Born Into The World

A mere eight years ago today, on the streets of beautiful Madrid. With a steely gaze toward a horizon of culture and sophistication I was compelled to stop in front of the Museo de Jamon. Which, yes, is the Museum of Ham. I strolled in awe though gallery after hushed gallery of hinds and dry-cures and bone-ins. Spiral cuts and smokers, Bayonnes and Black Forests, Capicola and Culatello and yard after yard of glistening Gammons. But Speck aside, it was the stunning Salt Period of Ibericos and Serranos that truly blew me away. The light, the hue and coloration, the art-brut strokes of marbled fat, the intricate brushwork, the Parma perspectives and avant-slicing, the acorn-fed beauty of it all. But oh, the casings. The delicate, whisper-thin, gossamer folds of casing. I think I can say, as a purely objective matter and without undue hyperbole, that I have never been the same since. Also, you can tell by my expression that I am unwittingly, or perhaps with full-prescience wittingly projecting myself into a hog-laden future of a very different sort, one soon to become gloriously swine-free on January 21st, 2021. It all works out in the end, friends, this life, tinged with a beechwood and juniper glaze as it is, the marvelous pungency of all that is available to us, all that awaits.