These days I'm getting to where I must be very picky with my food. I have gotten through the past few years where I cannot even stand the aroma of cooked meat or of meat cooking. When I was young I was a carnivore pure and simple. If an animal did not die for it I did not want to eat it. Bacon then, as now, was my favorite. And, oddly enough, bacon still does not make me sick. I'm thankful for small favors.
I was born and raised in a rural setting where you either ate from a garden, animals you raised or animals you hunted and killed along with a few staples from the store such as flower and corn meal. I not only grew up eating these foods but helping my mother cook them. Had I the proper ingredients at hand I could still whip up a mean meal of those old time favorites.
I learned to cook from my mother and I never learned to use a recipe. My mother would tell me to add "ingredient x" and I'd ask her how much to put in. She'd just tell me to "add it 'til your conscience is clear". The most precise measurement I can remember was a pinch and below that was a 'skosh'. Call it half a pinch. As I got older I learned more units of measurement from my brother in construction type measurements. I will not specify them here as they are definitely rated at least an 'R'.
There are some things I grew up eating that are quickly being forgotten in this age of processed meats and the "pet-i-zation" of certain food animals. Let me tell you, the best day(s) of the year were day(s) after a 'hog killing'. Man, if you have never eaten fresh pork tenderloin, or pork chops or bacon the day after it was walking around on the hog you have missed something. Fresh pork does not taste anything like that insipid stuff you bring home from the store.
Wake up the morning after a hog killing and you had fried eggs, gravy, red-eye gravy(from fresh ham), biscuits and fresh fried pork tenderloin, pork chops and bacon along with your home made jams, jellies, molasses and honey. Best meals of the year every year.
Another big difference was the fat content of the meat. We are deliberately breeding the fat out of hogs now because fat is a 'bad' thing. Forty-five years ago fat was a very GOOD thing. All the fat in the meat added flavor. All the extra fat was cut off and cut in cubes and put in an old cast iron kettle and put over a fire and rendered out to lard and put in old 25lb or 50lb tin cans and put in the cellar for later use. Hog fat was put in everything for cooking. Beans, green beans, turnips, biscuits, whatever. And the left over from the rendering was called cracklings. They'd be put in a gallon glass jar and we'd pull them out and put salt on them and eat them like candy. Toss a handful into your con bread mix and you have cracklin' bread. Soooo good.
I've already talked about the garden grown things and canning but there was also the wild game. When I grew up, 'hunting season' was not even a suggestion. We knew it existed but hunger took precedence to rules. I grew up on squirrels for breakfast dinner and supper. And, yes Virginia, dinner is the meal you eat in the middle of the day and supper is the end of day meal. I do not know when or where lunch became the mid-day meal and dinner the evening meal but it was surely not such when I was growing up or in the many years before that.
Squirrel, squirrel gravy and home-made biscuits for breakfast was not to be beaten. Dad would go hunting and bring home the squirrels. Mother would skin them and cut them up and put them in a gallon glass jar and put salt water in on them to "draw out the blood" then cook them the next morning.
My favorite part of the squirrel was the head. Some people would not clean the head as they were difficult and I'd like to kick their a$$ for that. Not only wasteful but it was the best part. Cook it up good and the little cheeks were really good but the tongue was great and the best part was the brain. Perfect package, too. Just hook two fingers in the eye sockets and pull back the top of the skull and suck the brain out whole. Double YUMMY!!! I would kill for a good kettle of squirrel heads right now.
We also had rabbits, grouse, pheasant, quail, groundhogs and I even chased down a chipmunk once and Dad killed it and cleaned it and my mother fried it for me. Good training for a little, future Nimrod.
I enjoyed hunting when I was growing up. Nothing like being out in the woods before sunrise and sitting, listening for the tell-tale "swoosh" of a squirrel jumping from tree to tree or the sound of hickory nut cuttings falling like a light rain as daylight gradually revealed the surrounding trees. No time like that now as everybody has no trespassing signs up so hunting is limited.
I loved it until around 1984 fall. I went out and killed one squirrel and just sat and looked at it and did not even take it home and clean it. Never hunted again. I lost all ability to kill anything that 28 years ago. I'm not hypocrite enough to say it is wrong because I have NO problem with eating anything someone else shoots. I just could no longer do it for myself. And, as little as I can stand meat these days, I'd kill for a good mess of squirrel, squirrel gravy and biscuits.
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