
I went down to California last weekend for a pig killing.
For those of you who don't think you read that right: Every year, my family gets together with a few other Basque families to butcher the pigs we'll need for the next year. We make the traditional sausages — chorizo, mortzilla (that's blood sausage) — cure ham and and package up the salomo and pig's feet that will make its way into holiday dishes (or, in my mom's case, losing bets).
I could tell you about how much this means to me because it preserves tradition and is a rapidly dying art, or that there's value in seeing where that ham came from and how the animal suffered for you, but I know that the two readers of this blog aren't interested in that. So!
I hadn't been down to the pig killing — held every January for generations — for five whole years, due to assorted illnesses, bad weather, work schedule ... you know the drill. Since I was last down two very important people have died, a Portuguese family and a Japanese family have joined in, and now about 80 people show up to drink, watch the proceedings and eat like it's Thanksgiving all over again.
The morning starts out with spiked coffee and the husband-and-wife butchers, who dispatch the poor pigs and get them ready for the rest of us. And by the rest of us I mean the dads of the group. I spent most of the morning drinking, talking to my relatives and taking pictures. Eventually I thought that I should, you know, do something, so I went to help my mom separate intestines for sausage casings. That's really not as gross as it sounds. They're already clean and packed in salt in Denmark, bizarrely. Due they have some sort of intestine industry? Back in the day, cleaning the intestines was the job for the girl rookies. Imagine marrying into that.
After a totally awesome lunch (worth another post, really) of lamb everyone made the mortzillak. Blood sausage really isn't as bad as it sounds, but it's pretty great for freaking people out because it's made from the fresh blood and the offal from the pig. It tastes rich, but it isn't heavy or greasy. It tastes ... dark. If the darkest of dark chocolates could be reincarnated, it would show up as blood sausage.
Everyone breaks at dusk and eats the mortzillak, grabbing french bread and glasses of wine off of the bed of a truck pulled up to make a dinner counter. And then we drink some more. Too much, in my case. It took me three days to recover and all of my pictures from about 6 p.m. on are blurry.
The next day started out with the ancient grinder breaking down and an accidental stabbing after one of the men cutting up the hogs let his knife slip. He's fine after some stitches and staples, but the sheriff's office had to call (call!) to ask about the stabbing. "We're just butchering some hogs," the person who answered said. Apparently that's a good enough explanation in Stanislaus County. We weren't sure if we should be comforted or worried by that.
After mixing together the chorizo according to each family's specifications, everything gets packaged up. I wish I could have stayed for the big breakfast the next morning, when everyone tries out the chorizo, but no luck. I was on a plane back to Idaho by 6:30 a.m., nursing my hangover and thinking about next year.