Free Souse With Purchase

For months I have tried to remember to take a camera with me to the Porkly Workly, but alas, I’m lucky to remember the grocery list and, on a very good day, the environmentally-responsible market bags. I have been determined to document on this blog a disturbing product called souse, which hangs innocuously amongst the Oscar Mayer bologna and mesquite-smoked turkey as though it were some sort of normal, reasonable food item you might slip into your kid’s sandwich. At first unpleasant glance, you see pinkish-white ridged chunks floating in a viscous base sprinkled with green and red flakes. Peruse the ingredient list and -- dear God -- you’ll discover that souse is a pork product you’d have thought vanished from human consumption a hundred years ago, if not right after the first time someone tried it. The main ingredients in souse are (cue theme from Psycho): pig snouts, pig hearts, pickles, and gelatin. Heave. Here kids, have some jellied pig snout with pickles!

Though the Splendaville Porkly Workly has evidently been doing a brisk enough trade in souse to have offered it for as long as I’ve lived here, apparently even regional delicacies have a limited appeal. The souse was on sale for 99 cents, and I decided this blog was worth the expense, so I put it in my cart, along with some pot pies and cheap wine, and went to check out with a basket full of good times.  The checkout girl scanned my Porkly Workly card, rang up my items, and informed me that my exclusive membership had saved me 99 cents. In other words, free souse with purchase.