Charcuterie for the People

... in which the author reckons with life, death, and the afterlife of swine, snatches salami off the metaphorical charcuterie board of the culinary elite and returns it to humbler hands.

I saw a fly outside today. Nature is telling me something. The time of setting maple spiles is the same time that we begin to take down the various salt-cured hams, bellies and jowls from hogs killed in November. They have been hung there in a breezy, shaded shed to dry and develop, each ham carefully stitched inside swine gut, bellies rubbed with aroma…