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OP
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Why do we say, "Eating high on the hog"? Highest on the hog would be its head, and that's all scrapple to me. And the back isn't as nice as its hams or loin meat. (Many apologies to any vegetarians here.)
So, what's so great about what's high on the hog anyway?
Boar regards, DubDub
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(Many apologies to any vegetarians here.)Very thoughtful of you, Dear. High on the hog is where the loin chops, the most valuable cuts, come from. Just below the fatback. You can read about how to slaughter and process a pig here: http://members.tripod.com/~BayGourmet/pig.txt. Warning! This is not for the faint-hearted. I've seen hogs killed both on the home farm and commercially, and this article just about made ME sick.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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As Jackie said. In Why You Say It, Webb Garrison says, "But for a real feast, slices [of the hog] must come from high on the hog -- above the center of the animal's leg.
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Carpal Tunnel
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You ain't seen nothin' till you see sausage being made. They have the ground up meat (everything except the squeal) piped to a faucet with a tapered faucet, push one end of a roll of casing onto it, turn the knob, and the casing swells and thrashes about like a monstrous snake. All sorts of fantasies evoked.
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OP
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All sorts of fantasies evoked.
I'll bet, wwh, I'll just bet.
DubDoubtless
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Carpal Tunnel
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You ain't seen nothin' till you see sausage being made. As has been said, "Those who love law or sausage should not view too closely the process by which it is made."
everything except the squeal The phrase is used in Upton Sinclair's description of Chicago's meat packing industry (The Jungle, ch. 3: the tour guide says "They use everything about the hog except the squeal"), but I believe Sinclair was using what was already a commonplace description of the industry's efficiency.
Edit: Ch. 14 of The Jungle makes clear that the phrase predates with that book. In The Yankee of the Yards (1927), a biography of Gustavus Swift, it is at called a "hackneyed remark", with conjecture that it originated with a remark by Swift had been heard to make.
Edit #2: The remark does not mean that Chicago meatpackers systematically adulterated food products with unpalatable parts to the animal. Rather, "The enormous volume of animals meant that even body parts that had formerly been wasted now became commercial products: lard, glue, brushes, candles, soaps." A later federal report listed six hundred separate products produced by the pork and beef packers. The industry required such efficient use of the whole animal, for meat-sales alone did not cover costs of production, without the sales of hides and other by-products.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Now I wonder what sort of character, upon having just sat through a public reading of The Jungle, would archly intone, "Proscuitto, anyone?"
Veins of ice, I'd say.
Best regards, WW
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Carpal Tunnel
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"Those who love law or sausage should not view too closely the process by which it is made."
Believe that was uttered by our old buddy, Otto von Bismarck, aka the Great Unifier of Germany. offered without comment...
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Anonymous
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Anonymous
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High on the hog is where the loin chops, the most valuable cuts, come fromtrue, and this may well be the source of part of the idiom, but it also seems likely that the "hog" referred to is the early british colonial coin (bermuda/hog-money/YCLIU), and that living high off of the hog refers to the "high life" resulting from having money to burn? the phrase "whole hog" likely stems from the same source. and shouldn't this be in animal safari?
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