Good breakfast = (Home cured Canadian Bacon)

I'm a morning person...it doesn't make any difference if I'm meeting a client at 0530 to catch tarpon or have an appointment to show real estate at 0930. I'm still up before daylight enjoying coffee and a hearty breakfast.

Last year I ran across a recipe for Canadian bacon on Cowgirl's Country Life , an eclectic site full of excellent recipes & ideas and I decided that was something I wanted to try.

This is my second attempt at home made bacon and is by far the best! The recipe is very simple and takes very little time to prepare.

Ingredients

Pork loin  (all fat and silver skin removed)
Morton's Tender Quick                   1 Tbs. per pound of meat
Brown sugar                                  1  tsp. per pound of meat
Mix sugar and salt together, and rub the loin, covering completely. Shake off any excess and place in a plastic container to cure in your refrigerator for 7 days, then remove and rinse off salt and soak in cold water for 1 hr., changing the water after 30 minutes. At this point you can coat it with fresh ground pepper, crushed red pepper, fresh rosemary or just  leave it plain. Place in frig for half a day (overnight) to let the meat dry out. Into a 225 deg. smoker until the loin hits an internal temperature of about 140 (this is not completely done and allows for warming up for breakfast). Cool and refrigerate. I slice the loin and package in small freezer bags and freeze until needed.

This is an excellent and very economical breakfast meat...give it a try!

Apalachicola Bay in the spring

Old Man Winter is slow to let go of us this year, but we are beginning to get some warm days with light winds. Now if we can get the flow of fresh water to stay below flood stage for a few weeks maybe we can get serious about fishing.

 

As you can see, we still have some white pelican hanging around the Dry Bar. They should be heading north any day now, but with the weather our northern neighbors have been having...well I might hang around a little longer too.

Trout fishing is beginning to pick up, but water temps and muddy conditions are making it a little tougher than normal. I'm finding some cleaner water toward the west end of the bay and the trout are cooperating.

They are feeding on mullet now, so we've been fishing larger profile baits like the MirrorLure Catch 5. DOA shrimp are also producing around the oyster bars, but the Catch 5 are producing larger fish.

If our weather holds for a couple more weeks things should be back to normal.