The pig

Last night I went to book group. I hadn't read the book and by the time I got there the short discussion of the book was finished and the real business, yakking about everything else, had begun. Talk turned to food eventually and some of the frustrations of attempting to buy local and I found out that Sarah has a contact for local beef, hogget and pork/bacon. I offered then and there that I would like to share a pig with her.

Back home Favourite Handyman blasted my ideas that it would fit in our 135 litre freezer part of the fridge freezer. That sounds like quite a bit for a fridge freezer and it is but perhaps not quite a bit for fitting half a pig in.

When we moved into our home in late 2006, I was keen on getting a freezer. Later on I changed my mind because we seemed to be managing fine as long as we ate through things within 2-3 months or less. After reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal Vegetable Miracle and working ourselves through this winter being conscious of what we are eating from the garden and how dependent we are on the supermarkets (i.e. some place out there to furnish our food needs), I still thought I was in the no-more-appliance-spend category and would simply manage, even though I can't really fit much in there to last the year through after Autumn harvest.

But locally grown and butchered pig, with bacon that is apparently divine. ... Let's just say that I've had a wee look on trademe at the freezer section this morning (nothing around my part of the woods at the moment though). As bacon apparently lures many vegetarians back to the meat side, it's doing its work on me regarding freezers. Also I froze home made pasta sauce last year (much easier than attempting to bottle such a marginal fruit on the acidity/botulism front) but could only do about eight meals' worth because of storage constraints. Then there is Kingsolver's comments about freezing surplus zucchini for winter. With a bigger freezer....

I was buying my pig products from a local butcher. But after twice of not being able to get bacon bones from him I bypassed the nice lady at the counter and had a chat with the butcher. Turns out he gets his pork for curing into bacon boneless and the bones from the year before were bought in from Auckland. sigh.

Bought some local fish from the shop on the wharf yesterday and had a chat there about the challenges facing the local fishing industry. Ninety percent of the fish which is caught off our coast is sent elsewhere in the country (Napier and Christchurch) or to Russia for processing. That's a lot of jobs which I'd like to see here on the coast and it is a lot of fuel.