Mmm...Pork!

A little over a week ago we brought home our first pig from the locker. The thing I loved most about bringing it home (at the time) was that it was so much easier to load for this trip than the trip the pig took to the locker! This time I just threw some boxes of white paper wrapped piggy into the back of the Expedition and off I went. No pushing, no mud, no mess, and no problems! But, the actual best thing about bringing the pork home has been eating it. Here is what we have had so far.

• Pork Chops - We had to start with the Iowa gold standard first, so we started with a couple nice red butterfly pork chops. The color was amazing and the taste was even better. Two chops was enough for the entire family at supper and then I had the leftovers for lunch the next day. I can't wait until we have pork chops again, but I do need to make sure I save some for the grill.
• Cottage Bacon and Regular Bacon - Next we had a breakfast night at supper so along with our scrambled eggs and fresh bread we had bacon ... of the regular variety and the cottage variety which comes from the shoulder instead of the side. Both were wonderful and it was great to have bacon that tasted like something! Later on we had some cottage bacon on our pizza ... that was amazing!
• Ham Steak - On another night we had one of my farm meal favorites. Ham, corn, baked potatoes, and bread. I have to admit I was a little nervous about the ham because a lot of that taste has to do with the cure, but this was some great ham. In fact we have had a few different people comment on how good the ham was. I loved the taste and I loved the tenderness.
• Pork Tacos and Pork Spaghetti - We didn't have any beef in the house, but that wasn't a problem because we had nice little packages of ground pork. In both cases we friend them up in a pan and then made our meal. The first night it was spaghetti sauce and the next night it was taco meat. I suppose this was a little out of the ordinary, but it actually was pretty good. The biggest plus was that I didn't have to go to the store for ground meat though!
• Sliced Sandwich Ham - Just about like the ham steaks, but just smaller slices. We had this for lunch after our class up in Ames. My Grandma just steamed it for a bit and then we put it on some toasted buns. This will be a great meal for a quick lunch.
• Pork Shoulder Roast - Sunday morning my wife put a three pound roast in the crock pot before we headed to church. When we came home a few hours later we were greeted to a very pleasant smell and some tender and juicy pork roast. The whole family enjoyed this meal and we still have some in the fridge for later.
• Chocolate Chip Cookies - You are probably thinking I'm crazy now, but it is true. Just last night we made chocolate chip cookies with pork lard instead of Crisco. Thanks to one of my wife's friends (and a pork customer) we had a jar of freshly rendered lard to add to the recipe. I will admit that it seemed a little odd, but they taste great. In fact these are almost healthy chocolate chip cookies because we have some our nice outdoor/pastured pig lard in them, oatmeal in them, and freshly ground wheat instead of white flour. Of course the key word there is almost...

There you have it. We still haven't had a chance to try the Italian sausage or the breakfast sausage yet, but they will get their chance soon enough. In fact, I think there may even be a couple of other cuts we need to test out. All in all there has been some great eating at Stoneyfield Farm lately!