Antony Bowness, a butcher, knows that true love is (served) rare. That’s why he made a rose bouquet out of steak. Gentlemen, take note: this is how to be romantic.

Link -via Gizmodo | Photo: Hungeree

Don’t come to the table late or you’ll miss your chance! Kivaq is a Greelandic meat dish that you’ll never forget. Start by emptying the body cavity of a seal. Stuff inside a few hundred raw auk birds, feathers and all. Sew it up and cover the seams with fat. Let it sit under rocks for three to eighteen months. Serves eight.

At the link, you can watch a video of people opening and eating a Kivaq after this long preparation process.

Link | Photo: Inga Sørensen

But why should we wait for the Super Bowl? When you have recipes like Smokey Jalapeño Cheese Dip, Spicy Bacon Cowboy Chili Cheese Fries, Barbeque Beef Pizza, and Bacon Explosion, you want to try them out now! Shown here is the Black Bean-Habanero Lime Dip, with looks as yummy as it sounds. Link

Austrian Jasmine Schuller, a photographer, made delicious-looking (and probably tasty!) desserts out of meat products. Dig in! Link (Google Translate) -via Nerdcore | Artist’s Website

BBQ Branding Iron – $18.95

Are you on a mission to get Dad the best Father’s Day gift this year?  Get him the BBQ Branding Iron from the NeatoShop.  Just think of all the wonderfully inappropriate things Dad will be able brand onto pieces of meat, chicken and tofu.  The possibilities are endless.  Hopefully, your Mother’s patience and forgiveness is also endless.

Be sure to check out all the great BBQ items available at the NeatoShop!

Link

It’s just cruel to tease a dog like this. I’m glad Clark doesn’t really understand English that well. -via reddit

Glued meat is being supplied to some of Australia’s most popular eateries. It is also popular with catering companies – if you’ve been to a wedding lately chances are you’ve eaten glued meat.

An event specialist says top hotels and restaurants have been tricking customers for years.

Link – via Fark

About half — 47% of the samples — contained S. aureus, the researchers reported Friday in Clinical Infectious Diseases. Of those bacteria, 52% were resistant to at least three classes of antibiotics. DNA testing suggested the animals were the source of contamination. The research was funded by the Pew Campaign on Human Health and Industrial Farming.

"The fact that drug-resistant S. aureus was so prevalent, and likely came from the food animals themselves, is troubling, and demands attention to how antibiotics are used in food-animal production today," said Lance Price, lead author of the study and director of TGen’s Center for Food Microbiology and Environmental Health, said in a news release.

Link

The New York Times has created a chart that illustrates changing meat eating habits among Americans over the past century. Chicken, as you can see, is steadily on the rise, whereas lamb (black) eating has dropped to almost nothing. I’ve clipped it from 1955 to the present, so click on the link if you’d like to see the whole thing.

Since crawfish season is upon us, I’m going to do my best to bump up the shellfish line (blue). We all have to do our part.

Link via Ace of Spades HQ

The field of culinary evolution faces one great dilemma: why do most cooked, exotic meats taste like cooked Gallus gallus, the domestic chicken?

It is curious that so many animals have a similar taste. Did each species evolve this trait independently or did they all inherit it from a common ancestor? That is the burning question.

A meat counter featuring some of the author's favorites, including turtle, emu and boar.

Evolutionary Theory: Some Background

First, some tasty technical background.

The different traits of an organism (its hair or lack thereof, its teeth or lack thereof, its lungs or lack thereof, its taste, its color, etc.) can have distinctly different evolutionary origins. Some of an organism’s traits are inherited from many, many, many, many (thousands, or millions, even) generations of ancestors. Other of its traits developed late in the evolutionary history. If you compare the traits of two different kinds of organisms, you may find that:

1. Some of the things they have in common were inherited from a common ancestor; while
2. Other things they have in common were not inherited from any common ancestor-but happened to have developed independently for each organism.

