Porkopolis

Here is a supplementary bulletin from the Office of Fluctuation Control, Bureau of Edible Condiments, Soluble and Indigestible Fats and Glutinous Derivatives, Washington, D.C.:

Correction of Directive #943456201, issued a while back concerning the fixed price of groundhog meat. In the directive above named, the quotation on groundhog meat should read "ground hogmeat."

Bob and Ray, aka: Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding
A U.S. comedy team active from 1946 through the 1980s. Write If You Get Work (1975).

He who cannot eat horse meat need not do so. Let him eat pork. But he who cannot eat pork, let him eat horse meat. It's simply a question of taste.

Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971)
Soviet Premier, quoted in the New York World-Telegram and Sun, 25 August, 1964.

A pig does not bolt its food, but chews it, and savors it, and shoves it about with the snout to release the aroma; it revels in it. This, to a pig, is hog heaven.

Kent Britt
U.S. writer.

Shall I venture to the trough,
   do I dare to stuff with starches?
I shall dine on low-cal tubers
   and go on diet marches.
I have heard the farmers talking each to each.
   I hope they will not come for me.

John Southall Hatcher
U.S. poet, author and Professor of English Literature at the University of South Florida. "Pig Song" from The Hog Book by William Hedgepeth (1978).

There is something about the lure of a barbecue that kindles nostalgia. At our house fresh local cider with juicy caramelized sausages, hot from the grill, has been a favorite breakfast for countless Sundays in autumn. I still vividly recall spareribs that in our youth we barbecued in the dark on a beach at Big Sur; pigs roasted over fruitwood embers under the shade of olive trees in sunny Mallorca; and the ongoing easy meals of pork chops cooked over smoldering coals at dusk, bringing to a close a day at the lake.

Roberta Wolfe Smoler
U.S. author, cook and translator of French cookbooks. The Useful Pig — 150 Succulent Pork Recipes, (1990).

Pig, n.: An animal (Porcus omnivorous) closely allied to the human race by the splendor and vivacity of its appetite, which, however, is inferior in scope, for it balks at pig.

Edible, adj.: Good to eat and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm.

Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
U.S. writer and journalist. The Devil's Dictionary (1906).

There were scattered dwellings of surviving Mayans throughout the area. In one, I found what had apparently been an altar stone for human sacrifice lying outside a simple native hut. It had large indentations in it, presumably to hold the sacrificial victim, and now was being used as a trough for hogs. They were feeding at it when I came upon them.

The hogs were descendants of European pigs brought to the New World a long time ago but too late to make a difference [for the Maya]. The combination of elements — the strange discrepancy between brilliant architecture, bewildering color, fabulous religious imagery and an impoverished people, and European domestic swine — seemed somehow to suggest that if those elements had come together in another sequence, the Mayan culture might have survived the European intrusion and gone on to enrich the world.

Roger A. Caras (1928-2001)
U.S. author, broadcaster and ASPCA president. A Perfect Harmony (1996).

If you feed a calf from birth with bran, it will become a pig.

Trofim Denisovich Lysenko (1898-1976)
Russian peasant breeder and "geneticist" of the Lamarckian School expounding the genetic theory that acquired characteristics can be inherited. He was in charge of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences of the Soviet Union until the mid 1960s.

Marbthair dóib dano in mucc Mic Dathó. Tri fichit gamnach co a biathad saide co cend VII mh-bliadan. Tri neim imorro no-bíata[r], co ro-lathea ár fer nh-hErenn impi.

Now Mac Dathó's pig was slaughtered for them. For seven years sixty milch cows supplied its food. On poison however it had been nourished and the massacre of the men of Erin took place through it.

The Book of Leinster
A medieval Irish manuscript compilation (c. 1160). This text and translation, "The Story of Mac Dathó's Pig," is from: An Early English Reader (1927), by N. Kershaw Chadwick.

...But what was most remarkable, Broadway being three miles long, and the booths lining each side of it, in every booth there was a roast pig, large or small, as the centre attraction. Six miles of roast pork! and that in New York city alone, and roast pig in every other town, hamlet and village in the Union. What association can there be between roast pig and Independence?

Capt. Frederick Marryat (1792-1848)
British Naval officer and novelist reporting on a 4th of July celebration during a visit to the U.S. in the 1837. Diary in America (1839).

Unlike good beef, which is best when least tampered with, pork is a little too sweet and flabby — one might say epicene — when cooked plain. Something more is needed to inflame the imagination: the year-long stay in the smokehouse that firms the texture and intensifies the flavor of the country ham; the coating of garlic and herb; the quick turn in a hot oven that produces the juicy fat-seared roast loin of pork.

John Thorne with Matt Lewis Thorne
U.S. authors and chefs. Serious Pig, An American Cook In Search of His Roots (1996).

Arnold Ziffel, pig.
  Resident of Green Acres.
   Does he rest in SPAM?

Dave Barsalow
A contributing haiku poet in the SPAM Haiku Archive where SPAM™, that mysterious food product, is honored on John Nagamichi Cho's web site with a "collection of tranquil reflections on luncheon loaf."