GmanTerry wrote:
I sure can identify with your daughter. When I was in the Peace Corps in the Ivory Coast in Africa, I used to frequent a Lebanese restaurant for breakfast. They had these sweet rolls with a filling I couldn't identify but really liked. I had just learned French in Peace Corps Boot Camp so my vocabulary was limited. I would ask the waiter what the filling was and he would respond "cerveau". I would try to remember that word to look it up in my French/English dictionary. I never remembered. One day I was having breakfast with another volunteer from the State of Maine. In Maine, my friend did half his classes in English and half in French so he was bilingual. I ask him to ask the waiter what was in the delicious sweet rolls. He did and I never ate them again. The French word "cerveau" means brains. I learned to love snails but brains are just beyond what I can overlook.
Semper Fi
I sure can identify with your daughter. When I was... (
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We here at the tree farm are in the process of "Hog Killing" my cajun and negro employees and area help sre in charge. The only thing that we don't use is the "hair and the squeal"
We have 6 large cast iron pots that look like WW'-1 helmets. They originally were used to cook syrup in. A nearby farm was going to scrap them but the Sgt. Major found and bougjt them at scrap iron price.
They were "burned" and look brand new. They are used to boil water to scald the hogs to make removing the hair easier and scrub the hog so it is clesn.
Once the hog is cut up, the fat is cut up in small pieces and "fried" in another of the "pots" is used to cook the grease from the cracklings. The lard is placed in new five gallon buckets for storage and the "cracklings or pigskins" saved.
The heart, lungs, brains and liver is cut up and used to make hash seasoned with green onions and other spices. It is a canun delicacy.
The head us used to make "souse or hog besd cheese." The blood is saved and mixed with cooked rice and other seasoning then stuffed in casings to make Cajun blood sausage.
Other fat and meat scraps are ground, seasoned and stuffed for link sausage and is put in the smoke house. The hams, pork chops and bacon is smoked in the smokehouse.
The women do most of the finished work while a few of the men do the hard heavy work of scaulding and butchering work. This year we are killing 50 hogs ranging fron 350 to 500 pounds.
We start after the first frost and sometimes finish as late as January. This year we will finish mid December.
Over the years we have found it is cheaper to buy several yearlings and grsin feed them and have a near by slaughterhouse process them.
Eggs and chicken are cheaper to buy than raising them yourself. A few are still around that the ladies keep more or less for their enjoyment.
Occasionally we will buy a few processed domestic rabbits. Catfish, shrimp, crabs and oysters are available from local sources.
I know this is a long report but it's how oeopke have survived in this part of the country for hundreds of years.