However, this year, I’ve had a revelation (courtesy of living in a city ripe with flora). I could do some city-foraging. It happened by accident, on a mid-summer bike ride, but I stumbled across some easily accessible elderflower bushes and recalled a recipe I’d been eyeing up in River Cottage Preserves Handbook No.2.

Elderflower Cordial. I already had multiple swing-top litre bottles lying about and was looking for new ideas for some seasonal cocktails to make at the bar featuring seasonal flare. “Something in a bottle we can just mix with something else” is what I was told. At the time, I sighed, since I’d been trying to give subtle flare to some old Pimm’s cocktails, but I knew I could figure something out. After all, the best cocktail is often the simplest.

So the next afternoon, literally the last cool day before what was going to be a massive heatwave, my partner and I tied some brown sacks to the bike racks, packed scissors and string and set out to forage for some elderflower. I got quite a haul while still being respectful of the elderflower bush, leaving many flowers to berry for fall. Just enough to make a full batch or cordial and a quart of infused vodka.

Words of advice for those looking to do infusions and cordials with elderflower? Do mind the insects but know that you can always strain them out afterwards. Also, keep in mind you’re definitely going to need some orange and/or lemon zest in both. What elderflower lends to the cordial is a delightful aromatic that rides on a citrus chariot. Each flavour advances the other. But you do need a good balance, since you don’t want the zest to overpower your floral bouquet. I’m definitely excited about next year’s batch, since I’ll be ready for the season and won’t leave much time between picking and infusing (this happened, I suffered some wilt but all is well).

That said, it’s time for summer cocktails and floral lemonades.

The difference is, this year, it’s going to cost more.

If you remember an article posted earlier this Summer, the meat market wasn’t quite equipped to handle this year’s bacon boon (or much of any summer meat boon). If you’re like many other unprepared impulse-driven Americans, you didn’t buy pork early, and now you may be noticing the salted meat is going to cost you quite the penny. With the herds being cut down from swine flu and other economic factors such as an unwavering demand in light of a recession and just general food inflation, the costs are forecast to stay up through August.

A recent article in Bloomberg Businessweek says:

Kalo expects that monthly average pork-belly prices will top year-over-year records through December.

The U.S. hog-breeding herd is near the smallest on record, after pork producers lost about $6 billion from late 2007 through early 2010, according to University of Missouri data. Total hog inventories on June 1 dropped 3.6 percent from a year earlier to 64.4 million animals, the USDA estimates.

Funny thing about bacon though, we pay for it no matter what. The price may go up, but when one of us bacon-zombies walk into the market, it doesn’t matter if it’s 3.00/# or 7.00/#, we pick it up, and take it home.

So I guess what I’m really saying is, eat up, those tomatoes won’t last.

It is summer here in the Midwest and I have neglected you. I have been busy, working for cash money, in the garden, in the kitchen and in my garage studio and apartment studio. To put it bluntly, I have been and will probably continue to neglect you until fall. Unless of course something tickles my fancy and I find myself not distracted and can put something here.

Regardless, my apologies and I’ll see you for sure come Oktober.

In the meantime, please follow my flickr to follow my year in canning.

-Left Overs

I don’t have time to comment much right now, but I felt the need to post this and the articles informing me in order to inform you so you can write the the government immediately and encourage them now to go through with new regulations on mobile slaughter units that would thus put another nail in the coffin that is local meat procurement. Trust me, this is important, if you think the local butchers stocked with local meats is a dream from a by-gone era, you can be rest assured these new regulations will push that idea that much further into dream land.

Currently I am working on designing quick-flyers to post in my community with the following information attached, as well as throwing multiple art projects on the back burner in order to move Tour de Meats: The History of a Business on the Verge of Extinction for Madison, WI. Tour de Meats was inspired by artist Katie Ries currently in Knoxville, TN and although my version has a different goal in mind, it involves engaging a community.  In my case, I plan to address the absence of locally sourced butchers and meat processors once common throughout our country and almost expected in a region rich in German, Polish and Scandinavian ancestry, by sourcing the points of former businesses and making note of any current ones. It will require time at the state historical society, researching county history and current business maps as well as investigating how where current local farmers process their meats. I’ll be looking for community involvement. It will not be done before the June 19th closing of open comment on the HACCP Validation at Regulations.gov but regardless it will be an important project in community awareness none-the-less.

Below you will find various articles to inform you on what is going on as well as resources on how to send a letter and express your concern in a timely fashion before new regulations are passed.

