Something tells me you really like this place's sausage and it isn't very close to your house. How are my detective skills?
You got it! I stopped at The Big E in Easthampton, MA, which specializes in kielbasa, and The Smokehouse of the Catskills, a german-style meat and sausage store. I got a smoked ham hock, a garlic and herb liverwurst, and some double-smoked bacon at the smokehouse.
I'm sure you can find some grillin wood on the journey home. Unless you are just teasing us with a sample of the sausages, you have room for a couple of rounds. Safe travels.
Wow, you took some road trip Midwinter ! Great day for it. Not that I'm stalking you, but I checked out both places and next time I'm in Saugerties I will check out that smoke house. The pictures of their meats look great! The big E looks like a good all in one market and seems the prices are pretty good, I could see myself buying way more than I needed there. Wish they had a store near me.
Kinda reminds me of Lock Haven Pa My mom grew up there, I still have family there and lived there with my G'parents for kindergarten, and then 6th grade when my Nan passed and Pap wanted me with him. Great memories there, and the butcher shops were the best in my "small world". Lots of German heritage, great meats, awesome eats. Although I thought I'd vomit the first time Pap 'n an uncle butchered a hog. Never seen so much blood in my life. Didn't vomit, and found that blood sausage is great. I hunt and butcher, and we raised three turkey's some yrs ago that we harvested. Not sure that I'm up to it on a regular basis. Too much of the easy life I guess.
Yep, that's nasty business right there. Used to do 6-8 of em twice a year with my Uncle & Grand dad. Not pretty, but tasty later on.
Yep, the best pork chops I ever ate was raised in some small back yard animal farm in lower upstate NY. Butchered and eaten the same day and I couldnt believe the flavors compared to what we buy at supermarkets! I'm sure a lot has to do with the diet, but also I imagine the freshness as it was never even refrigerated being so freshly butchered.
Best pork I ever had was a back yard pig that had been eating acorns. There were 3 pigs, and when our (inexperienced) friend went to kill the first one, the other two ganged up on him and knocked him down. He eventually prevailed and was lucky he wasn't seriously injured.
I've been told that you should always separate them beforehand, much due to fear/adrenaline impacting the flavor of the meat Once again, I have nothing but second hand advice on this. But I surely don't need two other critters coming to the rescue while I'm trying to work.
He was supposed to train the pig to get up in the truck bed, by providing treats, so it could be shot right in the truck for convenience. But,being a drunk, he never got around to doing that. Hence the melee on pig slaughtering day.
With my pig story (and I'm going back 20 years) there were two pigs dropped within minutes of each other using a point blank shotgun slug to the skull. I asked the butcher (who is a distant in-law relative of mine) what the other pig did while his friend was shot. He said he did nothing because he just put out the pig feed so he was eating away happily and just looked up a second when he heard the blast and back to pigging out. I thought that was pretty interesting.
thanks for the advice. I almost scored some locust back in April (older roadkill), but upon discovering maggots under the bark, i quickly decided not to take it. Snakes, bees, critters dont bother me, but the sight of maggots really skeeves me out. EW! gross! Cute little pile of splits from my 4 log dump score. In a way im envious of you car hoarders. You end up with wood by "littles" and its not a lot to process and get more. I dont like to have a large volume of rounds/logs on hand or even mounds of splits waiting to be stacked. Id haunt the dump a lot, but have lots of wood already available to me. It is fun to stop there now and then though. How is the pizza oven working? Have you been using it at all?
one thing i dont do at our dump or messy scores. What i can grab on the ground or close to it. Great looking score BTW!
Yep The only wood smelly enough to attract an egg laying fly. Most wood gets termites, but B L gets maggots Lol! Thanks for asking Buzz! The Pizza oven is great, but not practical for everyday use since it takes an hour and a half of eating wood to get it to temps and a good coal supply. It makes great pizza and I used it three times to great success and fun. That said, though I'm Italian, I'm not the best with getting the dough not to stick to the peel when building the pizza on it. I am probably not fast enough causing the dough to stick and every 5th pie becomes a tragedy. My Brother in law got me these pizza screens (like the picture) below and said this will be a game changer next time. I haven't tried them yet, but I think it will do the trick since I have no problem rolling the dough out and lifting it on to the peel. Now instead just spray some Pam and throw dough on the screen. Once the pizza lands successfully on hot bricks though you are good to go as it instantly sets the dough. Having the screen will also mean I don't need to fuss as much sweeping the ash off the cooking surface. Since it takes so long to get oven up to temps, but it really holds the heat for a good few hours after cooking pies I decided last time to try to make a small roast at the end of every pizza session. This worked great for this 5lb hunk of goat! I have a huge fire brick block that perfectly seals up the opening. I just put the roast in and shut the vault for 1hr 20min when I made the goat. I also made some killer butter shrimp scampi that I cant wait to make again! The scampi you can make along with the pizzas, 5 min and done for 2 1/2 lbs worth. Sorry forgot to take photo, but someone there did so there is one out there somewhere haha. I keep it wrapped in a tarp when not in use now as seen below where I'm about to grill some sesame peppered tuna belly. Im sorry to go on so long, but you got me started on food. Anyway, I also make pickles like the half sour variety and just finished a batch. that's cabbage on top under the plastic wrap by the way. This particular jar is about the size of 2 large pickle jars and I have another jar that is almost 2 gallons. These pickles are so easy to make and supposed to be good for you, but I like them on my hot dogs so there go the health benefits
I thought you might. I mean barrel pickles go hand in hand with polish sausage. I'm sure you also like sauerkraut, so do I and one day I plan on making my own. Reason I haven't done so yet is sauerkraut is reasonably cheap to buy and though I prefer a good fresh batch, I'm not too picky... even like the canned variety. Sauerkraut is also more investment in process and time where these pickles literally take 15 minutes to prepare and as quick as 2 days time fermenting in the brine. I love this kind of pickle and got fed up paying $5 or more for about 6 or so pickles in a jar. So I went on Youtube and watched some videos on homemade barrel cured pickles and was like "Really that's it!", and yes it turned out to be so simple. In fact the less fuss the better, these are also referred to as being pro-biotic. The trick (if not growing your own) is to find the right size gherkins in good crisp shape and not ones that look like they were dragged through the mill or no matter what you do you won't get a crunchy pickle as an end product.
