Hunan-style Chinese Sausage * from the beginning

One of the treats I looked forward to every Chinese New Year was Hunan sausage. There was a place near where we lived in Taipei that made it every year. It was a neighborhood populated by many retired servicemen who longed for the traditional dishes of their home provinces in China. They would take over the sidewalk and any empty space available for their efforts. My favorite was the sausage or dry-smoked pork side meat. This type of meat is usually only available during the winter after pig slaughtering. I still have a craving for this sausage so we decided to try to make some ourselves.

First a brief Chinese culture lesson, related to the major ingredient in the sausage:

Part of many Chinese celebrations is a contest to see who can raise the largest pig. These are then put on display for everyone to enjoy.

The heaviest pig is awarded with a gold medal and a cash prize. The heaviest one in this ceremony we attended weighed 1157 pounds.

After the ceremony the pig was butchered and the meat taken home to eat.
In our local market, the pigs are slaughtered and then brought whole to the stand where they are butchered and sold.

Needless to say we don't have access to pork this fresh in Portland so we had to settle for fresh pork loin from the supermarket. It was chopped into 1/4-1/2" chunks along with additional pork fat for flavoring.

The necessary spicy-hot flavor was achieved by adding pepper powder, dried chili pepper, and Kaoliang liquor

To this was added salt that had been "dry-fried" with Szchuan peppercorns.

The spices were added to the meat and then it was allowed to marinate in the refrigerator overnight. The next step was to prepare the casings to receive the mixture. We were lucky and found some at the local Korean market that were already cleaned, but we still felt better after thoroughly washing them.

People who do this for a living have machines that force the meat into the casing - we don't. So we improvised by cutting the top off a Perrier bottle and using a wooden ram to force the meat mixture into the casing.
After the casing was filled we distributed the meat evenly and formed it into links.
The distinctive taste of this sausage comes from the smoking. I never determined what kind of wood they used so I made up my own mixture: sugar (they used sugar cane peel but I don't have any), rice, black tea leaves, and wood chips (cedar, apple, and oak). The sausage links were loaded into our smoker and smoked for about 5 hours.
When they came out it sure looked like I remembered it should.

The smoking also served to partially dry the meat. The low temperature didn't render any of the fat nor did it act to kill any bacteria that might be present so after cooling we store the sausage in the freezer. It must be cooked before eating, we tried some this morning with scrambled eggs and steamed bread - SUCCESS.

We are looking forward to the week after New Years when we will slaughter our pig and have some really fresh pork to make sausage and side meat. More on that later.

Frozen Water - aka snow, hail, sleet, snain, freezing rain, snog

December 2008 in northern Oregon has proved to be an interesting time to observe the weather. This is the third December we have spent here. Previously we experienced freezing temperatures and enough snow to satisfy our desire for a "White Christmas". This year we are experiencing what has come to be known as "Arctic Blast 2008". Temperatures have dropped as low as 9 degrees, winds have blown as hard as 45 mph, and snow is still falling after accumulating 18" in our front yard. Interstate highways are closed, chains are required on all vehicles travelling city streets, some homes are without electricity, the kids had the full week BEFORE Winter Break off as snow days, and the largest shopping mall in the area only had three stores open Saturday.

Our observations began Sunday, December 14. We had an early breakfast at church, a monthly activity sponsored by the men's group but open to all; only seven people showed up. The forecast was for possible snow in the afternoon but everything was clear when we arrived at 7:45AM. During breakfast the pastor called and said it was snowing at his place and he couldn't get to the church so was cancelling the morning services. We opened the door and looked out upon a steady fall of large fluffy flakes that were not melting as they hit the ground. We decided that since we had prayed, eaten, taken up a collection for the food, and told a joke that it was OK to leave. We divided up the church roster and took it home to call other members and tell them of the cancellation. When we got to the parking lot, it was already covered with snow and we had to clean the windshield before we could start the drive home.

After a slight slip/slide getting out onto the main highway we had a smooth drive home, only seeing one car off into the ditch.

There were relatively few cars on the road.
No cars had been in or out our road since the snow had started. I kept the car in low and going about 5mph up the grade leading to the house and Sandra opened the garage door as soon as we were in range so I didn't have to slow down to get into the garage.

