Low Down

This morning as my husband and I drank our morning coffee, we began talking about saving money. This talk generally happens about this time of year, not coincidentally because we just filed our tax return and had to send a check to Uncle Sam. (Really? You didn’t get enough throughout the year?)

As frequently happens when discussing our budget, I began wailing about the increasing cost of groceries. As far as I’m concerned, there’s a problem when I can’t feed two of us for less than $100 a week. But don’t get me started…..

Anyway, just as serious as a heart attack, my husband says to me, “Well, I guess we’re just going to have to start eating low on the hog.”

Now, I want to make something clear. My husband grew up on the south side of Chicago. I’m not talking about a cushy little suburb; I mean he lived in the city of Chicago, probably not too far from Leroy Brown, you know, as in

The south side of Chicago is the baddest part of town
and if you go down there you’d better just beware
of a man named Leroy Brown. – Jim Croce.

Now, granted, my husband’s southside neighborhood was probably a little more affluent than Leroy Brown’s, but I’m trying to make a point. He grew up in the city.

However, his father grew up in rural North Carolina, on a farm where they grew tobacco and corn. Every summer, his dad would load his wife and their four children into their Buick and drive from Chicago, Illinois, to Statesville, North Carolina, where they would spend two weeks on the farm. My husband always says he would take off his shoes when they arrived and put them back on when they left for home two weeks later.

There is definitely a little bit of the rural south in my husband, which he learned from his dad. It mostly comes out in colloquialisms. The first time he described a bumpy road as being “rough as a cob,” I laughed out loud.

All this is to say that I understood immediately what he meant by eating low on the hog. Literally speaking, it means eating the cheaper parts of the hog, which are generally down low. He simply meant let’s look at less expensive cuts of meat – maybe even eating occasional meatless meals.

Just for fun, I googled “eating low on the hog” and learned that pork jowl, pigs feet, and hog maw (stomach) are all cuts from low on the hog. Having never eaten any of these, I’m reluctant to offer a recipe for them. Actually, that’s not true. While traveling in France, my husband and I had the unfortunate experience of eating andoulette sausage at a truck stop outside of Lyon. Since I’ve never met a sausage I didn’t like, I was surprised to find I thought this sausage tasted foul. I later learned that’s because it comes from the pig’s colon and is considered a delicacy in parts of France. This picture tells it all.

But I am not at all hesitant to include a recipe using ham hocks, also from low on the hog. In fact, one of my favorite things to eat when I used to travel to our nation’s capital for work was Senate Bean Soup. This recipe is from allrecipes.com. Ham and Bean Soup is a hearty soup that you can serve with biscuits or crusty French bread on a chilly evening.

I also like to make green beans with ham hocks. Cut up an onion, and soften it in butter in a big sauce pan. When the onion is translucent, add a tablespoon or so of flour, and cook for a few minutes, stirring constantly, until the flour loses it’s starchy taste. Add a cup or so of chicken broth, a couple of baby red potatoes that you cut in half, and a big handful of fresh green beans. On top of it all, place a ham hock. Bring it to a boil, cover it, lower the heat, and let it cook for an hour or so.

You can serve this as a side dish, but I like it as my main course. Particularly when you can use fresh homegrown green beans in the summer.

That’s what I call eating low on the hog!