• NMPAN (Niche Meat Processors Assistance Network) provides you with a form letter to send by June 11th
• AAMP (American Association of Meat Processors) provides ample information and various ways to get in touch with local legislators, Senators, and Representatives
• The following is extracted from Marion Nestle’s recent article on the topic and is also the source of the articles linked below. This explains how to comment through the Federal eRulemaking Portal at Regulation.gov.

If enough people complain about this problem, the USDA might get moving on it.  The guidelines are a good first step.

The guidelines, by the way, are up for public comment.  For comments (or attached files with lengthier comments), go to the Federal eRulemaking Portal.   Be sure to include the agency’s name, USDA, and docket number FSIS-2010-0004.  Comments must be filed within 60 days.

Please read the following articles in order to better inform yourself on the subject, and then, please use any of the methods above to try and prevent any of this from going through.

• Joe Cloud “The Fight to Save Small-Scale Slaughterhouses” via The Atlantic
• Christine Muhlke “A Moveable Beast” via New York Times
• Two different articles in the San Francisco Chronicle “Small Farmers Wary of USDA’s Food Safety Plan” and “How High-Tech Butchers, Niche Operations Differ”
• Validation of HACCP Systems information and ways to contact stated in links above
• Marissa Guggiana “A Good Death: The State Of Slaughter In Our Community

You’ll be hearing more from me as the month progresses…

Simply put it is pumpernickel, sour cream, sprouts, tomato, cucumber, avocado, some roast beef if you wish and maybe some salt.

American’s may not be aware that their supply of cheap meats is about to go up in smoke (maybe a bit of a dramatization, but still). A recent article from the ChicagoTribune discusses the current economic climate in regards to the meat market and what that could mean for grills around the country. While our pocket books have been suffering, and our buying habits altered, farmers have been cutting back their herds to keep their pocket books in check as well. With Americans buying less meat, there was no need for herds to be the size they were previously. In consequence the “U.S. hog population, for instance, has fallen 6.2 percent from its peak at the end of 2007, even as the human population kept growning.”

With farmers using the futures market to lock in the more favourable prices per head, the Agriculture Department has forcast the meat prices to go up dramatically as demand for meat continues to grow while the supply remains cut. This is for all meats, turkey, chicken, cattle, pork; all herds have been downsized and all prices are moving up.

Unfortunately, while the prices trend upwards, many American’s pocket books will remain slim throughout this grilling season. For them the best option is to buy now, freeze, eat later. From shoulder to sausage, it’s all goin’ up.

Their manifesto is wonderful and their butcher bios make me smile; truely a great meat appreciation blog.

Our culture is at the precipice of something very dangerous. And from where we sit, perched high up in our blogoshpere, we have a clear view. We look over the plains and mountains and valleys and see a homogenized America. A pasteurized country, full of gated communities, shopping malls, minivans, Happy Meals, Hot Pockets and Lunchables. Our meat is pre-masticated and fed to us the way a mother bird nourishes her chicks. It’s the country of Whoppers and Big Macs. These foods have as much to do with real beef as Us Weekly has to do with Herman Melville. The nation has blurred, become soft, domesticated and tame. It’s been lost to corporate cookie-cutter chains serving cheeseburger pizzas and pepperoni that shouldn’t be fit for Snausages dog treats. Well, we’re here to take it back.-

from The Manifesto @ TheButcherBlog.com

I think it’s important to reach out and thank any meat advocacy with an inkling of thought behind their steak joy and The Butcher Blog is just that. They’ve recently done an article on grinding your own hamburger meat, and if you haven’t done so, I encourage you to try. If you do that, you’re one step away from homemade sausage and who can resist homemade sausage?? I’ve been quite busy here, although not working on new work as I should have, but I promised myself I’d get some drawings done and some posters printed over the next few months. With finances going tight, I’m sure I’ll be working ‘in’ more often and I’ll pop up with a spot of something to say more frequently.

Currently I am thinking of ways to cure sausage at home, and realize this requires a thorough skimming of Charcuterie as well as some home-rigged curing station instructions.

We’ll see.

Given we only cured a little under two pounds of meet, there wasn’t much and we ate it instantaneously. This left me with only a photo of the meat colour upon removing from its brine and a little spice pouch that you threw in when you boilded the meat over 3 hours. We opted to throw the meat in the pot and go for a morning bike ride to kill time. When we came back it was time to throw in the veg. I highly recommend parsnips if you don’t normally use them in your boiled dinner. Their flavour permeates everything nicely, almost like adding another herb altogether.

