Cuisine:

Directions

“Everything is fruit to me which thy season brings, Oh Nature.”

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

This sausage was created on the eve of my transition into the realm of those who have been trampling our earth with their feet over four decades. The ambivalence of celebrating birthdays is a testimonial to the malleable nature of all milestones of our lives. Some would say, this applies to our entire self-placement in the existential system of coordinates. On one level, it’s just another day. On another – an opportunity to re-evaluate where we are on the journey that inevitably ends at the same destination: six feet under. Hence, after I finished with my wife’s cake each January 5^th, I pour some decent bourbon, go to my study and I ask myself same set of questions. How have my priorities changed in that year? Have I done something worth remembering at the time of death? Have I done something I’ll be ashamed with when the lady with scythe pays a visit? Each year I check my diary for the entry from last BD. It often does put things in perspective…

Somewhere during my 40^th year, I’ve heard a remarkable phrase: tiger and lion are powerful animals, but wolf does not perform in the circus. In retrospect, during the year that past, I’ve even stopped occasionally looking into the disappearing lights of the distant Circus. That comes with a cost, by I don’t mind…

Hence, a sausage was created. Its ingredients and milestones of coming to maturity reflect my journey.

The 4228gr of Boston butt were married to 2000 gr. of hand-sliced pork belly.

Sea salt: 2.55%; cure#2:0.25%; coarsely ground BP:0.4%; garlic powder: 0.1%, 0.3% dextrose, 150ml Colonel E.H. Taylor Small batch bourbon. After day curing in a fridge, Boston butt was ground, F-LC cultures added, all stuffed into large beef bung. After three days of fermentation under the press, sausage was sent to the Curing Chamber for four months and three weeks. Weight loss — 41%.

The journey of SFD-41is not finished in both literal and figurative sense. It is my intention to vacuum-seal “SFD-41” and let Nature mature the product. Yet, the ultimate destination of the sausage is in the hands of Providence. Shall it enhance the flavor of the complicated simplicity of the prior stages? Will it rot in stagnation? Or shall it soon meet the end of the path on the side “before teeth” to be transformed into…well, you know…

Yet, after that stage all matter – from sausages to our bodies — becomes the star-dust, waiting to be born again from the purgatory of Nebula.

Hence,

In hope of Resurrection,

I eat the sausage…