Vegetarians Avert Your Eyes...

Really, this might be the post to skip if you don't eat meat. In fact, I think you should just read my post about Arugula Pecan Pesto. Scroll down quickly too.

We love bacon in this house. Every Saturday morning we religiously make bacon and eggs with toast, my week would not be complete without this meal. At some point in my obsessions with food, I always try to recreate my favored item from scratch (this can be disastrous and has resulted in many failed candy experiments). Recently, we have made our own bacon with great success! I will document the whole process below.

Warning! The gross out factor is a little high here...

Homemade Bacon

modified from Charcuterie by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn

1. Obtain a pork belly. This was not difficult for us in Chapel Hill, pork belly is for sale at our farmers market in Carrboro or at our local butcher.

2. This is the gross step. Remove skin from pork belly, if it is present. I made Derek do this. You could wait to do this later, but the skin grossed me out. *

Note bag of skin in photo

There is no easy way to remove the skin. It is gross and time consuming, but I promise it will be worth it. The answer is to buy pork belly with no skin. It is available like this, but we did not know to ask.

Derek removing skin.

3. Make dry cure. Ingredients: 1/2 cup Kosher salt, 1/4 cup sugar, 1 tablespoon pink curing salt.

Pink curing salt is obtained from specialty stores, it is also known as nitrite salt and it prevents the botulism, makes the meat a nice color, changes the flavor, etc. It is also toxic in large quantities. Life lesson = use for curing, not for the table.

4. Add about 1/4 to 1/2 cup of the salt to a tray of some kind with a couple of tablespoons crushed black peppercorns and about 1/4 cup of dark brown sugar. Stir.

5. Wash and pat the belly dry. Coat in salt mixture, shake of excess. Place the belly in a plastic bag and get as much air out as you can.

Yummy dry cure

6. Put the pork in the fridge and let it cure sitting flat for about 7 days, flipping it every other day to redistribute the juices.

7. After 7 days if the thickest part of the belly feels firm it is cured. If it is still feeling squishy keep it refrigerated for another day or two.

8. Rinse the belly thoroughly and pat dry with paper towels. Curing liquid should be discarded.

9. Preheat oven to 200 degrees (Fahrenheit).

10. In a roasting pan, roast belly until it reaches an internal temperature of 150 degrees (F), this will take a couple of hours, maybe longer. This will now smell delicious and look like bacon. You could also remove the skin here while it is hot (and probably easier to remove). I was not willing to wait this long, because it weirded me out to have pig nipples curing in my fridge (yup, I said nipples).

11. Allow bacon to cool to room temperature, when it is cool, wrap, refrigerate and enjoy at your leisure. It will keep for about a week like this, but you can freeze it to make it last longer. Remember when you cook homemade bacon, it is really best cooked at low temperatures for a longer time period. It will still get crispy, but it needs longer and lower...

Homemade bacon on Saturday morning

*Derek asked me, "So you are willing to eat meat, but you don't want to think about it belonging to an animal?"

I replied "I know it belonged to a pig, I just don't want to see nipples hanging out in my fridge. It is weird."

Boat Captain

Captain Me (supervised by Lee)

Last weekend our dear friends Rachel and Lee sailed into my 'hood and we drove out to the coast to say hey. Rachel and I were in graduate school together in Denver. When I finished, I came out to North Carolina to drive around and dig stuff up. Rachel and Lee moved onto a sailboat. She blogs about her life on the sea and it is a pretty grand adventure.

On their way down south to the Carribean (because who would stay up north in the winter if they lived on a boat?), they stopped by me. We drove out to water to meet them and they took us sailing. We brought lunch out to the boat and sat in the galley (I love nautical words) to share some Weaver Street Market olive bread, sourdough bread, a nice aged gouda, and a Giacomo's Italian Market salami sampler. This lunch also made me happy. Nothing like a quick lunch of bread, cheese, and freshly made salami to give a person the energy to go out and sail a boat around.

The boat was particularly exciting, because I learned that day that I love sailing! They even let me drive the boat. I got to stand behind the wheel, widen my stance, put one hand on my hip and say things like "turn up" and "tighten the hatches" (by the way, I am making this all up. I said none of these things). When we were going upwind the boat was tilting very dramatically. I thought we were going to roll over. But Rachel and Lee did not let me crash their house. Apparently, it is supposed to tilt like that, something about keels. I am now going by Captain Sarah, or just Captain for short.

