Salami

4 pounds ground pork
4 pounds ground beef
1 teaspoon ground onion
2 cups water
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon Italian dressing
4 tablespoons Tender Quick (by Morton, found in super markets)

Mix all ingredients thoroughly and form into long rolls like a log (2" x 8" is best). Roll tight and wrap in plastic wrap, refrigerate 36 hours. Remove wrap and bake on rack in oven at 325ºF for 90 minutes. Remove and let cool. Slice and serve.

Sausage

Trim all the scrappy pieces, tags and ends from hams and shoulders, leaving the joints perfectly smooth, all the tenderloin and as much of the heads as you please, depending on whether you want your sausage lean, fat or medium.

Cut all meat into small strips and grind twice through a meat grinder. Season with 1/4 cup each salt and sage, and 1 tablespoon black pepper to each gallon of meat. Mix thoroughly. Pack tightly in long, narrow cloth bags. The bags can be smoked and will keep until late spring.

Head cheese, Souse, or Huspenina

6 pounds pork shank
2 quarts water
2 teaspoons salt
1/2 cup white vinegar
1 teaspoon black pepper
1/8 teaspoon sage (or chili powder)
1 medium onion, chopped fine
2 carrots sliced and ground fine
1 cup chopped celery
2 teaspoons gelatin

Cook pork shank with all ingredients mixed thoroughly. Remove meat from shank when tender and cut in small cubes. After straining, skim all fat off of liquid. Add vinegar and heat to boil. Soften gelatin in cold water and dissolve in hot liquid. Add pepper and meat. Pour into shallow pan and let cool. Serve cold, sliced.

A second recipe for head cheese

Clean the hog's head, after removing eyes, ears and bristles by burning off the head thoroughly. Place in stone crock and let cool overnight, salted. Cook thoroughly until the meat falls from the bones. When cool, pick out all the small bones and slivers of bone. Set liquid out to cool. Run meat through meat grinder twice and season as follows:

To each gallon of meat mix 2 tablespoons of salt and ground black pepper. Remove the fat from the jellied liquid, bring to boil for 20 minutes and add meat to mixture while hot. Pour into shallow, flat pans to cool. Slice and serve with crackers.

Liver meat or Liverwurst

Cook the liver until tender with some fat pieces from the head meat. When cool, run through a meat grinder twice and season with 2 tablespoons each of salt, ground sage and ground black pepper. Mix in one quart of the liquid in which it was cooked. Mix all thoroughly and place in pans. When cold, it can be sliced and eaten. Don't neglect to stir in the liquid or it will be too dry to be palatable.

Pig's feet

Chop the feet, clean thoroughly, add the heart, tongue and head meat. Season with ground pepper, salt and pulverized sage. Heat and cook until tender. Run through a colander. If you want pickled feet, place in a jar and pour cider vinegar over the top. Bones were removed after cooking (above), and all the scraps of the hog were used in this recipe. All would have been wasted if not "fixed up" to make some very fine eatin'!

Scrapple

Strain cooking liquid from the liver and that from the head meat, remove most of the grease. Stir in sifted corn meal as if making mush. Add 2 tablespoons each salt and pepper to one gallon of scrapple. Pour into pans. Can be sliced and eaten cold or heated and served with biscuits and gravy.

Mincemeat

1 gallon of the leanest meat, cooked until tender
1/2 gallon apples, peeled and cored
1/2 gallon raisins
1 pound brown sugar
1 pound white cane sugar
1 teaspoon each cinnamon, cloves, allspice, nutmeg
1 pint white cider vinegar

Mix all ingredients thoroughly and cook until it suits your taste.

Pickled pig hocks

3 pounds pig hocks
2 cups vinegar
3 cups water
2 onions, chopped
1 lemon, sliced
8 whole cloves
3 bay leaves
8 whole black peppers
2 tablespoons salt

Cook hocks until tender. Remove bone and skin. Mix all ingredients and heat to boil, let simmer 2 hours. Remove meat and strain liquid, then place meat and liquid in stone crock with cover. Will be "lickin' good" in three days.

Paul has also written a book entitled Having the Last Laugh, a collection of odd, weird, grotesque and ridiculous epitaphs found on gravestones in the US and England. To order a copy, send $14.95 to Paul Jones, PO Box 608, Ridgway, IL 62979.

Here are a couple of samples from the book:

"Let cattle rub my headstone round, And coyote wail their kin. Let horses come and paw the mound, But do not fence me in." - On a rancher's headstone in Hutchinson, KS

"Here lies the bones of a man named Zeke; Second fastest draw in Cripple Creek." - Cripple Creek, CO

"Here lies the father of 29. There would have been more but he didn't have time."