Happy New Year and New Projects

[NCPaul]

Here's wishing everyone a happy and healthy 2020! I've started planning an Italian and a Korean snack sticks, a new chicken sausage and a British sausage that I tasted last fall. What's everyone else planning?

[Swing Swang]

Due to ill health shortly after moving into a 400 year house on a smallholding with a holiday business things have stalled on the sausage making front - I have an amazing wife who has kept things together, and as a consequence we've kept the momentum going.

On the sausage front the big project is the polytunnel - still a frame at the moment as I am wheelbarrowing 15 tonnes of compost into it, although the cover should go on next week. I'm setting it up as a 'no-dig' system, which I hope will allow me to keep gardening for a few years longer than would otherwise be possible in the probable event of frailty.

The idea has always been to grow a lot of capsicum/sweet bell peppers to turn them in to massa de pimentao, an essential ingredient in Alenjejo-style Portuguese chourico and which makes up about 5% of the total mix. Anything that I over produce can be sold into the Portuguese community.

If the land dries out and I can get the fencing contractors in before the spring I'd like some weaners in this year too, but they may have to wait until next year. The idea was to be able have a salami from my own pigs, own capsicum paste, own garlic, own sea salt within 5years of arriving which takes us to July 2022.

Where there is no vision, the people perish - Proverbs 29:18

Happy New Year to you all

Philip

[NCPaul]

Happy New Year!

I'm planning on making hams and some kielbasa for 2021. I'd also like to do a Snackstick with peri-peri sauce.

[wheels]

Happy New Year. I've got a list as long as my arm of things to try; many of them are NCPaul's fault for posting so many fantastic looking products! I used a couple of new recipes at Christmas - one for the sausages for pigs in blankets and another for the sausage rolls and cocktail sausages. One was my own recipe and the other an adaption of one posted by Weschenfelders, a butchers supply company.

Phil

[NCPaul]

Happy New Year! I hope all are happy and well (I counted down the new year at 10 PM).

I was really pleased with the small rolled hams I got from butchering a whole leg and will explore doing that again this year. I'm also thinking about a chicken sausage using the spices used on fried chicken.

[NCPaul]

Happy New Year! I got a smoking gun so I can do some small scale experiments with smoking. I'd like to explore using spices and herbs to see if I can get new flavors in cold smoking. I'm also going to nail down a Sichuan style snackstick.

[Swing Swang]

Happy New Year NCPaul. Hope the experiments go well, please share the highs and lows, the hits and misses. Apparently guava bark/wood is used for smoking by some communities - would love to know what sort of flavour that imparts. Not the sort of thing you come across in the UK. Tea leaves are ready to use, and I've used rooibos to impart some interesting flavours. Otherwise I'm pretty boring - oak and apple - so looking forward to your insights.