A Bad Day for Pigs

[Warning: this post is a little more gruesome than my typical
entries. If you're squeamish, you might want to skip reading this.]

Moldovan Christmas, based on the Orthodox calendar, is Jan 7th. On
January 5th, pigs throughout my village were slaughtered for the
holiday feast. When I say slaughtered, I mean the pigs are brought
out of their pens in the backyard, pinned to the ground by several
men, and then a knife is inserted into their jugular and wiggled
around a lot. The pigs squeal/scream (by no means a pleasant sound)
and the blood drains onto the ground. It probably takes about two
minutes for the pig to actually die. I saw my host-brother and
neighbor do this with our pig, and shortly thereafter I heard the
squeals of another pig further down the road. My tutor tells me that
her mother's family also did the same.

I watched the whole slaughtering process [inside joke with DW], which
I will now relay to you. The body is the lifted up on a makeshift
table or grill, and a blowtorch is used to singe off all the hairs.
It takes several rounds of torching, scraping off the skin with a
knife, and rubbing water and salt over the body until the skin is
removed. Then an incision is made along the spine and stomach of the
pig, and several perpendicular cuts between those two create a grid-
like pattern over the pigs body. Pulling at one section with one
hand and cutting the connective tissue with the other, the sections
of fat that surround the pig's body are removed.



This fat is canned
in salt and water, and is eaten throughout the year like you or I
might put cheese on some bread. [I've tried this "sava" and am not a
fan.]

Then the rest of the pig is cut up. Legs are chopped off, the spine
is cut out with an ax, after which (in a pretty amazing way, I
thought), the ribs just fall open revealing all the organs inside.
At least where I was, the heart and lungs were fed to the dogs, but
everything else was saved. The intestines took some doing because
all the digestive juices - which looked like chunky mustard - had to
be cleaned out. They did this by cutting it into 1-meter pieces and
pouring water through it. Then more water was used to turn the
intestine section inside-out and clean it again.

I've yet to see exactly how all this will be prepared, but I now know
the first steps.