[Granville-Hough] 22 Sep 2009 - Sage

[Trustees for Granville W. Hough]

  Sage, the Wonder Plant at Hog-Killing Time.

In the corner of our garden, we had a plot of sage, about 12 feet by 12 
feet. It was not a wild plant, so far as I know, so we had it in our 
garden. We weeded it by hand, but we did nothing else to it. It was 
simply there until we needed it at hog-killing time. Then, it came into 
its own. It has escaped me now how we prepared it. But we mixed it with 
the meat we were preparing for sausage. It gave the sausage an improved 
flaver. We also used it in preparing corn-bread dressing which we 
inserted into the cavity left when chicken or turkey was prepared for 
roasting. Every Thanksgiving day when I taste the dressing which comes 
with the restaurant meal of turkey, I can see the corner of our garden 
and its patch of grayish-green sage. I remember the smell and the taste. 
It isn’t an unpleasant taste, but it is distinctive. It is sage.
In reading the newspapers on the West Coast, I have seen several 
recommendations for preparing wild deer or elk for consumption. People 
who have never tasted wild animal food consider it too gamey. One way to 
reduce the gamey flavor is to cook it with sage. Now that wild game has 
returned to Sullivan’s Hollow, it may be that sage is again being used 
in cooking.
Sage is a member of the mint family, which contains many of the plants 
we associate with good cooking. It is officially Salvia officinalis, and 
the plant had historic medicinal uses in Europe.
Sage is in no way related to the Western plant, called sage-brush, which 
at times smells slightly like regular sage. Sage-brush got its name 
because of that faint odor. Perhaps the Indians used sage-brush in some 
of their medicinal or cooking preparations, but it is more likely they 
just used branches as fuel for cooking when nothing else was available.