Also, if you haven’t noticed, I use a tea ball for my spice bag. Traditionally I do wrap everything in cheesecloth, but when I run out, I find a tea ball works great, and you are using something then throwing it away.
All-in-all a great corned beef success! Next year, I’ll have the insta-cure to cross-compare the two methods. And possibly try adding some lager to the brine.

Since I’ve left home I’ve opted out of this tradition. Mostly because I forgot, didn’t have time or just was more interested in drinking. But this year, I’m hopping on the bandwagon and makin’ a classic New England Boiled Dinner for the week of St.Patrick’s Day. A holiday truly more for the Irish Catholics than the German American Lutheren born. And a holiday that has been transformed into an American Drinking and feasting binge—the latter still true to the 1600′s. Oh, and we wear green.

That could take me down a ramble about Kraut, Beer, Brats and Germans vs. Corned Beef, Clovers, Whiskey and the Irish.

Anyways…with me you will not find a shrink-wrapped piece of meat. You will find a 3.75lb brisket with a first-cut amount of fat wrapped in butcher’s paper, waiting to join by drawer of roasting potatoes, carrots, cabbage and parsnips. I’m going to make my own corned beef, right here, in my fridge. It’s a simple brine, and if you don’t care about the rosey colour of your meat, you can do it with ingredients easily found in any local grocer. This is referred to as grey-meat, and it won’t kill you as this is short-cure.

You begin by preparing your brine. Kosher Salt, Pickling Spice (your own blend or store-bought), some Sugar mixed with 2 liters of water. Bring it to a simmer until everything has dissolved then let cool to room temperature and chill overnight. At this point you can bring out your brisket (I cut mine down to 2lbs, and froze the rest for later). Rinse off the brisket and immerse the brisket in the chilled brine. You can do this a few ways: sealed in a brining bag, or in a large pot with a plate atop the brisket to keep it submerged. But the brisket must stay submerged.

My choice is my kraut-crock, with a plate weighed down with a smaller crock filled with water. This way I know the meat is really covered.

This is where I’m at now. I had hoped to do the brine full-up with some pink salt (insta-cure#1) which would add to the flavour and retain the meat’s pink colour through curing. However, the only supplier in a 50 mile radius was in a town that far away that I had just come from the night previously. Needless to say, I wasn’t about to spend 15 bucks on gas for a 4 dollar bag of pink salt. That’s for later, and I can see past grey meat. But do know that if you encounter a corned beef recipe that includes pink salt (not Himalayan pink salt, this is a curing salt, and is usually found at specialty stores that carry home curing and sausage making supplies/seasonings) you can usually remove it and be okay, your meat will just be more greyish and could probably benefit from a day or two longer in the brine.

Part II: Roasting for tomorrow.

Most of us purchase it from a store to use probably, at most, occasionally in cooking. It has impeccable shelf life and lends a wonderful flavour. But it comes for a price and it’s 2 dollars too much when i only need 1/3 cup. Conveniently, it is very easy to make ghee (just a step beyond clarifying butter), and the process itself is quite satisfying. All you need is 1/2 lb butter, a small saucepan, a spoon, some cheese cloth and a jar. Plus 30 minutes of your time (maybe less maybe longer, depending on how much you want to make, but the process it the same for any amount).

The gist of it is, take the 1/2 butter, cube it and place it in a saucepan over heat over low then medium heat, just like if you were to clarify butter, but instead of stopping at clarification you continue to cook the butter, browning the milk solids, giving the ghee it’s nutty flavour.

When you begin, the butter will produce a foam, After 5-7 minutes or so the foam will begin to break as the milk solids will fall to the bottom of the pan. Then, you brown the milk solids. This is my favourite part of making ghee, while you continue to heat the butter, moving it past the clarified stage and into the ghee stage, you can take a spoon and gently move aside any remaining foam to see the solids begin to brown at the bottom of the pan. When you begin to smell a sweet nutty aroma, remove the pan from the heat and let it sit for 10 minutes. Sitting allows the butter to absorb more of the nutty flavour from the solids.

Pass it through cheesecloth to remove the solids and package in a glass jar. From this point it is shelf stable, but will have a longer life if refrigerated. You can also use the milk solids in rice for flavour if you so choose. I haven’t tried it yet, but I imagine it lends a nice note of nuttiness.

GHEE. done.