Modern evolutionary analysis helps us try to sort out and understand the true origins of all sorts of traits. Here’s how you do it.

Cat tastes mammalian. In essence, it tastes like tetrapod.

First, you need to make a diagram showing which kinds of organisms evolved from which other kinds of organisms. (How to make this kind of chart is a whole question in itself. For a good introduction to it, see Phylogeny, Ecology, and Behavior: A Research Program in Comparative Biology, by Daniel R. Brooks and Deborah McLennan. University of Chicago Press, 1991.) Such a chart will usually turn out to be tree-shaped, and so it is called a “tree” of evolutionary ancestry (the jargon phrase for this kind of “tree” is “a phylogeny”).

If you are interested in a particular trait, you can go through the tree and mark every kind of creature which has that trait. These markings on the evolutionary tree then show you whether:

1. The trait developed just once, and was then inherited by the creatures that subsequently evolved. (You will see that the trait is spread over connected branches of the tree. The name for this is synapomorphy.)
2. The trait developed independently more than once. (You will see that the trait only occurs in isolation, on tree tips. The jargon phrase for this is convergent evolution)

Here is an example of a synapomorphy. Crabs taste like lobsters because they both evolved from the same group of crabby-lobstery-tasting crustaceans.

Here is an example of convergent evolution. My finger is “rubbery” to chew on. The stalks of certain plants, too, are “rubbery to chew on.” This “rubbery-ness” that the plants and I share has nothing to do with common ancestry. A chewy gristle evolved long ago among my animal ancestors. By happenstance, an unrelated, but equally chewy, substance evolved in the ancestors of those plants I mentioned.

By the way, if a trait appears on nearly all branches of an entire group of organisms, then it is called a plesiomorphic trait. This means its appearance is best explained by a single event in the ancestry of the entire group. For example, all animals have muscles (meat, if you will).

This type of analysis (as well as this type of jargon) is at the heart of much of evolutionary biology today.

Tasting the Tetropods

Swan tastes avian. In essence, it tastes like tetrapod.

For the current study, I examined a sampling of tetrapod (see Table 1A). Just so we have our jargon straight: tetrapod means “four-legged,” and vertebrates means “animals that have back bones.”

Many kinds of tetrapod are sold as exotic meats in marketplaces around the world. Being an affirmed carnivore, I have tasted nearly all of these species (prepared from fresh, canned or, in some cases, frozen meat). I judged the flavor of each kind of meat. In cases where I was not able to try the meat first hand (so to speak), I have consulted experts or used common knowledge. I tried to do most of the sampling myself, so as to reduce the variation in data from different tasters (n = 1, variance = 0).

Fowl-Tasting Food
As you might expect, most of the birds (Aves) have a “chicken-like” taste. The exception here is ostrich, with its “beef-like” flavor. Its meat was darker than the darkest chicken I have ever had. However, it may have been too heavily seasoned for an adequate assessment.5 With only this exception, all birds I sampled “taste like chicken.”

A Menu of Mammals
Patterns of flavors for cooked mammals are not as clear-cut. The origins of “beef-like” flavor coincide with the origins of hoofed mammals. However, it is impossible to tell whether “beef-like” flavor evolved before or after “pork-like” flavor did. Of course, this argument rests on the hearsay evidence that humans themselves have a “pork-like” flavor.6 I leave it as an exercise for interested readers to settle this point.

Scrumptious Salamanders
Several meats were excluded from this study, for evolutionary or ethical reasons (see Table 1B), but we can make predictions about their cooked flavor.

Based on a variety of factors, we can predict that cooked salamanders would “taste like chicken.” Their relatives all do.

Munching on Mice
Mice present a different problem. I will not eat them raw (are you surprised?), and nor can I predict how they would taste cooked. Their relatives, so far as I have been able to determine, have either “chicken-like” (in the case of the rabbit) or “beef-like” (in the case of the muskrat) flavors. Farley Mowat, in his book Never Cry Wolf, rates mouse meat as “pleasing, if rather bland.”

