Mo' Ham, Maude

Seeing as how Saint Padraig's Day has just passed, it being time for a celebration of sorts, tomorrow is the much delayed Ground Hog Party around here. As a good descendent of Celts (just not the Irish kind -- our ancestors probably painted their naked bodies some other color than blue when they went to battle -- oops, sorry, mixed up the Irish with the Picts, sorry...) any day is a good day to party.

So I went to Sam's and got the fixin's. Pork shoulders at $1.18/lb, bone in. Deboned them, weighed the bones, and figured that the deboned meat cost about $1.27/lb. Good deal. Sliced it up, ground it (grinding in 1-1/2 heads of stink-lily [česnak] as I went), added 1/4 cup of salt, a cup of water, a half cup of paprika, and mixed it thoroughly. Behold.I then taste-tested it by frying up a patty for a sandwich... notice that it was ready just in time for lunch.

Of course, there is other stuff to be done. I need to get the plastic cover on the greenhouse and get the tomatoe and pepper seeds started. [That was deliberate, to prove I am not an illiterate MainStream Media Talking Head who thinks that tomatoe has to be spelled tomato. I have a REAL AMERICAN dictionary, one that admits to traditional AMERICAN spellings.]

We pruned the grapes, and I decided to get some cuttings started for all my wee ones to begin their own vinyards...

Ah, Spring is sproinging. Tomorrow's plans are to murder trees at Joonyah's house. Breakfast at 7:30, sez he, and he has been rounding up the ropes and chainsaws and machetes and axes. Then, AFTERWARDS we roast the ground hog.