"pig" news and stories

A few weeks ago a friend and I were at a Vietnamese market in the Bronx of all places when we came across the delicacy pictured here. Since the damn thing was so cute she purchased two for herself. I only bought one, largely because cuteness doesn't score quite as many points with me. Looking around the store, I noticed several moon cakes and it soon dawned on me that this little piggy is meant to celebrate the Vietnamese version of the Chinese Moon Festival, which took place yesterday.

The other day I decided to eat the little guy. Like many moon cakes, he was packed with a sweet filling, in this case lotus seed paste. For some reason I started with the head. I soon made short work of the dense cake, which served as breakfast along with a cup of green tea.

Since you can't read the little tag, here's the gist of it. The English name of this confection is "The gold pig with riches and honor." The Vietnamese text reads, "Bánh Heo Phú Qui Bánh Con Heo Trung Thu." My curiosity about exotic foods runs pretty much neck and neck with my obsession with foreignlanguages. Thanks to the wonders of VDict, I was able to translate the Vietnamese. VDict stumbled over the word "qui," but here's its translation "pig pie endow mid-autumn pig pie qui." All of which seems to make sense since Trung Thu is the Vietnamese name for the Moon Festival.
Now that I ate the little guy, I'm waiting for the riches and honor to start rolling in. Still, I can't help think that I should have eaten it by the light of last night's full moon to seal the deal.

After my latest Midnight Snack, I think I know how to say lardo in Polish: smalec. I found this small tub of Smalec z miesem in a small grocery in the suburban Long Island town where I grew up, which never had a Polish presence to my knowledge. The English translation for this mysterious meat spread is seasoned pork lard with cured pork added. And not just any cured pork, but pork dewlap, or the skin and meat below the hog's chin, pig wattle, if you will. I'm sure there are people who think that products that contain pork dewlap should be emblazoned with red stickers bearing the legend, "WARNING: CONTAINS PORK DEWLAP." As many of you already know, I am not one of those people.

Who am I to look down my snout at pork dewlap, much less lard? Though I must admit that this was the first time I've ever tasted either. When I tore the cover off the little tub, I was greeted by a lake of snowy white pork lard with a little island of cured dewlap in the center. After I mixed it up I spread a bit on some hearty rye and found it to be pretty tasty. But when I smeared a goodly amount on toasted rye with a little onion I was in porcine paradise. The lard melted onto the warm, crusty bread so perfectly that the fat sensor in my brain went off immediately, leaving me woozy with satisfaction. And with good reason, a mere tablespoon of this Polish wonder spread contains 3.5 grams of saturated fat.

After it was revealed that the US's largest pork producer engaged in some highly questionable agricultural practices - to put it very mildly - when it came to raising the move than 25 million pigs they slaughter each year, there was an outcry. Smithfield Farms, with 187 farms in eight states, was known for keeping pigs in "gestational cages," free from straw, sunlight, or room to move for their entire lives and after years or criticism from groups like the Humane Society, as well as a 2 year long privately conducted study, the company has finally agreed to stop using the cages. The cages, which are sometimes referred to as stalls, were designed to maximize efficiency in the pig raising process by confining the pig to the minimum size that it would need to remain alive, but the interest in where our food comes from has now gotten to a point where even large corporate consumers, like McDonald's, are unwilling to overlook such conditions.

The cages will be phased out over an undetermined period of time. The company did not say how much the process would cost, but it is likely to be expensive for them as they try to find places to keep all their pigs that allow for cleaner, roomier living conditions.

[thanks, Elise!]

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If you resolved to lose weight this year, or at least to cut back on snacking, the easiest way to stay out of the kitchen is by keeping busy. Running errands outside of the house or moving about the office during work hours will keep you from getting bored and will hopefully prevent your thoughts from wandering to food too much. For a little bit of extra motivation, however, you might want to consider a little guilt trip. The Diet Piggy is a small plastic reminder than can be placed in the fridge or pantry and will oink at you, while giving you a dirty look, if you linger in front of the open door looking for munchies.

And yes, the piggy is a bit ridiculous - but we never said that dieting had to be serious. Other things that can help motivate you to resist those cravings include keeping "trigger" foods (primarily high-calorie junk foods) out of the house, stocking the kitchen with low-calorie fruits and vegetables for healthy snacks, and making and effort to cook more slow-cooked meals. Longer cooking times and more involved meals will keep you busier longer - thinking about making food and not just eating it - and will help you to appreciate the time it took to produce the dish so you'll look forward even more to the final product.

What are you using for motivation to stick to your New Year's resolution?

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Make a list of all the things that could contribute to world peace on a piece of paper. Is bacon at the top? If not, perhaps it should be. The people at Peace Through Pork think that it might just be the key to solving the world's problems. They offer up a deep, critical explanation in which bacon is a metaphor for the fears and desires of both societies and individuals, but to keep it brief, here is their drunken frat boy explanation:

1. Bacon is really tasty.
2. People that don't eat bacon obviously have issues.

Sounds simple enough, doesn't it? One slice of bacon, by the way, has only about 40 calories and 3 grams of fat, along with 3 grams of protein, which makes it a filling and satisfying food that shouldn't necessarily be counted out of your diet for health reasons unless you're watching your saturated fat intake (1.1 g), in which case you want to eat it in moderation. If you're interested in showing your support, a bacon awareness bracelet is available.

Non-food related note: If you're a registered voter in the US, you can also make a difference in a way that is unrelated to bacon. You can go out and vote!

[via boingboing]

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