Head Cheese

An old tale of mine from days spent on IRC. It falls under the category of nostalgia. Read it or don't.

Amidst the fond remembrances of my youth there lie scattered here and there the occasional memory which might best be consigned to oblivion. But constant urging from friends and acquaintances not to let folklore of this nature perish convinces me to reluctantly preserve for posterity an eye witness account of the arcane ritual by which the substance head cheese is conjured. The author assumes no liability for the results of attempts to duplicate this process but urges you "DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME."

It would be in the crisp fall air of October at that time when thoughts of children turn to the donning of ghost and goblin gear and the winesap apple plucked right off the tree hurt your teeth and squirted you in the eye. During Indian Summer, that brief return of warm temperatures before the plunge into winter, the last summer activities would be put to rest. Yards would be raked, the garden shed would be put in order and closed for the season, and the last potatoes and onions would be dug and consigned to the cellar. And surely on one of those fine fall days, early in the afternoon the clank and clang of the huge cast iron kettle could be heard as it was wrestled atop the woodstove. At this sound little children would run for home, dogs would crawl under crumbling porches and strong men would hurriedly close open windows, for all knew that granny was preparing to make the dreaded head cheese!

No sooner had the stove been fired and stoked and the kettle brought to a boil than Grandpa would make his appearance. Fresh from hog butchering on the farm he would emerge from the decrepit old ford truck carrying a pair of hog's heads..or maybe three. These heads were in exactly the same condition as they were in life, with all their accessories excepting only their detachment from the majority of the hog. Notwithstanding the baleful stares still seen peering out from their rapidly cooling brows, Granny cheerfully seized the heads and hurled them into the kettle.

Now followed a period of time that drew onward into the late evening when the fire snapped and crackled in the stove, the water boiled merrily and was topped up from time to time and the aroma proceeding from the kettle became more and more indescribable. This fragrance was of such potency that it actually had WEIGHT, and would flow out from the kettle down the stove and onto the ground where it would propagate outward in an ever increasing radius until it gradually began to dissipate at a distance of some three blocks from the epicenter of the event, meanwhile crawling up back steps and seeking entrance to unprepared houses where unwary denizens could be heard to exclaim, "Phew...is it headcheese time AGAIN??" Meanwhile Granny, without the protection of a gas mask, nay without so much as a moist dish towel to cover her nostrils would walk right up to the stove and stir the kettle time and again until all the soft parts of the heads (that's ALL the soft parts....yes even THOSE parts) fell off the skulls which she would then cast into the yard to the army of cats which had been gathering by the kitchen door all afternoon.

Hovering over the steaming kettle in the darkening evening like one of the three sisters in Macbeth, Granny would pass a sieve through the water and catch large undisintegrated pieces of hog physiognomy which she would drop onto the chopping block and gleefully reduce to appropriately bite sized bits with a meat cleaver. Once everything in the kettle (it doesn't do to think to long about everything in the kettle) was of the requisite homogeneous size, salt, pepper and vinegar would be added, the fire stoked up to full force and the evil stew would be rapidly reduced to a sludge-like consistency. During this final step the odor of the miasmic fog covering the neighborhood would reach such an intensity that any clothing or household linens inadvertently left on clotheslines would irrecoverably bond by some mysterious chemical reaction with the Eau du Swinehead and become fit for use only as bootwipers. Even indoors with the door closed, within three blocks of ground zero the eyes would itch and run and the sinuses would begin to drain.

The final act of the evening would be to pour the reduced contents of the kettle into large crocks held in readiness since the decimation of last year's batch sometime during the long nights of the previous winter. Granny and Grandpa would tip the huge kettle on its side and hope that most of its contents would find the crock waiting on the floor below. The batch would roll into its containers, steam would rise in prodigious quantities and Grandpa, who was not nearly so immune to the corrosive fumes as his spouse, would swear mighty oaths audible a block away.

The crocks, now brim full of their precious cargo would be wrestled down the stairs and into the fruit cellar to cool and solidify.

During the ensuing 48 hours, the fumes abated. The cats got over considerable intestinal distress. Dogs could be seen daring to cross Granny's back yard and those families living nearest to the scene of the manufacturing process began to think about actually consuming food again.

The end result? The mass left in the crocks would jell while cooling and become a grey amorphous semi-solid which could be sliced and eaten on bread with liberal quantities of mustard and horseradish. I have heard tell that headcheese is more toothsome than its nightmarish origins would lead you to believe but I am not able to confirm it, as it takes a stronger stomach than mine to even contemplate the consumption of this pig-face jello.