Were Dinosaurs Delicious?
But the most intriguing hypothesis that I can propose is for the flavor of dinosaurs. The only source of dinosaur in current times would be fossils.. I made several calls to the Field Museum, in Chicago , seeking to borrow merely a single bone from their recent acquisition (“Sue” the T. rex, a large skeleton with many bones). My request is still entangled in red tape.

Fortunately, we now have knowledge that bears on the question of dinosaurs taste. Based on recent evidence for the close ancestry of dinosaurs and birds, chances are that T. rex “tastes like chicken!”

A Slogan for Our Times
As a result of this study, I must conclude that cooked flavor is a result more of ancestral inheritance than of convergent evolution. Many animals taste similar because they evolved from a common ancestor that tasted that way. The meat of our argument is that “chicken-like” flavor is ancestral (that is, plesiomorphic) for birds and many other vertebrates, as well. Indeed, the emphasis on chicken in the statement “tastes like chicken” is misleading. The common ancestor of most tetrapods would have tasted similarly, if we had only been there to cook and eat it.

I therefore propose that the use of “taste like chicken” be banished from common speech in favor of “tastes like tetrapod.”

A Theory With Legs
This study puts the theories of ancestral flavor in tetrapods on a solid footing. It is tempting to propose further a theory of flavor based on leg number.

Do insects (6 legs) taste like spiders (8 legs), or do they taste more like lobster (10 legs)?

Are millipedes ten times tastier than centipedes?

These questions are under current examination in a joint research effort with other investigators to get a leg up on the broader implications of flavor evolution.

Figure 1: A phylogenetic tree with the characteristic flavors mapped onto it.

Two technical notes:

1. I have marked all characters with their earliest hypothesized evolution date.
2. Organisms with boxes at the tree tips were used as data input into the model; branch tips without terminal boxes were assigned a flavor (their branch or group was assigned the flavor) inferred by the program based on shared ancestry (MacClade, ver 3.06; Maddison and Maddison 1992).

Copyright © 1998 The Annals of Improbable Research (AIR). All rights reserved.

_____________________

This classic article is republished with permission from the July-August 1998 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. You can download or purchase back issues of the magazine, or subscribe to receive future issues. Or get a subscription for someone as a gift!

Visit their website for more research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.

Until recently, robots have been unable to replace human workers at the task of deboning meat due to the differences between individual pieces of meat. But the HAMDAS-R built by Mayekawa Electric can now debone ham effectively:

HAMDAS-R has made it possible to automate the processing of irregularly shaped, soft foods like meat. Until now, the use of robots for food processing hasn’t progressed very much. That’s because it’s necessary to mechanize the techniques of skilled workers, and it’s hard to mechanize tasks that rely on human hands. Another problem was that the cleaning and hygiene requirements of food processing plants made it difficult to introduce robots into such an environment. Until now, very little progress had been made in that regard, but HAMDAS-R enables those requirements to be met. So we hope this robot will expand the possibilities for automating the processing of irregularly shaped, soft types of food.

Nom Nom Nom.

Link via Popular Science

Kachanoff recruited 82 men and asked them to punish an aide with various volumes of sound each time he made an error while sorting photos, some with pictures of meat, and others with neutral images. The researcher had anticipated participants who watched the aide sort meat photos would inflict more discomfort on him, but he was surprised when those pictures did not provoke aggressive behaviour.

“[W]ith the benefit of hindsight, it would make sense that our ancestors would be calm, as they would be surrounded by friends and family at meal time,” Kachanoff said in a press release.

Link via Geekosystem | Photo by Flickr user Naotake Murayama used under Creative Commons license

ESQ: There won’t be methane emissions without a digestive tract. Could this technology stop global warming?

