Collin and Smash Ride Bikes Across America

I’d like to think I’m a relatively disciplined vegetarian. Sure, there’ve been some slip ups. In 2007 I ordered Jambalaya in New Orleans. A couple summers ago I couldn’t resist trying some bacon ice cream on the fourth of July. Sometimes they sneak sausage into the breakfast burrito menu description towards the end and I miss it, but have been known to eat it anyway. More recently I’ve shifted to a “flex-itarian” diet, if you will, eating meat if it’s headed for the trash or seems culturally appropriate. For me avoiding the consumption of animal flesh is not a spiritual practice, I’d just like to minimize my support of factory farms and related cruel and ecologically destructive practices.

Keeping all this in mind, allow me to thoroughly recommend Hog Cracklins, a Louisiana specialty. Cracklins are crispy, spicy, melt-in-your-mouth morsels of fried pig skin (with layers of fat and meat still attached) fried and coated in Cajun spices. A friendly gentleman by the name of Hillary (Bill for short) introduced Ashley and I to this culinary delight, and we couldn’t have been more satisfied. Sometimes eating animals is just the right thing to do.

Not only did Bill buy us a pound of Cracklins, he also transported us nearly 10 miles via pickup truck over a section of US 190 with a 65mph speed limit and no shoulder. What a guy! He stopped us at a convenience store and told us he’d be happy to take us over the nasty bridge, and we were mighty thankful for his offer. Were it not for Bill, we may have ended up a highway fatality statistic. More importantly, we would never have tried Hog Cracklins.

Bill has hosted touring bicyclists before, and provided at least one with work harvesting pecans, he told us. He filled us in on a variety of topics of regional significance, including corruption in Louisiana politics, deer hunting, pecan crops, and the importance of local rivers on commerce and farming in the area. Bill said he trapped 92 hogs on his property northwest of Baton Rouge in 2009, but has yet to make hog Cracklins. Bill, what’s the hold up?

-Collin