Day 1 on two choice ribeyes.

And… it was. We got the testing done early, but I stayed behind to support the clinical operations in case there were any problems.

And Sandy moved in, so I’m stranded near Milan, Italy for three days before I can fly home. As always, I’m going a little “hog-wild” on salume while I’m here (Yes, I did see the announcement about dry-curing salumi. Wonderful!). But that makes me even more glad that I got the beef started before I left town.

I’ve got the Ruhlman / Polcyn book “Salumi” with me, and it was a bit of a thrill to not only find Lardo di Colonnata available, but to also have another Lardo for comparison. The Colonnata crew have a definite edge.

This salumi news is going to be big, for me at least. I’m going to pull the texas-style smoker out of the garage to cold-smoke some speck, and all sorts of good stuff. The fact that it won’t be available until summertime is just part of the overall cost.

Cut-from-the-leg prosciutto-di-Parma is amazing stuff. I’m looking forward to what I can do — count on more ‘experiments’ showing up in this forum.

And here — I’ve hijacked my own thread from beef to pork. bummer.

Toasty