Vocab: boudin - blood sausage
Farm attire.At long last! The entry about my experiences as a murderer of small animals. Well, to be fair, they were large animals, and it wasn't me who killed them, and nothing was wasted. Seeing as I wrote 10 pages in my notebook when it was all fresh in my mind, I've decided to excerpt a few snippets for your reading pleasure. For purposes of discretion I will not: (1) post all of my notes, (2) include any names, or (3) post photos of the piggies. (Yes, I justified the text of this entry; trust me, it looks much better this way.)
Sunday, October 15, 2009
We had stumbled into an immense family gathering. Over the course of the weekend, I kissed easily over 40 people between hellos & goodbyes; you acknowledge everyone present when you arrive and when you leave. I am omniscient because I had no responsibilities and could bounce from inside to outside as the different family members proudly displayed and explained their roles.
We killed 4 pigs. I'm not a squeamish person, but I thought I might lose my proverbial lunch. The pig is terrified, seeing he must confront his own mortality. She struggles and screams -- not squeals, screams. Every fiber of her existence tenses and converges into one simple message: I am alive and I do not want to die. And that's what pretty much all of us want, isn't it? Her death is inevitable, though, planned by the human arbiters of life and death...the only gods in the pig world. I understand more than ever why the base of tragedy -- the most ancient and fundamental tragedies -- is inevitability. I felt myself in a completely alien world, watching a woman easily in her mid-60s eagerly place a bucket under the cascade of blood, while the men held the pig still in the throes of its death tremors.
After killing the pigs, the next step was griller... in
other words, to light them on fire to clean the skin and slightly cook the insides before cutting them open. It was raining. Hard. And the bonfires felt oddly funerary as the pigs transitioned to meat (as Angèle said). The human role in all this requires a strong stomach and a hearty constitution: You have to face your role as a killer, but you also have to have respect for the whole process underway. The man who butchered the pigs had been doing so since he was eight. One fluid motion after another, he opened the animals, separating head from body, organs from flesh, and later, separating the different cuts of meat.
While the work was clearly divided
according to sex, all the work for men and women alike takes a toll on the hands. The men worked outside in the rain, scrubbing down the charred carcasses, and setting up spigots to run cold water through the organs of the animals. The women worked inside to separate the intestines, finessing them out of their tangles, tugging and tearing at the connective tissue. Cold water, warm blood, hot insides. Even with hands no doubt numbed by the spigot water, though, the men still came inside periodically to roll themselves the perfect (filterless) cigarettes in zero seconds flat.
If the French are efficient in nothing else, they work quickly when preparing food. Within minutes the assembly line was whirring away. Ladies tearing at innards, an older mustachioed gentleman grinding away at the sausage machine, and the other men outside in the rain cleaning shit out of intestines that only minutes before had been inside, steaming with the heat of a recently-killed corpse.
After several hours of hard labor, we sat for lunch, which lasted easily two hours. With the efficiency of the day, we had converted the meat prep. room into a kitchen. Warmed by the fire, we passed around huge loaves of crusty country bread before partking of salads that people had made the night before. For the main course, we had sausage (not from our pigs) & pasta. I wasn't brave enough to try any of the recently killed cuts that we had cooked for lunch, but I did try a bite of the blood sausage. Never again. The taste was fine, but the texture reminded me too much of the substance recently flushed out of those same intestines. We wrapped up with strong country camembert, roasted chestnuts, & clementines.
That night, we had dinner with another part of the family. Again, there were at least 20 (une vingtaine) of us. This meal lasted around four hours. We took our time, starting with aperitifs & cold appetizers that we passed around on platters, then the warm appetizers -- a small plate of mini tarts for everyone. The main course, which came out in pre-arranged plates, consisted of three types of sausage, a cut of ham, half a baked potato, and a sauerkraut-like cabbage mélange. We three girls split a plate amongst ourselves and it was just the right amount of food for each. After the cheese course came dessert and digestifs. Angèle's uncle challenged us girls to try Calvados (affectionately: "calva"), a locally made apple brandy that you drink from a spoon, poured over a sugar cube. The other two didn't much care for it, but I appreciated the burning sweetness of the combination, which amused the family to no end.
I know Angèle and Anaïs said it depends on the family, but the French seem to thrive on family collectivity... certainly in the countryside.
Sunday, October 15, 2009
We had stumbled into an immense family gathering. Over the course of the weekend, I kissed easily over 40 people between hellos & goodbyes; you acknowledge everyone present when you arrive and when you leave. I am omniscient because I had no responsibilities and could bounce from inside to outside as the different family members proudly displayed and explained their roles.
