07/25/2024
I don't post things like this much anymore, but I wanted to speak about what I had for supper, as well as a commentary on family, culture, history, and nostalgia. I had home-made country ham, home-cured hog jowl, and home-grown corn on the cob for supper tonight, prepared by my amazing wife. All was absolutely delicious.
I'm not sure that people who haven't experienced an entire meal they themselves had a hand in growing, raising, processing, preserving, and preparing can really understand the unique connection this gives you to your food. The satisfaction of knowing *exactly* where your entire meal came from. Knowing the work that went in to it. Remembering the fellowship with friends and family all throughout the process of bringing that food from field to table. Sharing that process and the result with those friends and loved ones.
It's not something many people get to experience these days.
When you factor in the additional generational connection of sharing a time-honored process like salt-curing a ham, it pushes the experience to an entirely new level. I can distinctly remember my grandfather, who raised hogs for a living, working diligently and thoroughly in preparing the ham to cure, carefully executing the curing process, and discussing (and sometimes arguing, as was his way) about the ins and outs of the cooking itself. I am grateful for the generational knowledge shared with me by my grandfather (and my father, as was the case with this current ham) in showing me the ways of my family members that came before, and the opportunity to connect with them through food.
My grandfather has been gone from this earth for over a decade, but I felt more connected to him tonight than I have in a long time, thanks to the unique taste of salt-cured country ham.
