One of the events that led to Heather and I starting The Piggery was the planning of our wedding. We were doing a pig roast for the main course, but we wanted to have an appetizer table featuring local foods exclusively. The week before the wedding I collected wheels of cheese from Finger Lakes Farmstead Cheesery, Cowlick farms and Lively Run Goat Dairy. I ordered baguettes from Finger Lakes Flatbread. I picked fruit at Indian Creek Farm and filled in some gaps with fruit from Black Diamond farm and Eve’s Cidery. I put everything out with cutting boards from Raintree Farm. All that we needed now was a loaf of pate, or maybe some salami or smoked sausages. But none were forthcoming.

Despite the lack of forcemeats, the appetizer table turned out to be a really nice way to feed a lot of people for a special event very affordably, especially compared to a fully catered event. The guests loved it. And the best part is that if you’d like to do something similar, I can now offer to help you out with maybe a loaf or two of rustic pate. Or maybe some smoked sausages. Just let us know!

I just added a Flickr photoset that leads you through how I make Shrimp and Cheesy Grits with our smoked Andouille sausage. This recipe is of medium difficulty and can be prepared in an hour or so. You can click the picture to get to the Flickr photoset or just click on the link. Once you’re there, you can click through the pictures to follow the recipe.

A major study that claims to be the first of it’s kind has systematically looked at every randomized diet study in the scientific literature conducted between 1950 and 2007 and found insufficient evidence to associate the consumption of either meat or saturated fat with heart disease. The McMaster University study DID find associations between heart disease and the consumption of trans fat and diets with a high glycemic load (Glycemic load is a complex topic that I talk more about here).

At first blush this appears to be an exhaustive, high quality review of the available literature. At the risk of being overly simplistic, I’ll summarize the results in a table:

“This is cause for concern,” the article says, “because dietary advice to limit the intake of a certain nutrient (dietary fat) may result in increased consumption of another (carbohydrates) which can have adverse effects on CHD risk factors.” Which is another way of saying that you’ve got to eat something. If you avoid everything with saturated fat you tend to load up on carbs which is a dietary choice of dubious value.

Interestingly, the study shows that monounsaturated fat consumption is associated with lower rates of heart disease while saturated fat and polyunsaturated fat had no association with heart disease. Lets look at a chart of common dietary fats and their proportions of good fats (monounsaturated) with neutral fats (saturated and polyunsaturated), according to the USDA Database (butter and margarine contain water and the fat content doesn’t add up to 100%):

So pork fat (lard) comes out pretty good, having more “good” fats than all other fat sources except olive oil and canola oil. But of all these fats, pork fat from pastured hogs is the only one that’s loaded with vitamin D. See? pork fat is good for you.