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A Holiday Feast Consume with caution Just at the last minute, as usual, Yo'Doc and Wally Wartnagel present their favorite seasonal dishes for your holiday eating pleasure.
1. Wally's Jingle Bell Stew. Main ingredients are parsnips, garlic, pine nuts, small tomatoes, plenty of ketchup and one medium sized javelina, skinned and boned. First, you take your javelina - I like 'em best when they're just off the front end of an 18 wheeler - makes 'em a lot more tender that way. Oh and don't forget, you gotta make sure you get rid of all of the fat. Course, there ain't much there to begin with, but if you leave it you're gonna get a kind of greyish -yellow to brown skim right there on top of your stew. Don't want that, no sirree! Hmm. Did I tell you it helps if you get rid of the truck skid marks before you start the process? No? Well, do that first. Okey dokey, where are we? A pan, that's it, we need a pan. Get you a pan big enough to hold the pig with plenty of room on the sides for all the goodies you're gonna add. One of them big ones like for when you do canning and that kinda stuff? Pour about a quart of 40 weight Pennzoil in the bottom (Ha Ha! Gotcha! Just kidding.) - no really, you do need some sort of grease down there - personally I prefer pure lard - it's been used in the Wartnagel family for three generations and never failed us yet. But then some of you may be on one of the restricted low cholesterol diets they talk about so much these days, and if you have to do it, use the safflower (I'll tell you in advance it ain't got NO taste!) Then, and this is optional, either four cups of cider vinegar, Thunderbird wine, or tabasco sauce, depending on your individual taste preferences. So, heat this all up over a cooking element of some sort, best is one a long way from the house, like a campfire or an old woodstove you don't care about what happens to it. When it's kindly bubbly and steamy, you drop in the main ingredient. That'd be your javelina meat. (You know what I just went and did? I plumb forgot to mention another option - hanging the meat out to age for a couple days. Do this if you want to increase the ultimate flavor.) It helps to wear a really thick mask or a respirator at this point, since unaltered javelina has a particularly, whatchacallit, pungent aroma. But that's all gonna change! Now, peel the parsnips, mash the garlic, squish the tomatoes, open the bag of pine nuts, and dump it all in right there alongside of the pig, which by now should be developing an attractive grey color. Next, get one of those big like gallon sized bottles of ketchup and squeeze in a quart or two. Take a long wooden spoon (a one by four will work if you can't find a spoon), stir it up good, put a heavy lid on the pot and go on back in the house. Standin' there watchin' will do you no appreciable good although some say their sinuses really opened up after prolonged exposure. Check the day on the calendar, and make a mark roughly three days down the road. That's when the first stage is over, and it's time to turn the carcass. When you do this you may notice it seems to be still well connected to itself, by that I mean it may act like it's really hung together - like IT'S TOUGH AS A BOOT! Just ignore that - it'll change with time. Durn! We didn't start soon enough for Christmas! Oh well, it works just as well on New Years Day during all the games. No need to go out for pizza and all that other junk food. OK back to the business at hand - we just turned the thing, or was that a couple days ago? Anyway, take a meat fork with a long handle and put it into the meaty part there right back of where the head used to be - that's it, stick 'er in. If you can then easily pull the fork out, she's done and you're ready for some first class eatin' right outta your own back yard so to speak. Now Wilma and I we like to garnish the platter with something colorful to liven up the whole mess 'cause after all that time in the pot, there isn't much color left, like even the ketchup color has disappeared by now. Some of our favorites are gummy bears in assorted flavors and colors, M and Ms (no peanuts - Wilma's allergic), and for something green a few attractively arranged pieces of that cheese that's been in the back of the fridge since last Christmas. I mean! That's where the flavor's AT. |