Pigs become Pork

Well, the day of judgement finally arrived for young Ham, Sausage and Cha Xiu. Duncan took them off to the Cradoc Slaughterhouse Sunday a week ago, and on Friday night just gone, He, Katie and myself collected our sharpest knives and decamped to Tim's place for a night of home butchery.

Guided by Hugh Fearnley Whittstall's DVD 'Pig in a Day", his "Meat" cookbook, various webpages and a fair bit of blind luck (fuelled by Duncan's home brew) we managed to get oursleves a fair whack of lovely organic pork. By the end, the pigs came in at about 70Kg each, which meant hams of about 15Kg. You can work out the rest of it from there. needless to say, the frypan was working overtime cookin the scraps on Friday night. I've buried our ham
(as displayed here by the beautiful Katie) in about thirty kilos of salt. Gonna leave it there for a month, and then hang it in Mum & Dad's beautifully cool, yet sometimes drafty workshop for probably the best part of twelve months. We'll see what comes out of it then, eh? As for the rest of the product, it's bloody tasty, and well worth the effort involved. In fact, some Gordon's Knob Pork Neck was one of the primary ingredients in one of the dishes Mary served up to us at a sumptious Chinese dinner party hosted by Becher and herself on Saturday night. Yum yum.

BTW, Duncan and Jeannie (well, actually, Darcy the sow) are expecting another litter of young swine on about New Year's Day. Watch this space!

There's a few more pix of our flesh-riddled adventure here.