Steaks are High

The 2011 rib steak (l) and last year's model (r)

I’ve got a freezer containing of 3/8 of a massive steer.   (more…)

Beef Draft II: The Beefening

Now with 50% more beef!  While last year’s cow weighed 586 pounds, this year’s came in at a whopping 880.  To accommodate, we added a few slots to the draft, bringing the total to 10.

The delivery arrived around noon.  The shipment was six 100lb boxes; these things were massive. When the Fedex guys realized I lived in a third-floor walkup, they convincingly feigned injury and got the hell out of there. (more…)

Cry Me a Liver

As part of a pact made during last year’s beef draft, and part of my own plans to step closer to the food I eat, I kept the liver and promised to make it for everybody at the following year’s draft.  So, with the 2010 draft taking place that evening, the time had come.   (more…)

Angela and I Eat Tarantulas

Romdeng, a restaurant in Phnom Penh, has its heart in the right place. It’s staffed entirely by orphans and gives them skills (and a salary) they’d otherwise not have.  It’s the kind of place you really want to love.

But man, that place overcooks their tarantula.

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Is There Any Possible Way Foie Gras Could Be Morally Tolerable? Please?

Duck, duck, goose

Does the eating foie gras make us Torquemadas of duckdom?

I was always a little scared to know the answer.  We all know the basics of foie gras manufacture. Ducks are force fed calorie-dense food a few times a day for several weeks, until their livers get fatty and enormous – up to a tenth of the bird’s total bodyweight.  It all sounds a bit like torture, doesn’t it?

I was a little scared to know for sure – because foie gras, of course, is mind-blowingly delicious.   (more…)

There Will Be Blood

Face it: eating the whole animal can be a little unsettling

The idea of eating the whole animal, the movement away from 36-packs of boneless skinless chicken breasts at Costco, isn’t something dreamed up by a bunch of elitist fucks.   (more…)

Wet Work

I don't know how to define pornography, but I know it when I see it

Yeah, I used to watch MacGyver.

MacGyver stood out among 1980s action-adventure shows.  This is remarkable, considering just how many action-adventure shows were out there at the same time, each featuring a single, handsome, brown-haired guy whose name was the one- or two-word title of the show (you know it’s true; if you don’t believe me, you can ask Matt Houston, Remington Steele, Knight Rider, Magnum, P.I., or Mike Hammer (more…)

The Cupcake Challenge

Alas, poor cupcake; I knew him

“When I got home and looked in the mirror, there was frosting in my hair.”

These words, coming from Kaisha’s lips in the aftermath, describe better than any other the carnage that was the Wedding Cupcake Challenge.  What we did to the spread of cupcakes on my dining room table, doctors have done to Joan Rivers’ face.   (more…)

It’s All About One Benjamin, Baby

Accept no substitute

There’s too much kitchen crap.

Not that I needed to tell you this.  But I just had my own personal “enough is enough” moment, and it went a little something like this:

I went to a Barnes and Noble where, in a display near the cookbooks, was for sale what appeared to be a solid mass of vomit. As I approached, I realized that it wasn’t vomit at all, but rather (more…)