The kitchen smells like...

Salami!

Oh, wait.  Right.  That smell is not coming from the kitchen.  Its origin is the corner of our bedroom, which is where, last weekend, I hung about 2 pounds of freshly-stuffed salamis to dry-cure!  I have an entire Charcutepalooza blog post coming up about that adventure; the project is due on December 1st, but I'm not sure yet if the salamis will be ready by then.  I got a little behind on that one because, well, I ran a marathon.

The salami wasn't the only thing happening in my kitchen over the weekend.  I also put some fresh pork belly in a cure to make bacon, and ordered a bunch of duck legs from D'Artagnan so that I can get rolling on a duck confit.  I'm planning the final meat feast Charcutepalooza project, and hopefully this year of meat will go out with a bang.

In addition to the various meat projects, I got started on the few dishes I'm making for John's family Thanksgiving up in Connecticut.  I'm making his favorite sweet potato casserole dish, plus a cornbread and sausage stuffing and a sticky toffee pudding.  Note that, in case you didn't know, it's really a cake, just like a Boston Cream Pie is really a cake.  I tend to think that the food namers should have been more clear.

I was going to make a chocolate meringue pie, because it is the one my mom always makes for holidays (and I love it so), but, as much as I love it - and I'd take this pie over pumpkin ANY DAY - she talked me out of it.  I would have had to make it a few days in advance, and it would likely be soggy and less tasty by Thursday.  Also, the meringue is definitely a "day of" kind of thing, and putting that together on Thursday morning at John's parents' place before leaving for his aunt and uncle's house started to seem like a lot of work.  So I nixed it.

That's fine, though, because it means that I can make a chocolate meringue pie at home next weekend, and John and I can enjoy it all alone!