Hi Honey! I'm coming home early and do I have a treat for you!

How it all works

by

Móna Wise

Scene One

Act one

Picture me standing at the kitchen sink preparing our evening meal,
dropping everything to grab my ringing mobile phone.



Myself: Hello?

Himself: Hi honey, it's me.
I am coming home early and do I have a treat for you!

Myself: Oh, great! What is it??

Himself: Well, it is unforgettable! I will be home in a few minutes.


End scene with me returning my mobile phone to the charger and
conjuring up visions of a lovely Italian Barolo or beautiful piece of foie gras or
even some baked goodies he created and was racing home to share with me.
Gotta love my romantic hubby!

I would love to continue with the rest of this story but as you can see from the above sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words!!!

Who, I ask you - in their right mind would just saunter in home from a days work with a bloody pigs head under his arm and not expect a certain level of disgust or horror from his family???
Only Ron. And to be honest, I was the only one that felt a little 'turned off' by the whole thing because I had set my sights slightly higher I guess??

What on earth possessed my handsome Chef to even want to do something with this beast? Well, he had read (and re-read) his Art of Eating rag (issue no. 80) and it was all about American Charcuterie - The cooked. www.artofeating.com

One of his favourite pieces was on something called Brawn. It is the cooked meat from a pigs head that is seasoned and pressed into a loaf/terrine shape. Supposedly it will be one of the tastiest things we have ever eaten.

Right now he (Jack named him Bob) is in the pot with a few carrots, onions, bay leaf, garlic, green peppercorns, salt, pepper and a few cup fulls of Franks Red Hot sauce. It takes several hours of cooking, and several hours of refrigeration, then someone gets to pick all the meat of the skull (Cathyann - when are you getting back to Galway???), then, after all this waiting around - it may be ready to eat by Sunday??

Thankfully it is happy hour where I am right now!

That is all the WiseWords I have for today,

WiseMóna

Family and Community Nurturing

I have gotten a lot of emails over the last week from y'all wondering how and where Ron got started with this pizza/bread oven business. A million years ago when Ron was still working at Chateau Pomijie in Cincinnati, Ohio - a wine tasting trip out west to sunny California where he saw a beautifully designed bread oven sparked his interest.

He has thought long and hard about this over the last fifteen years and has drawn out several different versions of his oven plans . When we moved back home to Ireland and went to the Bórd Bia www.bordbia.ie National Organics Conference (September 2008) and discovered COB building, this style of sustainable building spurred him to 'get started'.

He called up our local library to get the above book The Cob Builders Handbook as it was out of print (at the time) and although he finds Ms. Becky Bee to write like a "scary feminist" she has guided him through his project thus far teaching him all he has needed to know about building with Cob.

The other book (above) The Bread Builders he sourced was co-authored by Alan Scott/Daniel Wing - Alan (www.Ovencrafters.net) designed that pizza/bread oven Ron saw in California all those years ago. This is a great read with him speaking of the importance of family and community nurturing, which no doubt I do believe has always been my husbands mission in life. This book makes one want to drop what one is doing and run outside to the oven to bake a loaf of unbelievable bread, then invite the whole world over to share it.

If you are thinking about taking on this project, you need a lot of patience because this can take a while (depending on the climate) and be forewarned, working with COB (Clay/sand/straw) is a messy mucky job to be enjoyed by the whole family (even if you are the Mum/Wife that is responsible for cleaning it all!)

The upside of all of this is you have something sustainably built (not to mention affordability) that will last for generations to come. Your family, your friends and neighbours will enjoy every last crumb.

That is all the WiseWords I have for today,

WiseMóna