and now back to our regularly scheduled programming - food

A sign of how poopy I was feeling this week: I was perfectly content to allow my father to make things like Kraft Dinner and store bought chicken wings whilst I survived on baguettes with balsamic and vinegar.

Yes, it was that bad.

I had absolutely no energy - not even enough to worry about the cause of the mysterious disappearance of my will to live.

But I'm done with that now. I'm actually exhausted with dealing with my own exhaustion and so I declare an end to the ennui. I say sionara to the insidious sleepiness. 

This week has not been a total loss on the food front though. Last weekend while in the metropolis of Toronto (said visit being the instigator of the slippery descent into depression and the inevitable escape in dream-time) I took the opportunity to pick up a couple of pork jowls so that I could begin my first experiment with home curing (an endeavour I feel confident in thanks to the arrival of my copy of Charcuterie by Michael Rhulman and Brian Polcyn a couple of weeks ago.)

I am in the process of making guanciale, the traditional cured pork used in carbonara dishes. At this point the jowls are in the fridge absorbing salts and spices - I will be posting pics upon their release from this phase of the curing.

The fact that I had to go all the way into the middle of Toronto to buy my lovely jowls was a little troubling to me. 

The thing is, I live in the middle of rural farm land. 

I'm surrounded by the smells of cow, horse and pig poop on a daily basis.

So why did I have to venture into heavily populated, very urban land smelling of exhaust fumes and greasy take-out to get my hands on some tasty pig?

This irritating question was really the last straw for me in terms of taking an active interest in local food.

I live in an amazing area of central Ontario, filled with producers of local food as well as artisans and craftspeople. It's also an area that seems to get overlooked a lot surrounded as Simcoe County is by some of the better known tourist areas.

The Ontario Culinary Tourism Alliance doesn't even list Simcoe County amongst it's culinary regions!

So, what am I babbling about? 

Basically I'm going to do my best through this site to continue the kind of writing and cooking that I've been doing but with an added focus on local yumminess. Besides the inescapable logic of eating locally, when you live in area as full of goodness as I do it's really silly not to promote it.

This week was my first picking up a Good Food Box from Karma Marketplace so I'll be doing a lot of cooking based on the seasonal, local produce from the box.

Finally, I'll be cooking something other than pork for a while....at least until the guanciale is ready!