We killed 4 pigs. I'm not a squeamish person, but I thought I might lose my proverbial lunch. The pig is terrified, seeing he must confront his own mortality. She struggles and screams -- not squeals, screams. Every fiber of her existence tenses and converges into one simple message: I am alive and I do not want to die. And that's what pretty much all of us want, isn't it? Her death is inevitable, though, planned by the human arbiters of life and death...the only gods in the pig world. I understand more than ever why the base of tragedy -- the most ancient and fundamental tragedies -- is inevitability. I felt myself in a completely alien world, watching a woman easily in her mid-60s eagerly place a bucket under the cascade of blood, while the men held the pig still in the throes of its death tremors.
After killing the pigs, the next step was griller... in
other words, to light them on fire to clean the skin and slightly cook the insides before cutting them open. It was raining. Hard. And the bonfires felt oddly funerary as the pigs transitioned to meat (as Angèle said). The human role in all this requires a strong stomach and a hearty constitution: You have to face your role as a killer, but you also have to have respect for the whole process underway. The man who butchered the pigs had been doing so since he was eight. One fluid motion after another, he opened the animals, separating head from body, organs from flesh, and later, separating the different cuts of meat.While the work was clearly divided
according to sex, all the work for men and women alike takes a toll on the hands. The men worked outside in the rain, scrubbing down the charred carcasses, and setting up spigots to run cold water through the organs of the animals. The women worked inside to separate the intestines, finessing them out of their tangles, tugging and tearing at the connective tissue. Cold water, warm blood, hot insides. Even with hands no doubt numbed by the spigot water, though, the men still came inside periodically to roll themselves the perfect (filterless) cigarettes in zero seconds flat.If the French are efficient in nothing else, they work quickly when preparing food. Within minutes the assembly line was whirring away. Ladies tearing at innards, an older mustachioed gentleman grinding away at the sausage machine, and the other men outside in the rain cleaning shit out of intestines that only minutes before had been inside, steaming with the heat of a recently-killed corpse.
After several hours of hard labor, we sat for lunch, which lasted easily two hours. With the efficiency of the day, we had converted the meat prep. room into a kitchen. Warmed by the fire, we passed around huge loaves of crusty country bread before partking of salads that people had made the night before. For the main course, we had sausage (not from our pigs) & pasta. I wasn't brave enough to try any of the recently killed cuts that we had cooked for lunch, but I did try a bite of the blood sausage. Never again. The taste was fine, but the texture reminded me too much of the substance recently flushed out of those same intestines. We wrapped up with strong country camembert, roasted chestnuts, & clementines.
That night, we had dinner with another part of the family. Again, there were at least 20 (une vingtaine) of us. This meal lasted around four hours. We took our time, starting with aperitifs & cold appetizers that we passed around on platters, then the warm appetizers -- a small plate of mini tarts for everyone. The main course, which came out in pre-arranged plates, consisted of three types of sausage, a cut of ham, half a baked potato, and a sauerkraut-like cabbage mélange. We three girls split a plate amongst ourselves and it was just the right amount of food for each. After the cheese course came dessert and digestifs. Angèle's uncle challenged us girls to try Calvados (affectionately: "calva"), a locally made apple brandy that you drink from a spoon, poured over a sugar cube. The other two didn't much care for it, but I appreciated the burning sweetness of the combination, which amused the family to no end.
I know Angèle and Anaïs said it depends on the family, but the French seem to thrive on family collectivity... certainly in the countryside.
Well, no one has commented yet so I guess I will go first. An interesting (if brutal) account of your adventure (were the pigs really all female, or was that just a literarty conceit?) Inevitablity as the base of all tragedy? Food for thought over a long extended family conversation of our own -- maybe even fours hours! We'll try! xoxo Mom
ReplyDeleteHaha, it's true! I mean, inevitability is certainly not the only ingredeient required for a tragedy, but it's a frequently recurring theme. It's because hubris was an equally important component in Greek Tragedy -- men trying to fight their destinies or defy the Gods, and we believe they can, even though we also know it's in vain. Two examples (one ancient and one modern) of tragedies that would be less tragic if not for their inevitability: Oedipus Rex and 'Night Mother.
ReplyDeleteBUT, to be continued! And I'm looking forward to it!
To be continued, indeed! BTW, the justified margins look good, and actually seem to work better it terms of wrapping around the pictures -- at least on my computer! xoxoM
ReplyDeleteHaha, yeah, it was a good aesthetic decision. It just looked too weird unjustified when I tried to place some photos on the right hand side.
ReplyDelete