Monday morning we went out for a brief walk to feed the ducks at a pond near the house. Garbage was to be collected that day so I put the collection bins out at the curb. There had been a freezing rain overnight and the road was slick, the only vehicle using the road was the post office truck using chains.

Sandra put on her high top boots to get better traction.

Little did we know that before we had gotten 100 feet from the house she would step on a slick ice spot and fall. She got a bad sprain/twist of her ankle and has been laid up in the house since.

She has been able to watch the snow fall in our back yard from the sliding glass door in the dining room.

We began to get a mix of freezing rain and snow on Saturday night, almost a week after the snow began to fall. Although it was beautiful as it coated the trees it brought with it falling limbs and power outages.
We could hear the ice hitting the windows during the night and when we woke up and tried to look out our upstairs window, we were greeted with a coating of ice.

We occasionally hear creaks as the roof groans under the load of snow. I climbed up into the attic to be sure no snow was blowing in through the vents. Melting snow in the attic isn't something that I want to deal with. No snow was seen, but it sure was cold.

We are using the bench in the back yard as a "snow gauge". This is the level on Sunday morning.
and this is what we saw Monday morning; its misleading because the sleet compressed Sunday's snow.
This is what happens to Thanksgiving decorations left out in 9 degree weather.We are using the millstone by the front door as a snow gauge also. This is what it looked like in November.
But last Sunday afternoon the snow began to accumulate
and continued to builduntil Thursday when we had a slight warming spell

but it hit its peak Sunday afternoon, one week after the first snowfall.I measured 17" in the front yard Monday morning
and some of that was a "sandwich" of snow/ice/snow.
This is the road leading up to our house which sits at the top of the cul-de-sac.
Wonder why no one has come to visit us this week?

The weather bureau says the temperatures may be going up some during the day for the next few days but still below freezing at night; so some melting that will freeze again as ice during the night. One nice thing about being retired; I don't have to go into work. White Christmas? well it's anybody's guess right now. Sandra's biggest concerns are Pre-Christmas sales and "What about all the After-Christmas sales?"

This is the view out our front door of the house next door

and the car in the driveway.

This is the view from our second floor window. Can you see the road?

The garbage hasn't been collected in two weeks, but at least it isn't hot and smelly!

Any body have a guess what this is?

(hint) it's sitting on the back porch

We may not be able to see it for long as the weather bureau has just issued a winter storm warning for MORE SNOW starting during the day Christmas Eve and continuing into Christmas Day with an additional 3"-5" accumulation.

So, I bundled up and went out to try to knock some snow off the eves and gutters so the new snow doesn't pull them off the roof. I had to watch out not only for falling snow but slabs of ice that were sandwiched between layers of snow.

There were four distinct ice layers of varying thickness on the roof. I removed about one foot of the "sandwich" that was overhanging the gutter; hopefully if we get some above-freezing temperatures that will allow the melt to run off into the gutter and hopefully the downspout isn't frozen solid.

Now, its watch and wait for the next snow fall. I'll be inside with a book and a cup of coffee.

Rice Ball Soup - a Chinese housewarming tradition

When Chinese greet each other it isn't "Hello", it's "Have you eaten yet?". Food is an integral part of life for the Chinese. Since my wife is Chinese (Taiwanese) I have learned a lot about eating for social, as well as nutritional reasons. Recently a young family we met moved into their first house, actually a rental. In keeping with Chinese tradition, we all went over for a housewarming pot luck. One of the dishes that MUST be prepared and served is tang yuan, a glutinous rice ball in sweet soup. Why tang yuan you might ask. Round (yuan) means a circle without an end so a complete and endless relationship; soup (tang), sometimes sweet and sometimes savory so that there would be sweetness and harmony in the relationship, whether it be a wedding, birth, new house, or any number of things. We started early that morning making four colors of rice dough; green, pink, orange, and white.

The colored dough was formed into rectangles which were stacked on top of each other

making a "sandwich" which was then rolled up like a jelly roll.

After cutting into convenient lengths

the sections were reduced in size

then cut into pieces

that were rolled into balls

and more balls

which were dropped into boiling water

and left until they floated to the top indicating they were done.

We took the prepared dough to the party and everyone joined in making rice balls.

Some were very artistic

All were boiled until they floated

then served in either a sweet sugar syrup or a brown sugar-ginger syrup

They were very filling and stuck to your ribs for sure.