So many meats, so little time

6/27/2007

Vegetarians may say that grazing is the key to health, harmony and happiness, but I am still not convinced.
Nothing makes my day more complete than eating something that once flew, swam or ran. It is easy to deny yourself the pleasure of a flame-broiled hamburger now and then, but no one can deny that we are predators. If not, we would all have eyes on the sides of our heads, like chickens, cows, and the girl I danced with at senior prom.
Some foods are simply too hard to resist, and there is a vast array of must-eat meats out there to not only please your palate, but expand your mind and gratify your soul.
To begin with, don’t ignore the simple pleasure of the lowly pork rind. The ingredient list, pork and salt, should qualify it as health food. Some brands add lard, but that is rather redundant. The pig provides enough of his own.
For the connoisseur, there is Kobe beef. This product of Japan sees the cow fed a diet of beer and daily massages, until the richly marbled flesh is more white than red. No need to worry about animal cruelty here. Kobe beef cattle are cookhouse royalty, and flat-out delicious.
Grinding Kobe into a burger only misses the point, and the point is fat. I now eat ten per cent less fat, than a bowl of fat, so take it from a man who knows. Try it raw, shaved into paper-thin slices, and drizzled with flavoured oil.
If a Japanese cow with a daily rubdown seems out of your price range, try horse. Apparently, it is sweeter, leaner and redder than beef. Never having eaten a horse, I’ll have to trust the research on this one. Eating horse is traditional in other countries, and still legal in ours, just in case someone you know is so hungry they could eat one.
Before you throw the dog a bone, give the marrow a try for yourself. Wobbly, greasy and always rich, it is surprisingly tasty. Scoop out the centre of boiled or roasted beef bones, spread bone marrow on toast, and salt to taste. Ossobuco, or braised veal shanks, offer delicious marrow.
If innards are still your thing after a good feed of bone marrow, there is always foie gras. French for “fat liver”, this delicacy is mired today in ethical controversy. Some restaurants now ban the fattened livers of force-fed duck and geese, but you can still enjoy it here, while it's legal.
Then again, there is no point in getting too fancy. I personally recommend anything cooked over a wood fire. Propane barbecues do a reliable job, while most charcoal is made from good old coal, but there is no substitute for red hot hardwood coals. Take the time to do it up right.
Wild game is a favourite of many meat lovers, and a staple in rural and northern areas throughout our fair country. Venison and moose can be prepared in as many ways as your imagination can cook up, and the meat is great tasting and good for your overall well being.
If you are lucky enough to have a wild turkey at your disposal, try skinning it, giving it a bacon jacket to wear, and roasting it alongside a pork roast. This will keep it moist, and the blend of flavours will be remarkable.
Keep an open mind and try something different this summer. If it doesn’t work out, there’s always vegetables.

You have to go where the fish are

6/20/2007

Sometimes, when you’ve known someone long enough, you get to know what they are thinking. Most often, it will be something you wouldn’t repeat in church, if at all.
Find a friend like that, and you will never have to worry about what to say, or how to say it. A friend like that can wade through all the lies, boasts and excrement, and come right back with a heaping helping of their own.
On a fishing trip into the high country last week, I met two such friends. In order to protect the guilty, and their churches, they will be referred to only as Al and Jim.
Al and Jim have known each other for 25 years. They trade their wit, insults and stories as only two old friends can, tossing barbs and boasts back and forth like a pair of octopus playing tennis. Whether an octopus can even play tennis is doubtful, but if anyone would know, it would be Al and Jim. They happen to know a lot about fishing.
For starters, before every fishing trip, they stock up on lures by buying three at a time. One is to use, one is kept in reserve in the event of a snag, and the other goes into the other guy’s tackle box the second no one is looking.
The two have been swapping fishing lures for years, safe in the knowledge that borrowing a lure means you are only stealing one you bought in the first place. It is a system that works for Al and Jim, and they always catch fish.
Last week’s fish of choice was the elusive trout, no easy prey when the sun is high and hot, and the water starts to warm. Any hack with a rod and reel can catch a bass or a pike, no matter the conditions. These are stupid fish. Trout are the smart ones, lurking only in the cold, dark depths, and it takes an intelligent angler to outwit them.
Al started with a gentle troll, dragging his lure over rocky points, drop offs, deep holes and dark places full of mystery. All he caught was a buzz and a sunburn.
Jim laughed, called Al a name like noodlehead, or dozey or fartbag, and said you have to go where the fish are. Last week’s heat meant they were all down on the bottom of the lake, stacked up like cord wood, as the locals say.
So, Al portaged his boat into the next lake; a good, deep lake. He liked his chances, and felt almost giddy, most likely from loss of blood due to all the mosquitoes.
Jim said all you have to do is catch a dragonfly, attach two feet of extra-light monofilament line to its tail, tie the other end to your hat; and no fly, bug or pest will come anywhere near you. Yeah, Al said, that’s exactly what a dozey fartbag would try to do, you old noodlehead.
Al pulled out all the stops on the deep lake, using copper line and some evil old rig from the turn of the century that looked capable of snaring buffalo. There were some fish caught, along with plenty of rocks and sticks, an old hat, an even older shoe, and even a nice little ice fishing rig that a drunken fool must’ve dropped down his hole last winter.
All in all, it was a great day. Dusk brought the end of the fishing, but it brought with it a chance to swap stories, to recount some old ones, and forge a few new ones. It meant the lies, boasts and insults would soon be flowing, along with a few cold beers. It’s what old friends are for.