Note Lee making sure I did not tip the boat over.

Then we drove back to Carrboro and made a feast for weary sailors.

Pan Fried Flounder

1/4 cup flour

salt

pepper

cajun seasoning

1 whole flounder, filleted

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon unsalted butter

1. Heat a large heavy frying pan with olive oil and butter at medium high heat.


2. Mix flour with cajun seasoning, salt, and pepper (seasonings to taste).

3. Rinse flounder fillets and pat them dry with paper towels. Dredge the fillets in the seasoned flour, shake off excess flour.

4. Place fillets in the frying pan skin side up for about 4 or 5 minutes, flip and pan fry other side for an additional 4 minutes.

5. Serve the fillets with lemon wedges.

Rotini with Pecan-Arugula Pesto

(modified slightly from A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen by Jack Bishop)

3/4 cup pecans

1 1/2 cups packed arugula (stemmed)

2 cloves garlic, peeled

1/3 cup good tasting extra virgin olive oil

1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesean Cheese (and more for topping)

1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

salt

1 pound rotini

1. Heat a heavy frying pan on medium heat. Toast the pecans on medium heat until they start to get aromatic, then remove them from the heat and allow them to cool completely.

2. In a food processor, pulse the garlic cloves several times. Then add the arugula and pecans and pulse further until the leaves start to break up. While the food processor is running, add the olive oil slowly. Pulse in the grated parmesean cheese.

3. Scrape the pesto into a large bowl. Grate the nutmeg into the bowl and add salt to taste (this needs to be generous because it has to season the entire pound of pasta.

4. Meanwhile, bowl a large pot of water. Add the rotini pasta and bowl for about 7 or 8 minutes, you want the pasta to be cooked al dente. Drain pasta, reserve 1/2 cup of pasta water.

5. Add some of the pasta water to the large bowl, stir together the two until it has a saucy texture. Stir pasta into the sauce. Add more pasta water, if it is needed to help distribute the sauce.

6. Eat.

This feast was wonderful! Sorry for the lack of food photos. Bad blogger, bad...

Shovel Testing

I am an archaeologist. This is a fact that I have not discussed much recently, which is odd because I spend 40+ hours a week being an archaeologist. I travel as an archaeologist and every dinner party I go to I have to discuss being an archaeologist. Archaeology is actually a pretty diverse field. This is surprising to most people.

Typical conversation -
New acquaintance: "What do you do?"
Me: I am an archaeologist.
New acquaintance [is thinking, but how do you make money?]: "Who do you work for?"
Me: "I work for a cultural resource management (CRM) company."
New acquaintance: "So who pays you?"
Me: "I work for a private company that contracts with a variety of federal, state, local and private agencies."
New acquaintance: "Oh [then they decide to let the subject drop]. What is the coolest thing you have ever found?"

Everyone asks about the coolest I have found. I do not know the answer. Archaeology is about context. If a group did not have many ceramics and you find a sherd, this is cool. Ceramics are not as cool when you find 100+ sherds in every screen full of dirt.

Last week I was in Charleston, SC. We were working on a tract of land that has been a tea farm, rice plantation, and more modern housing. Did you know that tea was briefly subsized by the U.S. government? It was a largely failed enterprise as a whole. There is still one operating tea farm in the United States (see this). There were still wild tea plants growing across the tract.

Shovel Test

In CRM archaeology one common way of exploring an area that has not been previously surveyed is shovel testing. To shovel test an area a grid is established and regular holes are excavated throughout the grid. The distances are measured through pacing and the angles are determined using a compass. The dirt from each shovel test is screened for artifacts.

This is a sort of zen inducing activity. Walk, dig, screen, dig, notes, repeat. This is supposed to locate archaeological sites. Often it even allows sites to be roughly dated. Shovel testing is a necessarily flawed activity. What if a site is less than 30 meters in size and sits between shovel tests? Oh well... let me know if you think of another, better, way to find archaeological sites.

Blue Cheese Potato Carrot Soup

Today I found myself in need of a comfort food dinner. Derek told me he could not have too much cheese before he played hockey. This eliminated the macaroni and cheese option. I have been really obsessed with soups lately. We had black bean soup last week and butternut squash soup the week before.

So, I made up a recipe. One of my very first, now I am going to share it with you.

