Fortune sometimes smiles on the willing.

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Have you ever meant to offer a favor, often for a favor given, but the opportunity slipped away.  Whether the opportunity slipped away honestly or not, I mean because you chose or had no choice, matters little.  If your intent was sure but a method was unavailable until the notion was lost, the whole idea comes back to haunt.  While it doesn't cause me heartburn, if it was simply a lack of too many things necessary, it does give me an off taste... about myself, about my predicament at times, and lends to some dubious notions of whether health or laziness, limited income or unkind frugality, is truly to blame.  Well, sometimes an opportunity returns.

It turns out the hog I had put in an order for is ready.  Well, it will be going to the, uhrm, chop shop Tuesday, in any case.  I will need to go there and speak with the butcher about how I would like it processed, whether to smoke the bacon and possibly some other parts (HAM) (both, OF COURSE, and maybe some of the chops, thick cut at that!), what cuts for this part, or that, and such.  I am a novice, so I will be doing a bit of research in the interim.  Now, this is a whole hog, not a half or a quarter.  And, I know that is probably a bit much.  While pork can last for six months in the freezer, and perhaps up to a year, it does begin to... change... over time.  Which is why I am pleased to have most of my equipment for canning some pork.  Jars and some of the minor canning utensils remain to be purchased.  While canning, it could be argued, will only extend the life of meat to about a year, the truth is the meat will be good for much longer.  The same is true of at least most vegetables.  Some nutrition, and some flavor, may be lost beyond the first year after canning, but the food will still basically be good.  And most certainly it will be better than a big ol', freshly canned, quart o' nothing.  :p  This looks like a really good starter resource regarding canning meats.

While I am there, I am going to ask about the hocks and any extra of those, sweet breads, brains (at least pork, sheep, or lamb if I can't get beef).  Yes, yes, I do want to try some of these things.  My mother's generation, minus the girls to include her it seems, lived on these foods.  I just want to know what that was about and possibly find some new, inexpensive, meats.  Plus, you know I am a foodie.  Not of the, technically, haute cuisine sort, but of the... try anything you can stomach and then some, if you like it, try it again.  Actually, I think you should try something until you find a way to like it, but that's just me.

Still, even with some frozen and some canned, a whole hog is a lot o' meat.  It turns out that the fellow who cut the tree branch off my roof also provided dinner for me tonight.  He travels for work, across another state, for a week at a time.  One of the things he uses to facilitate this seems similar to what D.C. uses, containers and prepped food.  So, my food came in some of his gear, only he would like it back.  All very good.  He will be coming back tomorrow, and since I just learned about the pork after his visit or before I could put two and two together, I will see if a ham, a roast, chops, and some other goodies would be something of which he has interest.  Well, and I would like to show him my chain saw too.  I am certainly hoping his family likes pork.  Though I have something else in mind if not.  That was a heck of a job he did, and I was all but crippled, more so than now by far, at the time.  I would make them some cookies but I am just not quite there tonight.

Oh, I saw a tom come by today.  It looks like the gray cat on D.C.'s sidebar.  I know Sam has been... itching for company.  Unfortunately I scared him off.  Then again I think Sam likes some more than other toms, and she didn't seem all that interested in this one, or at this time, if it might simply be a bit chill for her sensibilities more than anything else.  It is as difficult to understand a girl cat as it is a girl human.  Women cats, can't please em', but don't always displease them?  I will say daughters and cat daughters definitely have a different manner of allowances!  Catnip to toms...

Oh, that massage therapy chair?  It is definitely working.  When I first started getting massages a few years ago after an accident, and off and on through the treatments, my bm's would... be a fright on the nose.  Something about breaking things loose and getting them out of the body.  Well, that is already in evidence.  And I have been voiding often and easily just since using the chair today.  It looks like, even if these chairs aren't everything, they are indeed something.  *gurgles*  I'll... write more later.  Hmm, maybe I should make some coffee too!  *GURGLES*  Later.