Serious question please.

Darby_Crenshaw said:

Jeezus people

can we try to remember what curing is actually for?

you could throw this on your counter for a week and it would still be fine

when did people start thinking things become deadly after a few days in the fridge?

Darby_Crenshaw said:

Skiddy, not sure what you mean

bgebrent: thanks for the suggestion. But nah bruh. Posted hundreds of cooks and pics over the years, with artfuly composed pics 'just so' and long detailed explanations of the process. Early adopter of a lot of the bandwagon stuff, enthusiastic helper, belabored sharing of perhaps too much detail or explanation, goer-to of a few fests, meeter of a number of old timer cool people

and i/we often ran into that old guy on the forum who was driving us crazy because he was tired of hearing the same stuff over and over despite the fact the he and *his* old guard had explained things a million times and posted their cooks a million times and they'd still encounter the same questions. Drove the dude crazy. Old man!

Fast forward fifteen years, i'm that guy

it's a conveyor belt, man. There is literally nothing new here. But that's ok. Some day you'll be the cranky old man say obscure sh!t you think everyone already knows because you heard it a thousand times and "dang these meddling kids!"

and i suppose it's now my turn to be the old man grousing about crap and who never posts a cook because, frankly, i don't care what bgebrent (or anyone else) thinks about my cooking ability (and neither should you). I have twenty thousand posts in the other forum if you really wanna learn how i made bacon ten years ago (after nature boy posted it a year before that, or what pepper mill i own (a magnum, ten years ago), or how i affixed my rutland (with high temp silicon, ten years ago, after [i think] photoegg or egginator did it), or any of a hundred other topics, or when i started pimping oil and napkin (after egginator again mentioned it), or if you wanna read my asking WessB to "post a cook, man" (because i was you then, and he was me, see?). [NB: wess is a cooler early forum member who got more grief than he should have, while giving more grief than he should have. Was good times, man. Good times...]

For clarity's sake: i mention twenty thousand posts NOT as any claim to legitimacy or fame or as a credential-girding footnote. I mention it as a shrug, a pathetic reference to the fact that this stuff just keeps rolling along. That sword cuts both ways, btw. For anyone thinking that 20k posts means they are vital or important, remeber that it's also a sign of not having anything better to do.

 I'm not special. There are dudes here with way more time in country. And it doesn't mean they (or I)know more. It just is what it is. 

But the reverse is true. Just because someone doesn't have a lot of posts doesn't give anyone the right to trot out the 'post a cook or shut up' line. Sorry. 

Regardless, time moves on. it's a new crowd's forum. And that's fine. Don't go asking people for credentials. 

i'm also now at the age when that guy next to me at the light is revving to go, and squeals the tires when the light turns green. Been there. Done that. And now it's his turn to be the tuff guy. 

My grumpy reaction was at the end of a long day. Apologies

but at the root of it IS a frustration with the lack of intellectual curiosity and the apparent inability these days of folks to solve their own stuff. And it ain't THIS guy either. It ain't about his bacon question. 

But part of me wonders how far we have gotten from our food that we don't understand the basics

[a correction: you couldn't simply throw he meat on the counter and it'd be 'fine'.  You'd wanna hang it so it could dry fairly quicky on the surface. The wet counter-side would be bad for quality. The top side would dry, but the bottom would be wet and perhaps grow some bacteria. Tie it though, touching nothing but itself, and hang, and she'd form a quick pellicle and be safe to eat as long as you had the courage to let it hang in your basement. That's WHY we cured. No one cured pork originally because they liked ham. They ended up with ham because they had slaughtered a multi hundred pound animal and needed to store their meat. Same for all charcuterie.]


TL/DR: blah blah ramblings of a cranky old man. Mostly in jest, btw. But as we have not met, i do not get the benefit of the "i know this guy" default tone of voice afforded others. That's the way of the (or perhaps of any) forum

EDIT: tried fixing the phone spelling issues. Gave up after a half hour. Dang iPhones! When i was a kid your blackberry had actual buttons and a keyboard as big as a damn buick dashboard. Why, you kids and your fancy google glasses and your snapface with the talk-into-it automatic microphone spelling! I just may go down to the community room fot the intrduction to AOL class my senior center is having.  It's also cinnamon applesauce night in the dining room. Need to get a good seat. They're showing Matlock on the big screen during dinner at 4:30. 

EDIT2: unrelated topic for discussion; Meatloaf is pate'. You like meatloaf, and so whether you know it or not, you also like pate'. It's probably, being a red blooded american man, you just think the name sounds fey, and that french crap can (for we insular 'murican types) seem simultaneously intimidating and wimpy.