We have a new, lower-price point salami in the store. It was created by one of those serendipitous "mistakes" that turns out pretty great for all involved.
As you know, Olympia Provisions makes a few products for us including the Rosette d'Oregon salami. Well, this last batch turned out differently than expected so Olympia Provisions did not want to sell it as Rosette d'Oregon. They offered us to buy it from them and resell it ourselves - and a new product is born!
We accepted Olympia Provisions' offer, and have renamed it Salami d'Ouvriers, which is a really fancy way of saying "lunchbox salami." It is available in the store for $9.66 each.
How it happened
The reason it turned out different from the standard Rosette d'Oregon is interesting: The pigs harvested for this salami ate a diet higher than usual in walnuts. Walnuts, like all nuts, are a great source of food for pigs. Nuts are known for flavoring the meat, are a great source of fat and protein. Some farmers also credit walnuts with natural de-worming properties.
Why did they get more walnuts than normal?
"Our crew was very effective at cleaning up the yard this fall and collected a lot of walnuts from the ground. We can't sell those, of course, and so we gave them to the pigs," said Deck processing manager and farm chef Jeremy Hyland.
A diet of wanuts tends to make the fat softer than usual. Because of this, while the salami aged the fat melted into the meat rather than remaining distinct chunks usually sought after in salami.
We think it is delicious and that it may even be appreciated by some people more than standard salami.
We hope you enjoy!