Angel wrote about our experience selling pulled pork sandwiches at Trade Days, so I don’t have to.  I’ll just add that although we didn’t sell all the meat or make a lot of money, I’m glad we did it.  We learned a few things, and who knows how many people have our name rattling around in the back of their minds now and might think of us for pork in the future.  I suppose that’s the way of all marketing: you have to spend a certain amount of time or money just building name-recognition, even if it doesn’t involve direct sales at the time.

At least people liked the pork, judging by the way they raved about it.  I thought it was good, but I’m used to it, so I’m a poor judge.  I’d like to take credit for it, but it’s really all in the quality of the meat.  I just rubbed it with salt and pepper and cooked it in a roaster at 250 until it was done.  That simple.  The exceptional tenderness and flavor come from hogs that haven’t been bred to be overly lean, that don’t live the stressful, crowded life of a confined hog on concrete, and that occasionally get to eat a root or acorn or something.  When the meat is right, the rest is just getting it hot.

Since my readership has expanded lately, I should mention again that we’re always taking names of people who want pork.  The next batch of hogs will probably be going in early July, and there will be more after that.  If you’ve got at least a few cubic feet of free freezer space, you can fill it with great pork for less than $2/pound.  For more info, see our new farm site.

Here are a couple neat articles from a Baptist minister in San Antonio who recently attended a couple Orthodox services.  There are certainly differences between the Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches and their Liturgies (probably the most obvious being that the Orthodox stand through the whole thing—no kneeling or sitting), but our Latin Mass is more like the Orthodox Liturgy than the Ordinary Form most Catholics are used to, in some ways.   He has an interesting perspective on it, so I’m looking forward to seeing if he goes again.  The title of his first post, “Not for Lightweights,” sounds like something I’ve said about the Latin Mass: it’s not easy, just worth it.

Do people still watch David Letterman?  Is he still on TV?  I had no idea.  I remember watching him in my dorm room in 1987 and thinking he was pretty funny, but then we used to watch the home shopping network a lot too, so that doesn’t prove much.  Anyway, apparently he’s had a real hate on for Sarah Palin for a while, and lately he’s been going after her daughters too.  Now, it’s probably true what he says, that when he joked about her daughter getting knocked up at a Yankees game, he really meant the 18-year-old and not the 14-year-old.  But that doesn’t actually make it any better.  Settle down, Dave, you look like the boy on the playground who pulls a girl’s pigtails and calls her ugly because he secretly likes her.

Here’s an article about how modern environmentalism makes things hard on large families.  It’s a good example of why we should be wary of using government to effect social change.  We could probably all agree that it’s not good if people who never need the extra space to drive big 9 mpg SUVs to work and shopping every day.  But when we look to government to fix it, we get one-size-fits-all solutions that hurt the large families that do need a big vehicle with a bunch of seats.  (Of course, the environmental movement unfortunately contains a certain number of zero-population nuts, so anything that makes life harder for large families is win-win for them.)  She also makes a good point that large families were the original recyclers and re-users, passing down clothes and toys from child to child.  We certainly did that when I was growing up, and there were only four of us.  It just made sense.

On a similar topic, here’s a nice article about being a mom, from one with a large family.

And here’s a good one about stem cell research.  (Yes, I’m all over the place today.)  Be sure to check out the “myths” link halfway through.  Look, I watched Family Ties when I was a kid, and I want to see Michael J. Fox get cured along with all the other Parkinson’s sufferers.  But the embryonic stem cell push was never about that as much as it was about putting a positive spin on the idea of killing embryos, whether it be in the womb in an abortion, in a test tube after a few were selected for in vitro fertilization, or to cure someone else’s cancer.  (Not that that was Mr. Fox’s motivation, I’m sure, but it was for many of the organizations and politicians who pushed it so hard.)  It’s all part of the same argument.

For a while now, the actual doctors and researchers have been saying that using your own cells is much more promising than using embryos ever was, so it’s nice to see they’re finally being heard.  When even Oprah’s Dr. Oz gets on board, I guess that means the mainstream is catching on.  Maybe now more energy can be directed in more useful directions, and Alex Keaton will get cured after all.  I sure hope so.