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Pork sausage? No thanks!
T
hank heaven for Tim Noakes and Mr Banting. Together
they have made mealtimes a pleasure again, have
removed the guilt associated with eating all the nice
things on one's plate (meat and fat and vegetables that taste of
something) and not feeling guilty about leaving all the tasteless
starch, which is going to kill you in time, anyway.
And they have turned on its head all the rubbish information
punted by global starch and sugar processors and their cohorts,
the REGISTERED dieticians (ever noticed how dieticians, before
they start their strident diatribes about how low-fat-high-carb
eating is far preferable and more healthy than Noakes' and
Banting's suggestions always tell one that they are REGISTERED
dieticians. That's like a dentist telling you, before he attacks your
mouth with a drill, that he's a QUALIFED dentist. Well, hell,
would you allow treatment from an UNqualified one?).
My wife and I are staunch followers of the Banting way. Since
changing to the diet, both of us have more vigour, are actually
consuming less, feel hungry less frequently and have lost
considerable amounts of weight. And not for us any more boxes
of carb- and sugar-rich breakfast cereals in the morning. We
consume a delicious hot breakfast which varies daily: Bacon
and tomato, bacon and egg, scrambled egg, fried haddock,
sardines on toast, pork sausage…
Well, pork sausage until recently… Until, in fact, I discovered
what commercially-made pork sausages, and vienna sausages,
polony and other processed pork products can contain.
For there I was, innocently trolling around Facebook, when I
came across a picture, taken in a cold room, of some cartons of
frozen product (you can see the picture on Page 46, which
proves that I'm not making this up). I was immediately interested
to find out where these cartons emanated from, whence they
were headed and, of course, what they contained. The labels
clearly stated they were of USA origin, certified by no less an
authority that the US Dept of Agriculture. And their contents
were plain for all to see: “DEBONED PORK RECTUMS
(INVERTED)”
My curiosity piqued, I immediately wondered what kind of
bone it is one usually finds in a pork rectum and, more importantly what one does with a deboned pork rectum, inverted or
not. Curry it? Hot chilli sauce? Deep fried in batter? And what
effect does the inversion of the rectum have on the rectum?
Does it, like beating a calamari steak with a mallet, render the
rectum more tender?
I had no idea, and I don't think I have a recipe book that could
help, so I asked my friends. One, who has spent a lifetime in
the food industry, answered in a flash: “Ground up with the
other ingredients, they are used as extenders in products such
as pork sausage, viennas etc, to make the “real” pork go further
and thus reduce the cost of the sausage.”
So that's me done with processed pork products from now on.
Because while I know that pigs
are remarkable for the usage of
every available part (pigs' ears,
deep fried, are a delicacy
somewhere, my own father
used to like nothing more than a
plate of pig's trotters, and even I
crunch down with delight on a
nice piece of crackling off the
Sunday roast), I'd never really
thought about what happens to
the very end of the animal's
alimentary canal. And now that
I know, I rather wish I didn't.
But here'a a another thought.
Somebody in the pork
preparation factory must be
involved in the process of
inverting the rectums.
And this reminded me of the popular Springbok Radio show in
the Sixties and Seventies entitled The Skip Show 21, in which a
panel of radio celebrities, which included, I think, personalities
such as Leslie Richfield, Dennis Smith, Donald Monat, Victor
Mackeson, and Evelyn Martin could ask a contestant a total of
21 questions to ascertain the contestant's job.
My father-in-law, a brickmaker by profession, entered once and
was mighty proud that it took the panel 18 of the 20 questions
(they were shrewd, that lot) to discover what he did.
The listening audience would be in on it from the outset, with a
“ghost voice” telling listeners before the questioning started
what the contestant did (“Basil from Springs is a brickmaker. He
makes bricks,” the voice would sonorously intone).
Now imagine the ghost voice telling the audience “Clarence
from Crown Mines is a pork rectum inverter. He inverts pigs'
rectums.” How many questions would even the most perspicacious panel need to ask to arrive at the correct answer?
WRITTEN BY SMALLHOLDERS, FOR SMALLHOLDERS