Free Paris Hilton. We need her.

6/13/2007

Paris Hilton is an American celebrity, socialite, actress and recording artist. She is also an heiress to a share of the Hilton Hotel fortune, and the value of that inheritance is estimated at roughly $50 million.
In September 2006, she was arrested for driving under the influence and subsequently sentenced to 36 months probation, and had her driver’s license suspended.
In February 2007, she was stopped for speeding and driving after dark with no headlights on, and subsequently charged with violating her probation.
In May 2007, she was sentenced to 45 days in jail.
And the world wept, roughly 50 million tears.
In June 2007, after partying it up at the annual MTV Movie Awards, Hilton checked into an all female jail in California. With credit for good behavior, it was anticipated she would serve only 23 days of her 45 day sentence.
She served five. Five agonizing days.
In an unexpected turn of events, the L.A. County Sheriff signed orders that Hilton could serve out her sentence at home, for a ‘medical condition.’ And the world cheered.
That very day, however, Paris was ordered back to court by the L. A. City Attorney, and was sent back to jail to serve out the remainder of her sentence. She was taken out of the courtroom screaming for her mother.
Tragic. I may never recover from the shock of it all.
To see a positive role model like Paris Hilton treated so harshly, so unfairly, so forcefully, is positively outrageous.
She must be set free immediately. We need her.
With her skinny legs, smooth skin and white teeth, Paris reminds us all how old, fat and ugly we are compared to her. We need her in the public eye, flaunting her sparkling eyes and perky parts, to goad us into becoming better.
Yes, Paris isn’t perfect; but who among us is?
I realize she has no real job, no real talent, no apparent skills at all for that matter; but we need her on television and in magazines to remind us that, no matter how small and ordinary we might feel, there is always the chance that we can become famous, and one of the beautiful people.
Some of us have a lot longer road to travel than others, but the magic power of Paris is what keeps us going.
Of course, it helps to have a lot of money.
I admit Paris didn’t earn any of her millions. That’s daddy’s money, and everybody knows it; but it certainly hasn’t stopped her from spending buckets of it.
A free Paris is good for the economy, and it’s no secret that Mr. Bush and his generals need all the help they can get when it comes to their economy. Someone should stand up and demand justice. O. J. Simpson is rich, and he didn’t have to go to jail at all, not even for five days.
At the very least, a free Paris Hilton is a convenient distraction. When we focus our attention on something as harmless as Paris, we forget all about all the other truly nasty things out there in the wide world, such as poverty, war, genocide, taxes, mosquitoes and pickled pig’s feet.
It’s going to be a long 45 days without Paris. If you find yourself missing her, you’re probably the only one.

Busting the gutbusting record

6/7/2007

A time comes in everyone’s life, most often around a picnic table, when you think to yourself, yes, I could handle one more hot dog. Well then, how about 58 more?
There was a great rejoicing around the old relish jar on Saturday, as a California man finally toppled the seemingly unbeatable Takeru Kobayashi’s hot dog eating record.
At the Southwest Regional Hot Dog Eating Championship at the Arizona Mills Mall in suburban Tempe, Joey “Jaws” Chestnut scarfed down more than 59 franks and buns in 12 minutes, to set a new high water mark for good old American gluttony.
It works out to one hot dog every 12 seconds, for 12 agonizing minutes; and if that boggles your mind, imagine what it is doing to Joey the Jaws’ digestive system.
The otherwise normal 22-year-old from San Jose laid waste to Kobayashi’s previous record of 53 and 3/4 hot dogs, set last year at Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July Hot Dog Eating Contest, held at Coney Island in New York.
While such a record may be laughable to some, it seems only fitting that the title is back in American hands.
The hot dog has been an American institution ever since the first forward-thinking butcher scraped his shovel along the slaughterhouse floor, squeezed whatever it picked up into a casing, and sold it to a happily hungry public.
It is also somehow fitting that the record was broken in California, where freaks are a dime a dozen, and dimes are in endless supply. Chestnut, by the way, is no rank amateur when it comes to dog gobbling. He placed second in last year’s world championships, consuming 52 hot dogs.
Ryan Nerz, an employee of Major League Eating, the world governing board for all stomach-centric sports, said Chestnut is “unbelievable” and that “his numbers have just been going up at a tremendous clip.”
Following the record breaking performance, Nerz said he always thought there was a limit to the human stomach, and a limit to human willpower. Apparently, there isn’t.
Gone are the days when a 400lb ogre could waddle up to the table, and cram a few dozen hot dogs into the airplane hangar he called a mouth. No, a record like this requires training. Lots and lots of training.
The most popular gut-stretching technique involves long days of guzzling water, until the stomach is stretched out like a hot air balloon just before the gas hits it. The top technique for downing the dogs is not to chew them, but to fold them up and swallow them whole, much like a boa constrictor downing the barefoot bushman.
Preliminary research has shown that three out of four doctors agree this is not particularly good for you. The fourth doctor still thinks smoking is good for you, and DDT is an effective way to control the mosquito population.
Regardless, Joey Chestnut is a world champion. His prizes included a free trip to New York, a $250 gift card to the mall, and a year’s supply of hot dogs. At one every 12 seconds, that works out to around 2,628,000 franks.
Kobayashi, if he wants his record back, has a month to train. It’s going to be war—and no one said war is pretty.