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Transcription: [00:18:30]
{SPEAKER name="B.K. Bentley"}
Well, we can't do that on Tuesday because it's too much work. If we make-the weeks we make it we go back on Wednesday. That's another all day job. We take the heads and the feet, clean them and cook them in the wash pot.
[00:18:45]
Then we take them back to the cutting room and you have to work with it while it's hot. Take all the bones out and then mix your seasonings in it and put it in small trays, that can be. After it sets in the cool and hardens put on in the meat case for sale.
[00:19:01]

{SPEAKER name="Gerri Johnson"}
What do you use souse meat for, souse for? What, what else do you call it first of all? Do you have another name for it?

{SPEAKER name="Corrie Smith"}
It's also called hog head cheese.

{SPEAKER name="Gerri Johnson"}
And what do you use it for? How do you use it?
[00:19:13]

{SPEAKER name="Corrie Smith"}
Well you can eat it just as a meat on ya plate. It's real good with sweet potatoes or something like that and they also put it in sandwich just like a luncheon meat.

{SPEAKER name="Gerri Johnson"}
That's very good.
[00:19:26]

{SPEAKER name="Fred Lee Bentley"}
On the hams Gerri I didn't think to tell you but, uh, you can put some ground red pepper on them before you smoke them after you take it out to wash it to go to the smokehouse, if you want it a little hot tasting, even bacon, just spread your little ground red pepper on it. And they call that hot bacon and it gives it a delicious taste too.
[00:19:47]
{SPEAKER name="Gerri Johnson"}
Oh I bet I've never heard of that

{SPEAKER name="Fred Lee Bentley"}
[[overlapping]] And also on the ham if you want to keep it a long time, you can take meal, borax, black pepper, red pepper, and even pour honey or syrup in it and make a paste out of it, and uh, this honey or syrup, either one would give your ham a sweet taste. In other words you could dress it up like a birthday cake.
[00:20:12]

{SPEAKER name="Gerri Johnson"}
Sounds like it. But it's so good when it's just natural flavor
{SPEAKER name="Fred Lee Bentley"}
[[overlapping]] Just the natural flavor to me is best. And the red eye gravy you can get out of it is better than the ham.
[00:20:22]
{SPEAKER name="Gerri Johnson"}
Is that right [[laughter]] very good. So we didn't talk at all about bacon, about curing your bacon, how do you do that?

[00:20:30]
{SPEAKER name="Fred Lee Bentley"}
Bacon is a real simple process, uh you just take your side of fresh pork, don't ever salt hot pork, chill it a day or two, because hot meat will absorb salt too fast and that's where you get your real salty taste and that goes for hams too, don't ever salt a hot piece of meat.
[00:20:50]
And, uh, on the bacon, it just takes four days. You just spread a light layer of salt, with your hand, table salt, and if you was gonna do it at home you'd put it lay it on a metal rack and put your pan under it to catch the water, you know that dripped out of it, because it would rust your refrigerator.
[00:21:12]
And just leave that side of bacon laying there for just no more than 4 days. About a 8 or 10 pound piece of meat. And not more than four days or you'll have it, in one day more it'll be so salty that you wouldn't want it.
[00:21:26]
And anytime that you have to soak meat that is salt brine before you cook it, it takes all of your flavor out of it by soaking it, and it also makes it tough. But this bacon, 4 days is the limit to it.
[00:21:41]
All you have to do then is just take it out and wash it and hang it two or three days. Just however brown you want it is when to stop smoking it and you've got a piece of meat ready to eat, and it is cured and it is just like ham and it will last forever.
[00:21:54]

{SPEAKER name="Gerri Johnson"}
Mhmm sounds good. Now the day I visited you um in Pelham you were making sausage as I said, and Corrie here was really working out on the sausage. What is tricky about making sausage? What makes her so good at being able to stuff the sausage, what does she have to watch for when she's