Pig Pig Pig

Apparently, yesterday (March 1) was National Pig Day in the U.S. Who knew that such a day existed? In any case, Serious Eats outdid themselves with a whole slew of fun posts of a porcine nature. My favorite out of all the bacon homages and so on was actually the one about Paul Gauguin's ham painting. Now, that's a good looking piece of pig.

One of my favorite literary mention of the humble pig in its edible form appears in Little House In The Big Woods, the first book in the Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder. It describes how the family carefully used every bit of the pig that they had kept over the year. They made big hams, bacon and sausages from the scraps (stored in a barrel of snow). The tail was roasted as a treat, and the bladder was blown up like a balloon for the children to play with. There's probably no animal that is as useful as the pig.