What's for supper

Several years ago we would be shopping in Cape Girardeau, which is just north of where we live, and we'd end up hungry. Rather than wait until we got home, we'd eat out. It's a fairly large college town, so there were lots of places to eat. One that we particularly enjoyed also had pour-over coffee, which naturally seemed to draw me in. But they also had a Southwestern salad which I still believe was the best salad I have ever eaten anywhere. I usually had chicken pieces added to the salad, but honestly I could have enjoyed it meatless. This meatless stuff isn't normal for me. I like meat three times a day -- at breakfast, dinner and supper.

But this was how we were raised on a cattle ranch in the Sandhills of Nebraska. Maybe once a month Mom might have a meal that didn't have meat with it, but it was rare. Normally we had bacon or ham for breakfast, some kind of meat for dinner -- beef or pork or chicken -- and then meat for supper -- beef or pork or chicken or sometimes fish. We probably had meat 99 out of 100 times, if not 999 out of 1,000.

Dad usually had several hogs getting ready to butcher. The two main things the hogs were fed were corn and separated milk. Oh yeah, every now and then he'd dump in a can of Prince Albert tobacco to worm them. After milking the cows, Dad would run the milk through the separator and out one spigot would come cream and out the other would come skim milk or separated milk. The cows Dad liked to milk were either full-blood Jerseys or Jersey/Brown Swiss cross. The Jerseys shucked out almost pure cream. If you didn't run the milk through the separator, after cooling half of the container would be cream. Whole milk was thick and creamy. Mick and I drank separated milk.

Dad always had the hogs ready to butcher during the fall or early spring when the weather was cold enough to cool the meat down, but hopefully not cold enough to freeze the meat. Dad usually hung the pork overnight and would cut it up the next day. He would skin the hog, get the entrails out and then saw it down the backbone into halves. These halves he'd carry into a room off the kitchen which had no heat so it was cold. When Mick and I got old enough and wanted to show off we'd carry in the halves.

Probably from the time Dad could walk, he helped butcher hogs and cattle and deer. He knew how to break down the carcass into pieces, and Mom usually did the wrapping. Mom would normally wrap the meat in freezer paper and then wrap it a second time. Once wrapped, the package would be marked as to whether it was pork chops or roast or steaks. Dad would cure the hams, so these were done later. Most of the time he never cured the bacon so we ate it uncured. I still like thick-sliced, uncured bacon. The odds and ends went into sausage which was ground and seasoned with salt and pepper. The grinder was an old hand-crank metal grinder.

Normally as the meat was being cut up and wrapped, Mom had a big canner on the stove full of pig fat she was rendering. After a good bit, it would turn pretty clear, and you would have lard and a bunch of cracklings. Cracklings with a bit of salt were darn good.

The beef was done pretty much the same, only it was bigger. The hogs weighed about 250 pounds, while the beef was 950 to 1,000 pounds. After skinning the beef and gutting it, Dad cut it down the back into halves and then each half into quarters, which we carried out on the porch where we hung it up to age. Most of the time the beef hung for about a week or so. Dad wasn't very keen on aging the beef over a week. While Dad was cutting up the meat, Mom was double wrapping it with freezer paper. Freezer paper had a slick side that was like it was wax-coated, while the other side was like paper. The slick side always went toward the meat. We ground up the hamburger.

Between the hog and the beef, Dad and Mom and the family were fixed pretty good. But so as to add a little variety, they would order in a bunch of baby chickens through the mail. It seems like they would end up with 150 to 200 baby chickens. Dad would baby them along and take care of them. Mom helped, but it always seemed like Dad was the caregiver. Some would end up being laying hens kept to lay eggs. The main part were to be butchered and frozen.

When the chickens were old enough, we'd use about a four- or five-foot heavy wire with a hook on one end. You'd hook the chickens by the leg to catch them. So as we caught them, we'd take them to Mom and Dad and let them kill the chickens. Dad used a tree stump and an ax. Mom would get the chicken by the head and wring away and off came the head. Then we'd dunk the chickens in boiling water, which caused the feathers to kind of come loose so we could pluck the feathers off. I can't remember for sure, but it seems like we'd butcher them in bunches of 10 or 15.

Once plucked Mom would hold the chicken over the gas range in the kitchen and burn off the rest of the pin feathers. Stink, oh man, that stunk. Now all that was left was to gut them and freeze them. I don't remember what we froze them in, but I'm guessing plastic bags. Voilà, now there were fresh chickens in the freezer. Chickens from the grocery store today don't hold a candle to home-raised chickens coated with flour and fried in lard.

Every now and then Mom would get a hankering for chicken and noodles. Mom made her own noodles, but I can't tell you how. All I know was she rolled them out super thin, and she cut them really thin. She dried them before cutting them I believe so there would be noodles drying all over in the house. She normally would get an old hen to bake for the chicken and noodles. It was probably one that wasn't laying eggs.

That pretty much sums up as far as what meat we ate. In the spring we'd go about weekly to catch a bunch of yellow bullheads. Those darn things were good fried up in lard. Every now and then we'd go to some hill lake and catch a mess of bass, crappie, bluegill, white bass and walleye. Once in a while, while we were mowing in July, we'd get a mess of wild chickens. We'd carry the .22 and plink off half a dozen heads. Yum yum!

Such was our menu. Today, I'm pretty much the same. A meal doesn't seem like a meal without meat. I do like my veggies and potatoes, but meat is center stage.

Happy grilling and eating.