‘Culture’, according to Seth Godin, ‘Is what happens when the community insists.’

And I would have to agree.

But just to make sure, I thought to put it to a test yesterday.

The afternoon was planned to make up some sausage with our children, and Taylors.

So, we got started cutting the bone out of the Boston Butts, and Jan got going on the beef, cutting the bone out of the chuck roasts.

For some reason, it fell to me to carve that bone out of the majority of the Boston’s.  Although I don’t think it had anything to do with culture.

Next, we began running the meat through the grinder for its first run, and from there to the dining table to be seasoned.

Once seasoned, it went through the grinder again, this time on a finer grind that left it looking as pretty as you see in the showcases in the store.

And I thought to myself.  “If culture is real, and what I think it is, I’ll hear it pretty soon.”

Sure enough, I heard the frying pans clinking even as I heard Bryce holler out from his place sealing up the bags, “Anybody going to fry some up?  We need to fry some up.”

Now I’ll ask, what good does frying some up at this point in the game?  Are we going to try to figure out what tastes off, (ask if we could) and doctor it up with something different?

No. 

It’s culture. 

Plain and simple. 

For as long as I can remember, whenever we have done sausage, we need to fry some up and, as like it was yesterday, Mama J carried her plate of neatly cut squares of fresh fried sausage around to the each of us, so we could get taste on it.

But about right here is where the culture thing started blurring the lines in my mind.

I looked at all the fat we had cut off, and saw small bits of meat left in it where it was too hard to trim it off perfectly.

I saw a fix and mix bowl full of bones that had even more meat on them.

And, I confess, I slipped it all away when no one was watching.

And, I sneaked downstairs and found the five gallon aluminum kettle we use for crawfish boils and whatever else, filled it with water about three fourths full, (which I quickly learned was about a pint too much) and once it got to boiling merrily along, I handed all those bones into it and snapped the lid on before anyone knew. 

But then Bryce came in a little later and said “Whoever is doing something with that pot in the garage, it’s boiling over.”

I was caught.

Almost red-handed.

However, I knew he didn’t know what I was doing, so I kept on with my game plan.

Because my game plan called for a taste of something long gone in the annals of culture.  

I let those bones boil along for close to five hours.

Then I pulled them out, and the meat fell right off of them.

I got a slotted spoon and fished the rest of the meat from the bottom of the kettle.

I saved a gallon or two of broth for later, and transferred all the meat mixture to my large skillet. 

I set it on a low simmer, and began stirring the meat, adding broth whenever it got too dry looking.

And about an hour or so later, my meat mixture had simmered off all the fat, and I had been knocking in even amounts of salt and pepper all along. 

It was time to pull it off and put it in Cool Whip dishes and then into the fridge. 

I smiled as I tasted what my culture calls ‘headcheese.’ 

Earlier, while those bones were cooking, I had the guys run the fat that I had snitched through the grinder on the fine grind and it went into the fridge for later.

Once the headcheese was done, I started dropping this fat into the skillet, again on a low simmer, and with the same dollops of salt and pepper.

It fried down to the most delectable little crispies of golden-brown meat, each with it’s own packet of salt and pepper inside. 

“Cracklins,” is what culture calls em’.

When I was all said and done, I pulled the chilled headcheese from the fridge and, using a sharp knife, sliced neat pieces, just like you would off of a loaf of cheese, and vacuum packed them individually to be fried up later and placed alongside a syrupy mess of pancakes, or eggs, or what have you.

In the end, from what we started with, all that was left was 3 cups of oil, a couple gallons of watery broth that I threw out, and the bones.

The bones I ground up and spread around the yard as fertilizer.  (At least that is what I think the dogs did with them.)

I won’t be surprised if I’m about the only one who eats the results of my work on the sneak, as it was mostly a younger generation with us, and I doubt their culture will insist on such.