Now here’s a beautiful subject line:

“let’s eat a ham & celebrate”

We shared a beautiful meal with a number of friends from FM@SELMA at the invitation of Shana and in celebration of the beautiful ham cured by Susie, Garin, and Matt. The ham, brined for 8 days, dried in the fridge for a day, then smoked all day long at Susie’s, arrived with great fanfare and many oohs and aahs at the crispy skin and the pink pink color of the interior. We piled our plates with the ham, a lovely potato au gratin, a crispy fennel and apple salad, and piles of roasted veg. Jeff and Lisa brought yogurt cheese topped with fig jam and hazelnuts for pre-meal snacks, and Olivia blew us all away with trays of maple macarons, Earl Grey madeleines, and little pig-shaped cookies. Our contributions to the feast were a loaf of bread (that took forEVER to rise), two jars of my marmalade (excellent on both the bread and the ham), and a bunch of bottles of Shane’s most recent (and delicious) beer, an agave wheat.

While we both occasionally feel overwhelmed by the locavore/brocavore culture in Ann Arbor, it was really nice to be reminded of the reasons we care about local food, and of the resources available to us to make the best food choices we can for our bodies, our budget, our community, and our planet.