Tag: history

AP article on Classes in Butchery.

So you ain’t from Butcher Holler. Wonder if this will fly in our environs. You need to deal with the gut pile. Dogs love ’em.

get your own pork
The good old days.. (I'm serious about this folks)

Going whole hog: Foodies learn the art of butchery
By TERENCE CHEA (AP) – 47 minutes ago

SAN FRANCISCO — Get out your knives and prepare to get blood on your clothes: more Americans are learning how to butcher their own meat.

Cooking enthusiasts and eco-conscious food lovers are signing up for classes where they learn how to carve up whole hogs, lambs and other farm animals, the latest trend among foodies who want a closer connection to the meaty morsels on their forks.

On a recent evening in San Francisco, a dozen men and women met at a rental kitchen in the Mission District to break down a 170-pound hog under the guidance of Ryan Farr, one of a new breed of “artisan butchers” who is bringing the art of butchery to the meat-loving masses.

After Farr and his assistant plunked the slaughtered pig on a sprawling stainless steel table, the students — wearing white aprons and brandishing cleavers, saws and hatchets — took turns cutting up the carcass. They sawed through flesh, chopped through bones and sliced off tendons until the animal was reduced to hundreds of individual cuts of meat.

“I like the part when you cut the head and you see what’s inside. You discover pieces here and there that you didn’t expect,” said Alex Castellarnau, a designer in San Francisco. “It’s very crafty. I had a lot of fun using the different tools.”

Something “new” to do at a picnic..

Bury the remains.. from Retronaut

“Today, 27 years later, a group of French scientists have brought the artistic event back to life by exhuming the meal, this time with the serious aim of testing the latest archaeological techniques. Slowly, bits of tablecloth, bottles and cutlery are once again seeing the light of day as they are carefully brushed free of earth. A dozen laboratories are involved in the dig, which is opened to the public today on national archaeology day.

Mr Spoerri, now 80, and several of his original picnic guests were present this week to oversee the excavation of their gargantuan meal. He discovered that the bottles and plates were still intact but the tables had all but vanished. He also swore that they had not used plastic cups, but these re-surfaced almost as good as new. The artist intends to take a mould of the excavated picnic: It will then be reburied “for future generations”.”

WS Merwin (who knows food) named poet laureate

you gen-xers & millenials may not get this.. pity, that.

In Time

(from 1999)
by W. S. Merwin

The night the world was going to end
when we heard those explosions not far away
and the loudspeakers telling us
about the vast fires on the backwater
consuming undisclosed remnants
and warning us over and over
to stay indoors and make no signals
you stood at the open window
the light of one candle back in the room
we put on high boots to be ready
for wherever we might have to go
and we got out the oysters and sat
at the small table feeding them
to each other first with the fork
then from our mouths to each other
until there were none and we stood up
and started to dance without music
slowly we danced around and around
in circles and after a while we hummed
when the world was about to end
all those years all those nights ago