Blue Cheese Carrot Potato Soup

1 tablespoons unsalted butter

1 tablespoon olive oil (really you could use all olive oil if you want to avoid dairy)

4 medium sized carrots, chopped

1 medium sized onion (indifferent about color), chopped

3 cloves garlic, chopped

2 pounds russet potatoes (approximately), diced

3 cups vegetable broth (low sodium is preferred)

1 bay leaf

6-8 ounces blue cheese (something creamy), crumbled (blue cheese could be optional, it is not for me)

salt

pepper

1. Melt the butter with the olive oil in a large pot on medium heat. Add the carrots and onions with a heavy pinch of salt. Sweat until onions are translucent (about 5 minutes). I love saying this even though I do not think onions are ever translucent.... Really they will just be soft. The carrots will not get soft yet.

2. Stir in the garlic. Let it cook for another minute or so.

3. Stir in the potatoes and let them get coated with the butter and oil. Then, pour in the vegetable broth and add the bay leaf.

4. Let this simmer on lowish heat for about 30 minutes or until the carrots and potatoes are falling apart and soft. Then remove the bay leaf and discard.

5. Now, carefully, use a stick blender, regular blender, food processor, or a potato masher (maybe?) to blend the soup. At this point it kind of looked like baby food. It is bright orange.

6. Season the soup to taste with salt and pepper. Then add the crumbled blue cheese and let it melt in.

Serve with wine, fresh bread and good company.

I apologize for the awful photos. Really the soup was good, my camera karma was just not with me today.

Conference

Last week I went to the Southeastern Archaeological Society (affectionately known as SEAC). Once a year archaeologists who study the southeastern United States meet up at a random hotel to talk about archaeology, drink beer, and generally nerd out. This year it was in Lexington, Kentucky. Home of bourbon, the derby, and, well, not much else.

I presented a paper entitled "Geophysical Prospection as an Archaeological Survey Method: Ground-Penetrating Radar, Magnetometer, and Intra-site Patterning in North-Central Tennessee." No one really wants to hear about my presentation. Actually, there were people at the conference who did care.

The conference was so much fun. Nothing like being surrounded by people who share a common interest. Then you can drink beer and gossip about the same stuff.

Women's Rights National Historical Park

Seneca Falls is the home of one of the country's only National Parks dedicated to a movement. I have to say that visiting the park's museum totally inspired me. Rights for women! Go ERA! Equal pay! Etc!

The park has a museum, the Weselyan Chapel and two historic houses that major leaders in the women's rights movement. The chapel is the site of the first women's rights convention. The houses belong to Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Mary Ann M'Clintock. Without this convention and these people, I would not be doing what I am doing today. Elizabeth Cady Stanton believed that women could do whatever they wanted. That was pretty intense stuff in the 1840's. For some people that is still pretty crazy.

The museum is very well done, with sections on politics, fashion, education, and work. It makes a valiant effort bring all of this into the modern era and related to women's status today. It would do a much better job if it were still 1980. As it is, the funny haircuts tend to undermine the very serious subject...

It is a little sad that women have basically made no strides since the 1980's exhibit was put together.

Girls are still not represented in the math and sciences.

That's me... archaeologist was not an option (Park Ranger though, really?!).

You boys were wrong. We can do!

Anyway, I think the park is a must visit for everyone of any gender. It is nice to be reminded occasionally of how I got here, a woman working in a male dominated field.

At least we don't wear corsets any more. Thanks, E. Stanton, S. B. Anthony and their cronies!

In the field! teaser...

This past week and a half I have been at the Women's Rights National Historic Park. I know, this is a pretty cool place. I am a woman. I enjoy voting, owning property, etc. I have these gals to thank for it all.

We have been incredibly busy this trip. I have yet to find time for a real post. But, here I will summarize our field schedule so you can picture me out there slaving away.

7:20 ish - Leave hotel

7:30 - fill our mugs up with real coffee from Zuzu's cafe in Seneca Falls (a very worthwhile visit)

7:45 - arrive at the site, drink coffee, discuss plan

8:00 - begin data collection

12:00ish - lunch, usually cheese and crackers, little soups, apples (it is that time of the year up here in New York)

4:30-5:00 ish - wrap up, finish data collection, roll up tapes

6:00-7:30 ish - Dinner

7:30-10:00 - Data Processing, downloading, and back-up

10:00-11:00 - Quiet time, reading

11:00 - Sleep. Goodnight