Chapter 47 Making Bacon and Sausage
Under Secretary Zhao's command, the wild boar was quickly gutted, and the pork and offal were separated and weighed using the large scale used for the annual public grain delivery.
The meat weighed more than 120 kilograms, 20 kilograms heavier than expected, and the offal weighed about 30 kilograms.
It is easy to distribute.
As for pork, the four strong families who had carried the wild boar back from the mountains and Uncle Wu's family, a total of five families, each received five pounds. The remaining twenty-five households each received about four pounds. As for the offal, each household received slightly different amounts of weight according to the different parts of the pig.
As for which family would get which part of the meat, no one wanted to lose out, so in the end it was decided by drawing lots.
As luck would have it, Song Xiu Yue and her uncle Wang Da Zhu were lucky today and caught the first and second place.
The two families went up happily, intending to pick the fattest and best hind leg meat - ever since they had committed suicide and lost their power, they had been living in a very low position and had not been able to afford food for a long time!
However, the villagers who were responsible for distributing the meat were not happy.
These two families used to bully people in the village, and everyone in the village hated them! Now they are allowed to choose first when dividing the meat?
You wish!
Finally, amid public condemnation and opposition, these two families were shamefully relegated to the last place, and when it was their turn, the villagers deliberately shortchanged them by only two kilograms of meat!
Song Xiu Yue was almost mad with anger, but she had no choice but to endure it.
Xia Juanjuan was given pork belly, which was of very good quality. The villagers were grateful to her and the piece they gave her weighed almost four pounds.
After dividing the meat, they began to divide the pigs into the water.
Everyone in the village was scrambling for hearts, lungs, pig livers and the like.
This area is not like Sichuan. Although people can make bacon or dried meat, there is no custom of preparing one's own intestines. In addition, people think pig farms are dirty and feel uncomfortable with it, so everyone dislikes large and small intestines and does not want them.
Xia Juanjuan smiled and said, "Secretary, if no one wants the pig intestines, just give them to me!"
When Secretary Zhao heard this, he immediately said, "How can that be! You were the one who killed the wild boar, how can I give you the worst part! I'll just give you the liver!"
Xia Juanjuan said: "Secretary, I have a use for pig intestines."
Secretary Zhao saw that Xia Juanjuan insisted, so he gave up.
He sighed again, "The fourth daughter-in-law of the Li family, if it weren't for you, we in Qingshui Village would definitely not have such a good year this winter! You said you wouldn't let me report it to the country to reward you... Let's put it this way, if you have any difficulties in the future, just tell me, and I will do my best to satisfy you!"
Xia Juanjuan blinked and said, "Secretary Zhao, if you say that, I just have a request, but I don't know if it's appropriate to bring it up."
Secretary Zhao immediately said, "What request? Tell me!"
Xia Juanjuan said: "Secretary, you have seen today that my mother-in-law and sister-in-law do not like me and have been spreading rumors behind my back to ruin my reputation. I thought... I wanted to build two more houses to live farther away, so that I would not offend them again.
It’s just…it’s a bit difficult to find a residential plot to build a house…I went up the mountain the other day and saw an empty plot by the river at the east end of the village. It looked like a house had been built there before. I wonder if the village can grant it to me…”
Secretary Zhao pondered for a moment and promised, "I'll take care of this matter! I'll bring it up at the villagers' meeting in two days. If anyone in the village dares to disagree with this big fat wild boar today, I'll kick him to death!"
Xia Juanjuan smiled and said, "Thank you, Secretary!"
After making her request, Xia Juanjuan returned home carrying four pounds of wild boar meat and a whole set of pig intestines.
Pig intestines are rather troublesome to handle. The most important thing is that flour or starch is needed to clean the dirty impurities. In that era, white flour was extremely expensive. Who would be so extravagant as to have extra flour for cleaning?
So it’s normal that no one wants it.
However, Xia Juanjuan knew a cheap and economical method, which was to use wood ash to wash.
She first cleaned the large intestine roughly, then took out a large basin and rinsed it several times with clean water.
Here, three little boys came into the house carrying a load of firewood.
"Mom! You caught a wild boar, a big wild boar, right? Mom is so awesome!" Xiao Wu asked excitedly.
Beibei also repeated in a baby voice: "Mom is so awesome! Mom, is the big wild boar fierce? Beibei wants to see the big wild boar!"
Xia Juanjuan had another, even bigger wild boar in her space, but of course she couldn't take it out to show them, so she smiled and said, "Next time, mom will take you into the mountains to see it."
Li Wenze would steal a glance at Xia Juanjuan from time to time. After a long while, he asked with a worried look on his face, "Are you...are you injured?"
Xia Juanjuan was stunned for a moment, then smiled and said, "Don't worry, those wild boars are no match for me!"
Li Wen's face was burning. He ran to the big basin, rolled up his sleeves, and helped Xia Juanjuan wash the pig intestines without saying a word.
Xia Juanjuan couldn't help but smile, and then instructed: "You three, go to the stove room and dig some wood ash."
When the three kids heard this, they immediately ran to the stove and got some wood ash in a short while.
Xia Juanjuan scrubbed the large intestine with plant ash, and then washed it with clean water. After repeating this several times, the large intestine was clean and there was no odor.
However, Xia Juanjuan still washed it again twice with flour and oil, and that was the end.
She separated the large intestine from the small intestine, put the large intestine aside, and planned to use it to make sausage in the evening. The small intestine was made into casings for enema.
The meat for enema is, of course, ready-made minced meat taken out of the space, with fat and lean meat in large chunks. It is marinated with pepper, Sichuan pepper, sorghum wine, salt, sugar and other seasonings, then stuffed into the casing, divided into even sections with cotton thread, and hung on the eaves to dry in the wind. It can be eaten after about 20 days.
As for the four pounds of wild boar meat, Xia Juanjuan marinated it with salt and asked the three children to collect branches and leaves of pine and cypress trees to smoke and roast it for a few hours before hanging it on the eaves.
At the black market price of two yuan per pound of meat, this big wild boar alone can be sold for more than three hundred yuan!
However, even her big-spending customer probably wouldn't be able to buy a whole one at once on the town's black market!
If we don't sell them in bulk but separately, the number of buyers we have to deal with will increase exponentially. Not only will the risk be high, but we may not be able to sell all of them in the winter!
Therefore, we still have to go to the county.
There are two state-owned factories in the county, a textile factory and a wood processing factory. There are many workers and there are canteens in the factories.
If it's in the cafeteria, I should be able to eat a whole wild boar in one go!