Well, I'm going to be a bit honest here... While my friends in the San Francisco area were enjoying 75 degree weather and enjoying their local farmers' markets, we were busy digging ourselves out from yet another snow storm. Working on breaking a 1939 record or so I hear. We had a blast with our neighbors, who called to say we were all snowed in (thanks to a mean-spirited plowman who left a 3 1/2 foot ridge of ice at the foot of our driveways), let's get together an eat whatever's in our refrigerators. It was hilarious. They brought two pasta appetizers (gnocchi with blue cheese sauce, spaghetti al forno), we had wet-aged Black Angus NY steaks with a balsamic thyme shallot sauce topped with buttermilk battered onion rings plus a green salad with toasted pecans and avocado. For dessert, we had homemade caramel-poached pears on vanilla ice cream. Not bad, eh?
The problem was that we also drank 4 bottles of wine and half a bottle of Grey Goose vodka (neighbor Ron's favorite). Somewhere into the second bottle (and after a lovely shaken martini), I was deep fat frying the onion rings. Unfortunately, I was apparently using a pot that wasn't deep enough for the festivities. Peanut oil spewed out of the pan and onto the stove and floor (and our clothes). Ever the calm one in an emergency, I simply stated "I'll go get the fire extinguisher" to which my husband said, "It's not going to catch on fire." Two seconds go by and.... Whooof. The whole stovetop is aflame. We tamped it down without the extinguisher, what a mess. We're still laughing about it today (while we all shoveled out yet again after another foot of snow).
Tonight, I think we'll have, hmmmm....
Bananas Foster!
Tonight, I think we'll have, hmmmm.... 
1 comment:
Over on my Sugar Mountain Farm blog on the Ton of Peanut Butter post you asked about the flavor peanut butter will impart to pork.
Definitely. Thus I would not want to feed them too much. I also don't want to unbalance the protein mix so the peanut butter is being fed slowly. A ton of peanut butter to two hundred pigs over several months only comes out to only a few of ounces of peanut butter per day per pig.
I focus the peanut butter on the main herd, piglets and growers who need higher protein. At the same time their still getting their free feeding diet of whey and pasture/hay. We'll see if it changes flavor but at that rate of feeding I think we'll be fine.
Interestingly, pigs are not piggy like people think. They're actually very cautious about new flavors and don't dig in to something strange. This is likely a survival trait - new can be quite dangerous.
One thing that is important is variety of diet. In the summers they get the most variety since they're out on pasture. With winter the hay is more limited in variety as well as freshness.
As an experiment I'm planning to take one pig and feed it up in the last two weeks on free feed of peanut butter to see just what that does to the flavor. Until then, everyone's just getting a little bit.
Cheers,
-Walter
Post a Comment