Hand Coding

This morning started out fairly ordinarily:

• The alarm goes off with the usual high-strung DJs yapping about something or other inconsequential…
• I pull back my sheets and roll out of bed…
• I then walk over to my desk and take a drink from my glass of water…
• I stretch a bit and start wandering over my closet to pick out my clothes for the day…

Then, my alarm goes off and I wake up for real. Ugh. At least the radio wasn’t playing “I Got You Babe”. I’m not a morning-hater, but those first few moments of consciousness where I’m still trying to convince my brain that I’m no longer sleeping can be trying at times. And now I had to go through all that again? Silly meta-brain, tricks are for kids!

I was browsing through Ask MetaFilter and came across a thread on the weirdness of non-American pork (at least, in from the poster’s perspective). The thread is interesting in itself in some ways, but then about halfway in, a guy who goes by “obiwanwasabi ” busts out with a make-your-own bacon recipe:

Make your own bacon — it’s dead easy. Buy a couple of pounds of pork belly. Rub the pork all over with salt, sugar/dextrose and sodium nitrite (pink salt), then put it in a ziploc bag for a while. The liquid comes out of the pork, making a brine that cures the meat. When it feels firm in the centre (about a week), pop it in a low oven til it reaches an internal temp of 150°F / 65°C. Take it out of the oven, remove the skin while it's hot, chill it &mdsah; voila, bacon. I can post a more detailed recipe from this book tonight if you like, along with a couple of recipes for sausage.

Bacon is tasty, to be sure, but it does seem suspiciously easy to make. I don’t think I’m courageous enough to try this, but I could see some of my meat-adept friends giving this a try (yes, this means you, Ru & Roger).