Boudin

I’d like to get back to Depression food.  I don’t know what city folks ate in the 30’s, but I have a good recollection of what my family survived on.  Remember that Dad was earning only 400 dollars a year.  He had a wife, four kids, and he was building a house.

One food item I recall was”boudin” which is a French-Canadian name.  Sometimes we called it blood pudding.  Usually we had it as a sausage that was fried in a skillet.  Having grown up with it, I thought that it tasted fine.  Sometimes we had it sliced from a bread pan, but I don’t remember Mother making it.  I do recall once when Aunt Irene showed up on a November day while  we were butchering a hog.  She carried a large cast iron skillet with some salt sprinkled on the bottom.  She held a dish towel on the pan handle to protect her hand from the heat.

I used to help during the butchering, and that is a story in itself.  We boys, usually Corky and I, would hold the pig down while Dad inserted a long, thin knife into the animal’s carotid artery in its throat.  He would feel its throat to find the pulse, them very slowly and carefully he would sever the artery and slide the blade all the way to the heart.  This actually seemed painless to the animal.  It would just lie there, sometimes grunting slightly.  Soon bright red blood would come spurting from the wound as the heart continued to pump.  Then the animal would seem to fall asleep.

Meanwhile, Irene would catch the blood as it spurted out; then she would hurry to the kitchen with it so she could prepare the boudin.  I’m not sure what all was in it, but it seemed like there were tiny bits of fat  along with some condiments such as nutmeg or cinnamon.  I guess that I should Google a recipe for it although I’m not planning to sticka pig any time soon.  I wonder what it would be like with deer blood?

I’m sure that many city folk will find this whole idea gross.  Yet, remember that we are talking about survival.  We are also talking about self-reliance and absolutely shunning any kind of social assistance.  In those days you also raised and killed your own chickens.  Nowadays, most modern cooks have never plucked a chicken nor drawn the intestines.  Food items from the grocery store are usually ready-to-cook and sometimes precooked.  Let’s not get into fast foods.  I’m not sure if many people have any idea where Big Macs come from.  I can still find blood sausage, boudin, blut polska, or whatever in local food stores although it has been a while since I’ve had any.

Some other kinds of Depression food were: baked beans, rice, home-canned vegetables and meat that we raised and Mother canned in glass jars. sauerkraut and spare ribs, fish from the lake or brook, some venison, wild berries for jelly, a lot of “patates” (Québeçoise for potatoes), sow belly and salt pork, oatmeal, and the list goes on.  I wonder, however, that if there was a really bad depression if modern-day people could adapt and survive on old-style cooking.  Next, maybe I should tell you about how to make head cheese.

Pea Soup and Johnny Cake

It must be time for some more nostalgia.  Looking into the food pantry at home recently, I noticed a long lost package of whole, dried yellow peas.  Uh huh!  I thought.  How long is it since I’ve had any “soupe aux pois à la Québeçoise”?  Understand that this is unlike green, split pea soup.  The recipe that I grew up with during the Depression years required whole, yellow peas.  Today you can still find some in most grocery or whole foods stores.   Back in the thirties we got some in Uncle Sullivan’s granary which was in the barn that had been built by our grandfather, Xavier.

Of course, in those days farmers still used horses, and horses require oats as well as hay.  Both oats and yellow peas are cool weather crops very suitable for both Chazy Lake and Quebec.  It seems that there was a serendipitous relationship in growing them simultaneously in the same plot of earth.   Naturally, the ground was first fertilized with horse and other dung the previous fall.  In the spring a mixture of oats and peas were sowed together, with oats predominating.  The pea stems have tendrils for climbing, and so the pea plants would climb the oat stalks where they would produce pretty white blossoms at the appropriate time.  The two species must have liked one another since peas are legumes and nitrogen develops in their roots, thus enriching the soil.  Old Sullivan King, Séraphin, must have brought this type of cultivation from his Quebec connection.  Peas with salted pork was the main diet of the Voyageurs who paddled from Lachine near Montreal all through the Great Lakes and beyond in search of furs for which they traded with the Indians.

Anyway, getting back to Chazy Lake and Depression food, Mother would send us to the granary with a container.  Hanging next to an opening there was a slotted sieve used to sort the peas from the oats which had been raised and harvested together.   When we were kids we called this recipe “Frenchmen’s Pea Soup”.

To make the recipe Mother would first place the dried peas in a flat cake pan and remove any little pebbles, bugs, or whatever didn’t belong.  Then the peas were allowed to soak overnight in a larger pan.  In the morning the first water was drained away.  Fresh water was added along with a meaty ham hock.  Sometimes she used a slab of spare ribs.  Remember that we raised our own pigs.  The pea soup was allowed to simmer on the wood-burning stove most of the day and was consumed during the evening meal where it was served with corn bread or Johnny cake.

Anyhow, after soaking, I made my version by placing everything in a cast iron kettle and baking it in the oven at 225 deg.  I also added some pork ribs, carrots, and onions.  And don’t forget the Johnny cake.  This meal brought back fond memories.  I guess that I may try using the crockpot next time.  Corn bread, of course, was another Depression food staple.