A Misadventure in Little House Land

I was shopping at the supermarket today, and I came across a package of pig tails in the meat section. My mind immediately flashed to Little House in the Big Woods and Wendy McClure's books on reading the Little House series (The Wilder Life and Don't Trade the Baby for a Horse). With this moment of inspiration, I purchased a package of tails and brought them home.

Tonight, I am here to share with you a few lessons learned from my experience with the pig tails:

1. No one tells you that pig tails look very disturbing. I didn't take any pictures of them, and even if I did, I don't think I could post them without having Blogger flag them for being rather obscene. If you are really curious, you can do a Google image search, but be warned - they are very phallic.
2. Pig tails are also very time consuming to cook. Based on Little House in the Big Woods, I imagined that they could just be tossed in the over with a little salt, but a quick online search told me otherwise. They had to be boiled (with at least one change in water) and then roasted. The good news is that the enterprise is largely hands off, but it does take a lot of time.
3. Given all of the time you will put in, there is little meat to be had.
4. Even though there is little meat, there is a lot of skin and fat. This makes them very rich.

While I never plan on doing this again, I'm glad that I had the opportunity to cross something off my Little House wishlist. I'd say that vanity cakes would be next, but they sound even more overwhelming than pig tails if only because they require several pounds of lard.