at Curious Kai Curious Kai. I plan to show the process as I go and am hopeful of a great and tasty outcome. The second bash at this pig will be tomorrow nights roast. It is a 6 hour process that I found on the Jamie Oliver website again I will take some photos as I go. I often find it interesting to see how real life cooking compare with what you see from the cook books.

In the meantime it is beer o'clock and I am looking forward to the rugby tonight. Hopefully this will be a good game and the Irish will give us a good run for our money.

Silly bitch

Why on earth does she think that because she has had a moderately successful career as an actress it entitles her to opine on world economics?

This is nice

It was a long drive but well worth it when this is the view from our room!

Off to Wanaka

A week off!

I have never worked so hard in my life and am finally having a week with the wife and kids away from Christchurch. I know I need it and I have never looked forward to a holiday so much.

We are again staying at the fantastic Edgewater Resort - thanks Dad! Hopefully the absolutely outstanding Gaynor  will still be working in the restaurant making coffee and fluffies for the kids.

We may pay a visit to the somewhat odd Toy Museum and of course to Puzzling World but that will have to be without a having had too many wines the night before as some of the rooms are fairly disturbing

Brian being silly again

Brian suggests that because he was no good at sport then it should not be compulsory. I think this is utter rubbish for a few reasons.

I was utterly shit at maths at school. I just never "got it" until I left school and was able to see practical uses for it (I was converting square feet of timber into cubic meters when made it all suddenly made sense). Following Brian's thought maths for me should have been optional. If that was the case how many kids would choose to take maths? Not a lot I would suggest. Even though I loathed maths what I learned despite myself has still been useful.

The same applies with english, science geography etc. There are some things that are important to know at least something about and sport is one of them.

Also at the secondary school I went to it was compulsory to do "standards" which was competing in 10 (from memory)  athletic events with every performance scored and counting toward a house competition. There were a lot pf people who were not very good but the encouragement of the other house members for all of the participants irrespective of ability was something to see. Even the most useless performer was encouraged by all of the other house members.  I didn't really have much aptitude at athletics but looking back I can see that by making everyone be involved it was beneficial to all of us. In fact I remember bloody near killing someone when I stuffed up a hammer throw! You could see some of the kids who lacked confidence (as clearly Brian did) really put the effort in when they had 50-60 people cheering them on. I know I did.

While I can sympathise with Brian's point I cannot agree.

Back yet again

Work has been just insane but today I feel like I have turned a corner. I caught up on jobs not done for weeks and all of the buildings that need demolition are sorted for now.

All of the talk about insurance companies being pricks has thus far (and touch wood) been untrue.

The people who believe the "squeaky wheel gets the oil" are beginning to understand the scale of what has happened here.

I have two meetings tomorrow for non Christchurch complexes and that almost seems like a day off! Prior to the quakes I would have been uptight about making sure I had every detail covered to the nth degree - not so much now.

I hope to get some blogging done and have a few thoughts on current events and the reconstruction of Christchurch.