I wanted to add just a quick post in honor of that most delicious of snacks, the virtuous pig in a blanket.
I've found Heather to be a leading authority on the subject. In fact, it was during one of our more electrifying discussions that she told me how overlooked pigs in a blanket are nowadays. We have found that when the average group of adults is presented with a platter of processed meat cylinders ensconced in homemade dough, their eyes will widen in astonishment and their voices will grow low with awe and anticipation; it is evident from these reactions that when we pass into adulthood we begin to forget about both pigs and blankets in all but the very literal sense. "But," Heather will tell you, even as she has often told me, "they're coming back! And I love that!"
So do all of us, Heather. And every platter of pigs in a blanket that I have witnessed her bring into being has done more to weaken the powers of evil in this world than a billion Boy Scouts helping ten billion little old ladies to cross the street. If they are indeed coming back--if pigs in a blanket may one day seize the nation even as they have seized our hearts--then it will only be due to one worthy and faithful girl's efforts in a noble cause. May we all join together and support her in this timeless endeavor, for together we can bring both hope to the hopeless, joy to the joyless, and blankets for the pigs in all of us.
Ready to feed at sunrise, a drove of blanketed pigs surrounds the feeding trough just as the dawning light breaks over the eastern napkin in this dramatic photograph.
Enthusiastically showing off their patriotism, these pigs nevertheless wait with understandable anxiety for the 4th of July picnic festivities to begin.
Still striking, even after millennia of the inexorable Sahara sun, this recently-discovered archaeological find suggests that pigs in a blanket were not necessarily unknown in ancient Egyptian theology. Although the red and yellow columns in the background still present mysteries of their own...
...new discoveries such as these sarcophagi provide fascinating clues as to the ancient royal entombment proceedings. Mummies like these were not thought to exist until recently, when
experts discovered a genealogy of "swine pharaohs" buried in the tomb of Amenhotep III. Compelling evidence notwithstanding, however, some researchers still speculate that these may have only been the ancient Egyptian equivalent of LDS primary children's craft projects.
Appearing at first glance like some kind of bizarre dicephalic snack time phenomena, these Chinese pigs in a blanket are actually proof that staples of one culture are often manifested in another. Although ethnocentrism will ultimately claim them as her own (in that both the arrangement and the toppings are foreign to our Americanized preferences), the basic ingredients and spirit of these oriental creations hold true to their Western heredity.
