An American History of Hogs
Dec 30, 2008 farming, general food
My parents are, to put it bluntly, antique hoarders. Apart from couches and dining tables, few of the furniture items in their home are truly serving their original functions. Their curio cabinet, for example, is an American Legion Hall gun cabinet from Floyd County, Iowa, and their living room coffee table is an egg incubator from an old barn. In fact, further proving their resourcefulness, they even have an antique wooden toilet, with a steel bucket inside, which they use as an end table, and which my father threatens, to this day, to serve chili from at a party.
While I don’t have nearly the same obsession with antiques as they do, growing up around them, the bug has, at least to some degree, worn off on me. All those years of countless trips to antique stores left me fascinated not just by the history of the items that returned to our own home, but by the stories surrounding every item I would encounter.
Today, in my own home, this is reflected in some of my own items like my dresser–an antique wardrobe I built shelving into–and a storage cabinet in our dining room which is actually an oak icebox. It has always been photographs, however, that I have been particularly drawn to. Even when they are reproductions.
Take those you’ll find in a chain restaurant like Mimi’s Cafe. Assuming they don’t outfit each restaurant with a different set of gathered photographs, the people in those photos are scattered throughout the nation in Mimi’s 138 locations. But who are they? Are any of them Mimi, and do their relatives dine in the restaurant, see their photographs, and think, “hey, that’s Grandma.”? More than anything I look at those photographs and wonder what stories the people would have to tell as they certainly never imagined that one day a subsidiary of Bob Evan’s would have them plastered on the wall.
Whatever my reasons for wondering about the people and places in these antique photos, due to my clear fascination, I recently began purchasing them along with vintage advertisements. In the past I had purchased some chef-related photos,
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Tags: animal husbandry, antique photos, Floyd County, hogs, Iowa, slaughter
The Butcher
Feb 21, 2008 general food
In a carnivorous world, a butcher is a necessary link in the food chain, carving a carcass of unsavory flesh into mouthwatering cuts.
Now that’s a tag line!
Not in the typical rotation of shows I watch, last night the episode of Modern Marvels on the History Channel was “The Butcher.” It was pretty interesting, and especially the last couple bits when they briefly spoke about custom slaughtering and then showed at length a mobile butcher in action.
After hauling his giant mobile butchering trailer out into the middle of nowhere and leveling it, the guy literally got on a tractor and shot a cow in the head with a rifle before they strung it up and pulled it in. He then proceeded to skin it and gut it before taking it back to his facility to age and butcher into the final cuts.
As gruesome as that may or may not sound to you, it’s the best possible scenario for an animal to be slaughtered humanely, and as I haven’t found anyone that can do this in Missouri, I’d been deeply curious as to how it worked.
I did get the impression that the mobile facility on the show is probably in the upper crust as surprisingly there was actually a USDA inspector present for the entire slaughter.
The butcher specifically stressed that he is fully USDA inspected so that the meat can be further sold down the line. This is not typically the case with custom slaughter because many of the people utilizing it have no further need to resell the meat as it is for their own consumption.
I’m sure they’ll show it again so be on the look out.
Another upcoming episode of food related interest (I thought to look since they had this one) is Harvesting which will air next Wednesday.
Tags: butcher, mobile butcher, mobile slaughterhouse, modern marvels, slaughter, USDA
Knowing Your Meat
Oct 26, 2007 farming, general food
I’ve inquired recently with a few farmers about whether I could see their slaughtering facilities and specifically the slaughtering itself. Generally, when I discuss this with most people (non-farmers), it is met with looks of horror, and is quickly followed by a question along the lines of “why would you want to see that?”
I guess I want to see it because I feel, at least on some moral level, that if I can’t watch say — a pig being slaughtered, then I don’t really have the right to eat it in the first place.
While catching up on my Next Iron Chef reading tonight after finally watching episode three this afternoon (go Cosentino!) Michael Ruhlman had also posted about this sentiment saying:
“…one of five things you should eat before you die is the meat of a freshly slaughtered animal, preferably having witnessed the slaughter.”
He then linked to this great essay at the New York Times about raising pigs for slaughter.
Barbara Kingsolver made what I consider to be a phenomenally great point in her book about people using different names for the commonly eaten meats than they use for the actual animal. (e.g. beef is cow, pork is pig)
What do you think? Is it important to understand where your meat comes from?
Tags: Chris Cosentino, farmers, Iron Chef, Michael Ruhlman, nytimes, pigs, pork, slaughter
