I went and I really enjoyed myself,
There were apporximately SIX stations:
1) Butcgering station - three guys were butchering the fully dressed hog into primal cuts (bacon, shoulders, hams, etc.). These giys knew what they were doing and could easily process 6-8 hogs a day the old-fashioned ways.
2) Rendering station - boiling the fat into lard, cracklins, and pork rinds.
3) Chitterlings station - one poor lady was assigned the task of cleaning the chitterlings for sausage casings. She was doing a really good job - I mean that they looked almost edible (g).
4) Smokehouse - they took the primal cuts and they were curing and smoking the primal cuts. The lady did a good job of explaining the process but she would have had more credibility had she NOT told people that she would not eat the meat ...
5) Kitchen station - there were four ladies who were cooking up a storm. One was pounding the tenderloin into schnitzel. Another was making sausage patties. Another stuffing sausage into the casings. They were getting ready to make braunschweiger out of the pork liver.
6) Panhaus station - this was the area that I was most interested. Basically, one of the processes that I was most interested was one that my wife was responsible when her family was butchering hogs - the making of the panhaus (think scrapple). Basically, you boil all the meat off the bones, chop or shred it and mix it with a grain. The Amish generally mix the pork scraps with cornmeal to make scrapple. My family in Cincinnati and Sothern Indiana used pinhead oats to make goetta.
At this event, the lady was mixing the head and tongue meat with buckwheat meal to make the panhaus.. For those unfamiliar, you cook the meat off the bones and mix it with the grain, and place it in loaf pans. Eventually, the mixture will tighten up like polenta. You slice it and fry it in a pan.
It is important to realize that in most farm families, the panhaus or goetta or scrapple is only made at butchering time ( November or December), is stored outside in the cold weather, and is served almost everyday until it is used up. Now it is a treat to me. In the past, the seventh or eighth straight day, well, you get tired of it.
The lady making the panhaus was from the same German town in Southern Indiana that my great-grandparents were from early in the last century. I think that I shocked her when I could describe the town of Sunman that she had grown up in.
I have to say that I was very impressed with the knowledge that the people had on the subject matter. Thanks to the Schaumburg Park District.
There were a lot of kids there watching. To me, it seemed like more of the adults were squeamish that the kids. My only regret is that you really couldn't participate.
I left about 2 pm and headed over to Udupi Palace for their Sunday lunch buffet,