Well, it's ON like donkey kong.
I dropped off 37 lbs of hog bellies at Mark's (Smoking Snow) place after work. I took my 37 lbs of bellies home and after the kids got to bed, I got into high bacon curing gear. Out of the 5 slabs, 2 got the honey cured ham from Rytek's book and three got a modified version of recipes I got from TJohnson and rbranstner. They said to go with 1 Tbsp of brown sugar and 1 Tbsp of TQ per pound and a few more spices, but mama bear and the cubs were onboard with this project only if they got maple bacon out of this. So between miscalculating the brown sugar, added 2 Tbsp per pound instead of 1, and then adding 2 little maple extract bottles to the mix, soon I was willing to eat the rubbed down hog bellies raw. Mmmmmmmmm Good. I can't wait. I hope to post qview in a week when the bacon slicing party takes place. Until then, have fun.