This is me, about to make my first-ever cut into a hog's rear leg, the ham of this beast. How did I get here? Staring this whole hog in the face, wanting to learn how exactly he'll go from being an animal that just days before was probably skipping happily through a pig pen and sloppin' it up with his piggy friends -- very much alive -- to the sanitized-looking cuts of butt, arm, and hock that wind up on the shelves at the grocery store meat department?
Well, a lot of things have happened through my 40+ years that have brought me to this particular juncture (more about that in future posts of this blog). But one incident in particular, about three years ago, has led me to finally act, and do what most people wouldn't find interesting...or appetizing...in the least: butchering my own meat.
While ordering a couple pounds of 93% ground beef at the meat counter of my local grocery store after work, the guy behind the counter ran out. So he went to fetch some more. I was expecting freshly ground meat from a tub, prepared just that day for busy mothers like me, just getting off work and in a hurry to get kids fed so they can have their evening cocktail and relax already. After all, the meat department at this store looks fully functional. Lots of butcher blocks, mountains of stainless steel and grinding machines, racks upon rolling racks of freshly packaged meat. This stuff must be locally processed, right? Here's what he brings out: a ginormous plastic tube (TOOB) of pre-ground burger. I thought this horror only happened at Walmart or Costco. You have GOT to be kidding me, I thought. What am I doing here?!
My mind instantly traveled to mental images from Eric Schlosser's "Fast Food Nation." Exactly how many different cows went into this burger I had been eating for years? I thought of my brother's joke that you know it's bad when the tube the ground beef comes in has a PICTURE of the appetizing meat that's supposedly inside, in case you have any doubt just how yummy and fresh it really is. I thought I was being a conscientious shopper. Where I got my meat was really important to me. I had thought it through. And I thought I knew where my meat was coming from. I thought I was shopping at a place that had the same values as I did: freshly processed meat that comes from down the road.
It was then, after asking several questions, that I learned they don't grind their own meat. He had a reason. I can't remember what it was. And whatever it was, it wasn't good enough for me. I was in shock. And it irked me to no end that I felt like what was being presented to people as fresh meat products was just being repackaged and sold in a way that REMINDED you of a local, hometown meat market. Forget the reality. The domino had been tipped. And all the other disappointments I had had in recent years started to come back to me in a wave so overpowering that I knew there was no going back.
This blog will be about a lot of things. It will be about discovering my roots. It will be about overcoming boredom with food. It will be about doing something about the way meat is prepared and fed to people in this country. It will be about being tired of bad quality meat. Slimy meat. Smelly meat. Old meat. And it's also about learning how to enjoy cuts of meat that have been lost to our people for generations. Surely there is something we can learn from the people who used to eat the undesirable parts because it was the only thing they could afford. And surely there is a better way to honor the animals that sacrificed so that we can live so well.
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