Eating Pig's Feet

Grease Sandwiches
Oh boy. Mother fried fresh bacon in an iron skillet on the old cook stove. She always saved the grease to use in preparing other dishes. After the grease was poured out of the skillet the residue left over became the main ingredient in a "grease sandwich." She took a couple of slices of bread and used it to wipe out the skillet. The stuff in the skillet came off on the bread and that, plus fresh green onions, was the best sandwich I can ever remember eating.

Cold grease sandwiches were much like eating pure lard that looked to be riddled with dirt or scraps of something. The scraps of something were bits and pieces of burned bacon. Gosh it was good eating.

Chicken's Feet
We ate their feet, necks and the back. Mother said we ate "the part that was last over the fence." We also ate their gizzards, hearts and livers. Mother even sucked what meat there was off their heads and those feet with toenails. I never could eat the heads and feet but learned to eat everything else.


Pig's Feet
We never had a whole hog to eat but we did eat all of what we got. We ate their skin that was cut into small squares and put into a press and cooked and became a cake of cracklins. The grease that came from the skin was the lard everyone used to cook with. Nowadays the lard cannot be sold and is thrown away but the cracklins are worth about $4.00 a pound. Mom loved pig's feet and got them when she could. She also liked pickled pig's feet. Of course we ate the pig's intestines because they were packed with sausage. The jowl meat was and is delicious as is the side meat when sliced like bacon.