The Swine Crew—Part 2

My spouse augmented the novice ranks, carefully slicing meat from fat. The all-male swine crew graciously accepted her. It helped that we had known several of the guys for a couple of decades and the fact that she arrived early, carved diligently, and left late. (She got repeated compliments on how hard she worked.) About the only dampening impact she might have had on them was a little toning down of their language, but that did them no harm. I could have helped them relax a little, if I’d given them a few samples of the imaginative expletives she often releases around me.

She reports that, besides random gossip, the talk around the cutting table consisted primarily of the guys trading their various experiences of the ways of handling the pig processing job, or sharing stories from past adventures. Like fish stories, in which the whopper that was caught grew another inch with each narrative, memorable hogs of bygone days have grown heavier with each telling of the tale.

The stories continued the next day, when I joined the crew. Half of them hovered around the boiling kettles, thankful for the heat on a cold February morning, and the other half surrounded a sheet of plywood, seasoning chunks of meat that then got stuffed into the sausage grinder. Rather than regard me as the oddball who stayed home while his mate joined them the day before, they saw me as a fresh target for their slaughtering tales. I was a little concerned that they’d tell me to go inside and help the women prepare lunch. (They were making roast beef sandwiches—using supermarket industrial beef.)

The second day’s main activity was boiling down the goodies in those large cast-iron kettles. The lard rendering is pretty straightforward: the previous day’s chunks of fat are heated in one kettle, carefully stirring so as not to burn it, and then pouring into an old pillowcase (used as a filter) and finally squeezed in a lard press. The bits of cooked skin and meat left in the pillowcase are dumped out and munched on throughout the day, as “cracklin’s.”

The second kettle holds all the scraps (the making of scrapple!) not used for other purposes—head, heart, liver, tongue, bones, and such other offal stuff. It’s boiled until it’s mushy “puddin’ meat,” at which point all the chunks are sifted out of the boiler and placed on a table. Folks gather round and finger through the morsels, removing all gristle and pieces of bone. This is an important step, since some of those old folks can’t afford to have a tooth broken when they bite down on a chunk of scrapple.

To the pot of broth, in the meantime, a mixture of flour and cornmeal is slowly stirred in, along with a blend of seasonings. There is a little more banter at this point, over how much seasoning is just right, but again the participants yield to the taste buds of the host. At this point either scrapple or panhaus is made. These are ways of not wasting much of anything, that German and Dutch immigrants brought to the Mid-Atlantic states. Panhaus (a good German word, also spelled ponhaus, pannhaus, panhas, and pannaus) is that mixture of broth, grains, and seasoning—ladled into small pans. Scrapple is the same mixture, back into to which has been added the bits of puddin’ meat, after passing them through a grinder. When the panhaus or scrapple mush sets up, it is usually sliced and pan fried.

I’ve tried a few bites of scrapple. It’s not bad, even kinda tasty, but like the visions of chickens running through my head, my appetite for scrapple or panhaus wilts when I think about what parts of the hog it contains. One of the running jokes at the slaughtering party is about the tongue—which is fished out of the broth just before making scrapple. It’s laid on the table and the participants cut off a slice, dip it in salt and pepper, and savor its delicate flavor. One fellow, however, can’t quite bring himself to try a taste, saying that he can’t take the thought of where that tongue once was. That man speaks my mind!

I am grateful for our neighbors’ offerings of food and their invitation to join their swine crew. They have taught me that close at hand there are healthy carnivorous alternatives to industrial meat. We have been introduced to a few of their time-honored traditions of preparing basic ingredients for hearty meals. We’ve enjoyed participating in social activities that help contribute to a healthy community. And thanks to my spouse’s good work with the guys, we end up with a few quarts of beautiful lard and several pounds of scrumptious sausage. She even shares her bounty with me—providing I help with the dishes.