Things Happen for a Reason (or how I got here)

I guess things happen for a reason. I was in Seattle last October visiting friends and revisiting old haunts when I ate a piece of culinary inspiration. I had always heard of Salumi when I lived in Seattle but never had gotten there because one reason or another. I made a point of visiting the store and that’s when my life changed. I was waiting in the line to get in the cramped little store and ordered a cow tongue sandwich for lunch and a half a pound of the mole salami for snacking later. I unwrapped the sandwich, took a bite and uuuuuggggmmmm. You know those moments when something tastes so good that all you can grunt and say single syelbol words like WOW over and over. The joy and pleasure that you experience can’t be described in words so why try. So my culinary inspiration was born and I know that I wanted to learn how to cure meat. I did some research and found Michael Ruhlman and Brain Polcyn’s Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking and Curing. I loved it I read through it twice in a week and started doing further research for all the tools I would need to start charcutering it up.
Like I said earlier things happen for a reason. I have had a twitter account for a couple of years not really using that much but for checking a few things on occasion. Then I saw the hash tag of #charcutepalooza popping up on tweets and I explored. Charcutepalooza is the brain child of @TheYummyMummy and @MrsWheelBarrow and is a yearlong charcuterie challenge with a new challenge each month. Participants blog their triumphs and failures, crowd sourcing for helpful hints and overall fun playing with meat, plus the best blogger gets a trip to France. So I am getting my meat on and I hope you will put up with my terrible writing and join the fun that is charcuterie.