MB: Reports have definitively shown that animal husbandry produces massive pollution, and a large percentage of our problems are caused by raising large numbers of animals for slaughter. Look at the way chickens are raised. Fish raised in captivity produce enormous quantities of waste, and there’s no good way to dispose of it. The environment is not being affected favorably; from the standpoint of preserving the environment, lab-grown meat technology certainly deserves support. And beyond climate change, this could stop famines in places like Ethiopia and Darfur, where people starve to death because they don’t have enough protein in their diet.

Link – Thanks Marty!

If the steak doesn’t cost $45,000 a pound, would you eat lab-grown meat?

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the average Dane devours 321 lbs. of meat a year. This edges out New Zealand (313 lbs. per person) for the top spot.

The United States, at 275 lbs., is fifth — also following the tiny nations of Luxembourg (312 lbs.) and Cyprus (289 lbs.) For the sake of comparison, the average citizen of the United Kingdom eats 175 lbs. of meat a year, and the typical Frenchman 222 lbs.

Link via Ace of Spades HQ | Photo: USDA

A furious argument erupted in the kitchen after the man made his daily delivery Wednesday evening but was told the restaurant didn’t immediately have the euro400 ($535) in cash to pay his bill.

The vendor then took back the meat he’d delivered — including steaks already being cooked or marinated. That still didn’t cover the bill, so he continued collecting meat in the dining room.

Police arrived at the scene after he left but said they believed no offense was committed.

Link

In the United Arab Emirates, adventurous chef Anissa Helou got a chance to taste roasted camel hump. The tender hump full of stored fat is the choicest part of the camel, and you have to buy an entire camel to get the hump. In this post, you’ll also see how to cook a whole camel at once! Link -Thanks, Hanan!

We talked to Rabbi Arnold Bienstock of Congregation Shaarey Tefilla, a Conservative Synagogue in Carmel, Indiana, and asked his opinion on the matter. “The way any religious issue comes down, in the Jewish community, is the more traditional, pious Orthodox Jews have a hard time accepting change, the Reform embrace it, and the Conservatives fight about it,” said Bienstock, with dry humor. So it will vary greatly along the various degrees of observation.

Bienstock thinks the Conservatives will be hesitant to adopt artificially raised meat, unless it’s seen as something completely different to its original form. The Rabbi compared this to two previous cases with kosher food: cheese and gelatin. Both contain animal products which may not be kosher, so specific variations have to be made for people who are strictly Orthodox. On the other hand, the Conservative movement viewed these objects as being so far changed and removed from their original source, that they don’t need to be kosher. Says Bienstock, “these elements are re-defined as not really being meat, as the substance is so incredibly transformed. So using [this technology] the Conservative movement might say it’s not really meat because it doesn’t come from an animal.”

Link | Photo: U.S. Department of Agriculture

Sauté onion, bell pepper, and that wonderful Cajun seasoning, smother alligator meat in tomato sauce. Combine finished product with white rice.

Link -via Woman’s Day

(image credit: Flickr user Paraflyer)

Image: Nicholas Lampert

Collage artist Nicolas Lampert combines the joys of lovely landscapes and mountains of meat. In an interview with ArtSlant, he wrote about the juxtapositions that he creates in his meatscapes:

AR: A lot of artists are interested in using spectacle as a prime component of their work. Whether it’s hanging a working locomotive from a crane, suspending cars in the Guggenheim rotunda, or diamonds on a skull, spectacle plays a key role. How does the idea of spectacle play into your work, and how is it different from the way other artists are using it?

NL: Spectacle is a great term because spectacles are a subversive form of entertainment. They are often unusual, humorous and disturbing and they force people to pay attention and to come to terms with the content. One piece in particular that I created “Attention Chicken” – a nine-foot tall realistic sculpture of a rotisserie chicken (uncooked of course) operates in the realm of spectacle when it is placed unannounced in the city. It doesn’t work in a galley context, but outside in the public, it plays the part of being subversive, humorous and is most certainly an unusual site for people to see. As far as how my art differs from others, it is difficult to say, because every artist has their own unique intentions.

