Drool

For those who don't know, the Ragin' Mrs. and I are foodies. We love food. We love to cook food, eat food, design food receipies, everything. We bake our own bread. We make our own sausage. And we make our own ham.

Yes, ham. We couldn't find a ham that we liked down here, without paying bundles of cash. So we started curing our own hams. First in a salt/spice cure, then smoked, and then wine. We found a couple of different curing techniques, and blended them together to make our own ham. The result is delicious.

Anyways, I told you all that so I could tell you this:

Spaniards are nothing if not dedicated eaters.

Now, hard-core foodies are drooling over the prospect of something truly superlative from Spain, at least in price: a salt-cured ham costing about $2,100 per leg, or a cruel $160 per pound. It's a price believed to make it the most expensive ham in the
world. Don't grab your wallet just yet. And forget about asking for just a slice. The 2006 Alba Quercus Reserve (as this pricey pork will be known) won't be available until late 2008 and you must buy the whole ham or nothing at all. But that hasn't dissuaded gastronomic Web sites and blogs from buzzing with talk of the farm where it is being produced, likening it to a Mount Olympus of pork.

THAT, my friends, is a man dedicated to making ham.

Their herds of black Iberian beauties are kept on a handful of acorn-rich farms in the surrounding meadowlands, walking freely up to 6 miles daily without any wineherds to look after them.

After the pigs are butchered, they are cured in high-grade sea salts and refrigerated at 39 degrees. The salt is wiped off after about 12 days. Over the course of the next three months, the temperature is gradually raised to 68 degrees.

The hams then are brought into one of Maldonado's two warehouse-size cellars where they cure for two years, hanging on a series of interconnected hooks from floor to ceiling, like curtains.

If I could, that's what I would do for a living. Mmmmmmmmmm..... ham.......