No Food Waste

Margaret Heagney 21^st July 2017 Deerpark Social Services Centre, Ballinasloe, Co. Galway

No Food Waste

Interviewer: Clare Doyle (CD)

Interviewee: Margaret Heagney (MH)

CD: Did you ever make black pudding?

MH: No.

CD: Did you not?

MH: No. I didn’t. Though we used to kill the pigs now

CD: Right

MH: Though we never kept the pudding

CD: And did you have a man come to kill the pig or did your father to that?

MH: Oh, a next door neighbour would come and I’d run into the bedroom and go behind the door until

CD: I’d say it’s an awful job?

MH: I didn’t want to hear the pig

CD: I’d say it’s an awful noise?

MH: And I’d be trying to listen to see was the pig dead

CD: And how would they kill him?

MH: A knife. Just stick it in him

CD: It would be done quick enough?

MH: Oh, it was done quick enough. A few minutes. And then I’d be watching, the next day he’d come, and he’d open up the pig and he’d clean him out and all that and he’d always put a little dab in the heart. And he’d say “lookit where I got him, right in the heart”!

CD: Oh right

MH: And he only doing it the next day!

CD: So, he was proud of his work?

MH: Oh, just the pride of killing the pig in the heart

CD: And would you eat all parts of the pig then, would ye?

MH: Everything. Everything, there was nothing wasted. Everything there was make use. There’d be a big pot of potatoes put down for the dinner and you’d throw them out then on the floor on a bag and my mother would say, pick up the good ones now for the dinner. Get a plate and leave them up on the table and what was left then would be for the hens then the chickens and the pigs

CD: The small potatoes

MH: They got everything that was left, all the waste.