Flog; It's all about the food

Thanksgiving dinner this year was a special one. We spent the day gathered with friends, new and old of all agesThe food spoke for itself. All in all a lovely day.

I had made a commitment to try and use as much local food as possible. The idea was not to obsess about it but rather to come up with a list of possibilities and go from there. I'd say we hit 99%.

The turkey was from Jones family farm on Lopez Island. The star of the dinner was a ham I cured from one of our Mangalitsa hogs that we had recently slaughtered. This was my first attempt at making my own ham. It was awesome. The only thing I would do different next time is to inject brine into the center of the ham at the beginning to insure proper penetration to the center We also incoropated the bacon into several dishes including a cabbage/celeriac/fennel slaw with homemade aoili. For apps we made bacon wrapped water chestnuts broiled off in the wood fired oven as well as fresh local oysters on the half shell and enjoyed a large pickle platter from some of the items we had put up earlier in the season accompanied by hand made farmers cheese. For veg we had fresh Maple Rock Farm brussel's sprouts, broccoli and a fall forage salad mix with the last of our fresh tomatoes. One big hit was the onion pie. Made with copra onions from Orcas Farm, and also included some of the Mangalitsa smoked jowl bacon. I use a spring form to make this one so it stands tall. It's rich and delicious.

I think the best thing was to share all of this with friends and good cheer in an un-pretentious manner. Good friends, Good food, good times.

I bid you well,

Farmer John