In the rural south, that means the weather is cold enough to keep the meat chilled while you butcher the hog. When I was a kid growing up in the country, that was an exciting day with a lot of hard work, but looked forward to. Hams and side meat were salted and hung, fat rendered for lard to cook with for another year, and saussage and liver mush ground and packaged. If you were one of those families with a smoke house, there might be some hams, shoulder, and side meat that was smoked to put away for special occasions. You knew that cracklin cornbread would be on the table for the next few days, and that was a real treat.
Today, I don't know anyone who still raises and dresses out their own hogs. I'm sure there are still a few people who do, but not in numbers like when I was a boy. I miss that home made saussage and country salted/smoked ham too. My cholesterol is healthy, but I sure miss the big fluffy biscuits with the products of the hog.
Okay. Truthfully, I do splurge on a saussage and egg biscuit a couple of times a year. And, sometimes I even eat a buiscuit at Christmas with a piece of country ham in it. But, that's it. I don't eat cracklin cornbread at all now. I don't eat cornbread at all now. Nobody knows how to cook cornbread anymore that won't choke you.
I'll warn you ahead. If you come to the south and visit a restaurant for real southern cookin', then skip the cornbread. I doubt it's anything like what was once real cornbread. And greenbeans out of a can, swimming in grease aren't "southern" either, and besides they proabably will serve whipped margarine instead of real butter with it and that's just gross.
Anyway. The weather finally has cooled. It's a month late, and I'm not complaining, except for the bugs we had unti now, like mosquitos, wasps, jellowjackets etc. Now, you'll get to read my gripes about cold weather for another 4 months. Aren't you thrilled?
Posted by Dread, who also remembers pulling peanuts and boiling them at this time of year, only usually you also took into consideration the moon phase; at least we did here, beneath the Carolina moon.
2 comments:
There used to be a restaurant in Northern Florida near Perry where an elderly Southern black woman made all of the above including home made cracklins. I vacationed up there some years back and never ate anywhere else. out of this world. Everything everything had a taste life of its own...
We had a restaurant here like that where they peeled their own potatoes and made mashed potatoes by hand the old way. They prepared all their vegitables fresh. Alas, it burned and never reopened. Ashes of an era.
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