I'm a terrible blogger. I do awesome, cool stuff every day, but can't manage to take pictures of it all and write a few words to share it. But, I'll make an exception today because I'm having a heck of a day and I actually remembered to snap some pics!
Andy and I have been very busy the last few months. We've picked a name for our business:
Hank & Hazel's Butcher Shop and Eatery, and we've just finished working with our graphic designer on our logo. How cool is that?!
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| The logo! Isn't it just too cute? |
In between meetings with our architect to design the renovations to the building we bought, and meetings with the City of Vacaville planning department, we've been going crazy with recipe development. I have no excuse for not sharing with you all our progression from struggling to get the texture of our sausages right using the KitchenAid attachments, and forgetting to add curing salt to a full size ham(yikes! What a waste!!), to some of our true successes - such as the homemade Pastrami Reuben that just melted in your mouth or our Bockwurst which is light and fluffy and so yum!
Which brings us to today - the day I will actually tell you about some of these adventures. I got up really early so I could get out to Starbucks for my free birthday drink. Venti Iced Americano - what a way to start the day! By the time I got back to the house, Andy had gotten the Turchetta cooking in the sous vide and put yesterday's production of hot links into the smoker. The Turchetta was my brother, Seamus' idea - its two turkey breasts seasoned with typical porchetta seasonings (but with sage as the dominant spice), rolled up in turkey skin and slow cooked for four hours. See pics below!
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| Turchetta Spice Mix |
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| The Turchetta. Looks pretty cool, huh? |
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| Slicing it up - pretty delish! |
For the Hot Links, Andy and I challenged ourselves to try to develop a recipe that would be better than my Dad's favorite "Evergood" hot links. So, when we pulled our links from the smoker at like 9am, it seemed only right to cook up one of each and do a taste test. I've had a lot of decadent birthdays over the years, but none have included a sausage taste-off before 10am. Andy - thanks for keeping it interesting!
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| The sausages just before coming out of the smoker! I wish you all could have smelled it! |
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| Cast Iron Cook-Off |
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| The Evergood is redder, but ours has better smoke, more complex flavors and is bigger. I feel like there is a really good sausage / size joke here, but I'll leave that to your imagination... |
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After all this, it's obviously time to start making some sausage, right? After butchering up that turkey yesterday for the turchetta, we turned the rest of it into trim for Turkey Sausage with Tart Cherries (it should be mentioned that we reserved the drumsticks to smoke and make caveman style drummies for Andy and my Dad...obviously...) Didn't get pics of the sausage making process - I promise I'll do a good job of that one of these days.
Now time to read all of the lovely birthday messages on Facebook and watch World Cup soccer with my amazing husband while the baby naps, before meeting up with my family for a birthday celebration filled with board games, dry-aged steaks and ice cream with caramel sauce. Meatiest birthday I've ever had. Thank you all for making it amazing!!
