The Hungry Hoosier

The Meal Behind the Mask

The latest Hungry Hoosier story on Across Indiana is now available online. You can view it here.

Raccoon: It's What's for Dinner

OK, I've got another TV gig. The last one was covering caviar. This time I'm slipping to the other side of the culinary continuum. Next Saturday I will be doing a story on the "Raccoon Dinner" in Hibernia, Indiana. I guess that means I have to taste it, huh? I've never been one to try new animals. Guess I'll have to get over that. Did you catch the news story from the Louisville Journal Courier and then picked up by the AP? Here is it:

Raccoon Is Back on the Menu

By Dale Moss, Louisville Journal and Courier
Allus Franklin and his pals caught plenty of raccoons last season, 103 to be exact. The critters are to be cleaned by Dina Woods and a few other women who agreed to learn how. Dick Jones and a crew from the courthouse have offered, as always, to refill drinks and to take out the trash.

Above all, LaVeran Lorenz is again ready.

The popular annual feast in rural Clark County went away after 2002 because matriarch Lorenz was worn out, burned out, or both. She had had a hand -- and usually two -- in each and every one since the beginning in the early 1950s. Lorenz, who turned 86 last month, finally and understandably begged off.

Her Owen Township Homemakers instead occasionally sold chili and beans and ham, likewise to help pay for the upkeep of Hibernia's Community Building. Those meals drew decently but couldn't compare to tradition. People, a stream of them, all but begged Lorenz for a revival.

"I'd say, 'Some of these days,' "Lorenz said.

She had kept her iron skillets, 10 she had bought at a restaurant liquidation. She recruited and taught raccoon cleaners, requiring this surely gross task be shared. Paring inches of fat can prove necessary.

"It's not like cleaning a chicken, I'll tell you that," said Woods, one of Lorenz's neighbors.

Franklin is grateful his catch again can go to a good cause. "When they told us, we'd already caught 40," he said. What meat he couldn't give away -- during the supper drought these past few years -- he threw away.

Home from World War II, Franklin bought a dog, and he has hunted since. At 84, his tie to this Hibernia social highlight is as staunch as Lorenz's.

Like pork, sort of, Franklin said, asked to describe the dark, leg meat he provides. "You'd be surprised," he said. "People like them."

The supper indeed seems more than an excuse for people to get together. They eat all Lorenz typically can cook. She went through 65 of the animals last time, steaming the meat after she'd floured and fried it.

"Even got the women trying them," Lorenz said.

For the faint of palate, Lorenz will dish turkey. Also on the all-you-can-eat menu are dressing and gravy, parsley potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans, rolls and coffee or tea.

"The food is excellent and there's plenty of it," said Jones, the county recorder who's donned an apron in Hibernia for decades.

Lorenz will serve from 5 p.m. until she runs out of stomachs to fill, or food.

Lorenz is to become a great-great-grandmother in May, and her family is close-knit. She lives alone, though, since her youngest child, Kevin, died in 2004 of heart failure. He was but 45 and was high among Clark County's most-involved, kindliest farmers. He led by her example and, together, they did everything they could for everybody they could. He delivered fruit to a homeless shelter and a soup kitchen the evening before he died.

It was a concerned Kevin who talked his mother in to her semi-retreat. She had made the supper leadership only appear easy. "It's a bigger ordeal than you would think," Woods said.

Yet Helen Sue Sneed, another Lorenz child and another Lorenz lieutenant, is not a bit surprised her mother resumed the duty.

"It's what keeps her going," Sneed said. "She enjoys being around people. That's a big part of it."

Lorenz relies on the 21 members of the homemakers club to pitch in. They, in turn, lean on her. "She's a dynamo," said Woods, 46. "There aren't many ladies left like LaVeran. She keeps the rest of us going."

Perpetually campaigning politicians show, of course, sometimes bringing door prizes. A quilt will be raffled, as well. The Community Building seats but 75, so Lorenz asks those eager to linger and chat to do so on the porch. If it rains, a tent will be set up.

"It's the biggest day in Hibernia, I think," Woods said.

The cost is $6 for adults, $3 for children ages 12 and under. The Community Building is on Blue Ridge Road, alongside Hibernia Christian Church. The site can't be missed from Hibernia Road, which is off Ind. 62.