Link via Urlesque | Interview with the Artist

There are some 40,000 known species of spiders, but every single one of them is thought to be carnivorous … except this one. The  Bagheera Kiplingi jumping spider of Central and South America is the first spider found to have an almost exclusively vegetarian diet. These spiders live and feast on the protein packed tips of the acacia tree leaves.

But to reach this leafy fare, the spider has to evade the attention of ants, which live in the hollow spines of the tree.

“But when they get hungry, the spiders head to the newer leaves, and get ready to run the ant gauntlet. And they wait for an opening – they watch the ants move around, and they watch to see that there are not any ants in the local area that they are going after.”

“And then they zip in and grab one of these Beltian bodies and then clip it off, hold it in their mouths and run away. “

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by coconutnut.

Image: Victoria Reynolds

Artist Victoria Reynolds creates paintings of raw meat, such as the above “Flight of the Reindeer”, an oil on panel from 2003. A native of Texas, she got her BFA at the University of Oklahoma and her MFA at the University of Nevada. Reynolds now lives in Los Angeles and has exhibited in the U.S. and Europe.

Link via MAKE

What better for a Labor Day cookout than a steak in the shapes of the USA? Philadelphia artist Dominic Episcopo took photographs of states that look good enough to grill. Link -via the Presurfer

The Hot Dog Hideaway Kit: it’s like Lincoln Logs, except that the pieces of made of meat, instead of wood:

What child doesn’t imagine a house made of meat during the holidays? Our bestselling Hot Dog Hideaway kit comes with enough cured deli slices and kosher dogs (Over 10 pounds!) to make a veritable McMansion of meat! Just follow the included blueprints and use the pate spackle to join it together and smooth over the rough edges. Not only will you get the complete Hot Dog Hideaway, but also a set of meat landscaping materials to make pimento loaf trees and meatball bushes.

Link via The Presurfer

Tell her if she finds SPAM to buy it at once!

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From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by notoriousnicholas.

A whole chicken. That jelly is pretty off putting.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by notoriousnicholas.

So Good blog has constructed a Meat Bracket pitting the four major conferences – Seafood, “Red” Meat (his quotes), Poultry and Pork. So far steak(1) has ousted roast beef(8), bacon(1, of course) massacred pork chops(8) and pulled pork(4) slaughtered ham(5). Oh, and buffalo(5) just barely squeaked by veal(4) in a minor upset.

You can get it on today’s round – tuna vs. shrimp and lobster vs. clams – if you hurry.

Link via Slashfood

Photo from Wikipedia user Jonathunder

"They arrived eager and early, cramming the sidewalk leading to the entrance.
"

A lot of people like to play bingo. But this one in York County, Pennsylvania is different: it’s all about meat.

Is there a more salt-of the-earth, down home, practical thing to do on a Friday night then a little simultaneous gambling, bringing home the bacon and helping out a local service club?  I think not! 

It looked like just another evening of bingo at a fire hall somewhere in York County, except the prizes differed from most games.

Meat, massive amounts of it, awaited the winner of each round. Many have heard of playing bingo for pretty baskets, but once a year in Stewartstown, they hand out juicy cuts of beef, pork, chicken and seafood.

The novelty of it draws many players, and in these lean economic times, a $12 ticket makes for a cheap gamble on the chance to win a butcher’s bonanza. For others, the occasion has simply become an annual tradition.

“It’s a cultural event,” said Emily Cooper, 28, of East Hopewell Township. “It’s part of being from southern York County, going to meat bingo.”

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by makesense.

What you’re probably asking yourself right now is, “Is that an crocheted shawl that looks like olive loaf?” and the answer is yes.  Yes it is.  Stay tuned for more of my favorite food that you can’t eat.  To see more of Lady Linoleum’s insanely cool crochet, check out monstercrochet.blogspot.com.