Saturday, April 24th is National Pig-in-a-Blanket Day in the United States. To celebrate, Porkopolis.org is offering a favorite variety, the Mangalitza. This is not a food entry on cabbage rolls or informal U.S. cuisine; it’s a blanket statement and a shaggy hog story…
Literally, Pigs in Blankets
Or shear swine, all cry and no wool;
- Samuel Butler. Hudibras, pt. I, canto I, l. 852
To “shear your pig” is a common euphemism for an act of futility. As most any farmer will tell you, you’ll get a lot of noise for very little wool if you try to shear most any pig.
And, as noted above, no less an authority than the English writer, artist and satirist, Samuel Butler (1835-1902), has even weighed in on the shearing of pigs. Clearly Butler’s travels never took him near to the Curly Coat pigs of Lincolnshire in the east of England, or to Austria and Hungary, home of the of Mangalitza pigs. Warm sweaters could easily be knitted from the sheared “wool” of these pigs, they are literally, pigs in blankets.
Big, Fat and Rather Sheepish
Seen from a ways off Mangalitza pigs bear a striking resemblance to sheep – a big fat sheep. A casual glance from a non-husbandman and you would have no idea that they are pigs, that is until you get a view of their snouts. Then you see they are pigs, not posers. Root on in this post…
