Charcuterie and me

So Christmas before last my amazing husband bought me a meat grinder and a book called Charcuterie. I was so excited I read much of it picked out projects and then got busy with the travel agency.....sigh....so this year my goal is to be more balanced.

In a great first attempt at this I am starting my first project out if the book. Bacon! Who doesn't love it.

This book is setup kind of like a cooking course so I am going to try and work my way through the recipes as such.

Lesson one...make a dry cure...complete
Lesson two Bacon

So far this lesson has consisted of finding a butcher that sells pork belly....the first one was asking his supervisor where to get pig stomachs.......luckily I was able to correct the request and was sent to Horst Meats which is a farm that sells such items as they butcher their own.

While waiting on my pork belly I met a nice country looking gentleman who tells me I should only cure it five days or it will be too salty, so....I think I will check it at five days and see.

I have 8 pounds of pork belly so I am going to divide it in half and doone with just the dry cure and one either maple or birch maybe maple habenero ...yummmmmm
This is is what eight pounds of pork belly skin on looks like:

Then in the bag, I used flake salt instead of regular kosher salt...hopefully it will be ok....on has maple syrup in it.

Now I have to wait and tur the bag every other day.

Buzz agent item: Crunchy Nut Cereal by Kellogg's

Most of you already know that I am a Buzz Agent, to find out more about how I get to try things for free or how to join check out my first post.

Now on to the good stuff. So my box arrived right before dinner, so for dessert we tried the Crunchy Nut Honey Roasted Flakes. Delish! Everyone in the house loved it, from the two year old to the 46 year old. After dishing out a third serving the family said they didn't think there would be any left for the morning. Well good thing there was just enough left because our sweet bug wanted it for breakfast! Needless to say I bought two more boxes yesterday. One of the flakes and one of the roasted nut and honey O's.

Things to know:

Price 3.89at Sunny way
4.00 at food lion
Both cereals hold us well in milk and almond milk, however I love to eat it dry as a snack!

The cereals seem to be somewhat healthy.

Ideas of what to make with them:

Using the crunchy nut honey roasted nut flakes I am thinking those haystack things with peanut butter!

The crunchy roasted nut and honey o's I am thinking crispy treats with marshmallows or mixing it with peanuts and white chocolate and making Crunchy Nut drops!