Today, I bring you news from the world of delicious pigs:

Thanks to support from the Pork Board's Be Inspired campaign, we have been playing with pork. On Friday night, braised pork belly was the center of our meal. We served it over local root vegetables with mashed potatoes and homegrown green beans. This is a truly decadent preparation!

Saturday's It Couldn't Be dinner included pork sausage as the fat component in a spice cake. I realized when serving it the next day to my family that perhaps the inspiration for making a cake from raw meat was to avoid dairy; the crazy creation was lactose free!

Are you a fellow pork lover? On August 27, join me at Bacon Camp 2011. I'll be there as one of the judges for the bacon cooking contest. For $10 you can purchase one of the few remaining tickets to taste bacon creations, view bacon art, and enjoy bacon-related discussions.

And finally, the giveaway! The Pork Board wants you to also Be Inspired by pork. One of you will win the fun stuff pictured above in the "Be Inspired with Pork" kit, including:

$25 gift card to a local retailer to purchase pork
11” Square Grill Pan
16-Jar Revolving Spice Rack
Pork Be Inspired Cutting Board
Digital Thermometer
Copy of "How to Cook Like a Top Chef"

All you need to do to enter is leave a comment about a pork dish you want to make at home by Monday August 8, 2011 at 8 pm. I will use random.org to pick a winner. Good luck!

Disclosure: I received a Pork Board Be Inspired kit in exchange for hosting this giveaway. All opinions are my own.

Italy has prosciutto, German has sausages and Spain has serrano. It seems to me that America's go-to cured meat is bacon.

Long ubiquitous at breakfasts, bacon has recently enjoyed resurgence to cult status, flavoring everything from beer to cupcakes.

With a populace growing in concern about high fructose corn syrup and additives, making bacon has also become the de rigueur for the adventurous home cook. We hopped on the bacon makin' wagon over two years ago and haven't bought a pack of the store bought stuff since.

The process is simple: Rub fresh pork belly (our favorite local source is Blues Creek Meats) with a curing mix of sugar, salt, and pink salt. Under refrigeration, allow the pork to absorb the salt and leach some liquid for 4-7 days. Rinse off the salt, pat dry, and smoke or oven roast. Slice, cook, and viola! You just made the best bacon you've ever tasted.

The joy of home charcuterie rarely stops with the first batch of bacon, however. A curious cook wonders how this or that will affect the flavor and begins experimenting.

This drive to excite our mouths with interesting new flavors led to the discovery of cider syrup bacon. Just as one might make maple flavored bacon by adding maple syrup to the cure described above, we tried adding 1/2 cup of Charlie's Apple Cider Syrup to a five pound batch of bacon last year. It imbibed the pork belly with tangy zest from the apples and the slightest hint of cinnamon.

When we pressed cider and made our own syrup this fall, we made another batch, knowing the ingredients even more intimately. Perfect for winter when we don't always want to fire up the grill, cider syrup bacon is best oven roasted, lest the delicate syrup flavors be overwhelmed by smoking. This charcuterie experiment was a keeper.

If you want to jump into the world of home cured bacon and other tasty meats, we recommend Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn's book Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing. You can also follow the Charcutepalooza blog project in which we are participating. If you learn best in person, join us for our Charcuterie class at Franklin Park Conservatory on March 15 from 6:30 - 8 pm.

Added to Simple Lives Thursday 30th edition.