JOSH Ozersky King of Meats

Bacon, King of Meats! The food all men desire Perfumed by the scent, of slowly smold'ring fire May your meat be bathed in smoke of one thousand fragrant logs Created from the belly of obese and happy hogs Redolent of hickory, with a cure as sweet as sin You go places gastronomical, no beef has ever been All hail the mighty bacon! Whose scent inspires longing Whose taste sets hearts afire and empty stomachs gnawing Say naught of scrapple, naught of souse, nor such porcine pretenders Bacon along transcends its flesh, as its elixir slowly renders That quickening fat, clean and hot, which, like, Midas of old Turns everything it touches to a rare and precious gold Most precious of necessities, most beloved of all treats From China to Peru, the undisputed King of Meats.

Frank Smith Something Called Love / Hypnotizing Chickens

A rancher told me this at a wedding. If ever you need to hypnotize a chicken, hold the chicken on the ground. Be firm but gentle. Hold its head forward and, making sure you are in its eyesight, draw a straight line in the dirt. The line should be about a foot long starting at the chicken's beak. As the chicken stares at the line, it will become immobile. Hypnotized. Some chickens become hypnotized with just one line. Others need to see a few lines drawn before they zone out. Very obstinate chickens will need to be picked up and held so that they are facing the line. You'll have to walk up and down the line, while holding the chicken's head so it is staring straight down at your mark.

That'll do it, though. If you're being playful, just give the chicken a shove to wake it up. Most likely its just a diversion to give a lonely farmhand time to sharpen her blade.

Alex GilvarRy Travels in Spain: A Meat Journal

June 17, Barcelona Burgers Recollected After the sad burger I had on our layover in Brussels, I vow never to eat so poorly again, at least not while in the European Union. As my girlfriend Ashley and I touchdown in Catalonian country, a craving comes over me that only meat of the reddest proportions, fish of the freshest means, and cuisine of the finest and oldest preparation can fill. Waiting at baggage claim can be so torturous after a long journey, but there I recall that most excellent bite of food from my last trip to Barcelona. The stand out. The thing that made me come back. The McFoie. It was at Carles Abellans restaurant, Tapas 24. A foie gras burger of veal sirloin and foie gras constructed to look like a McDonalds burger, a touch of home for any American who grew up on the flat beef patty, two pickles, and dallop of ketchup. The McFoie came rare and juicy, and with an artisans

touch, too rich to be eaten too often, but with flavor so profound that I found myself dreaming of it as my baggage arrived and my girlfriends did not. June 18, El Born, 3AM Jamon Iberico After some heavy drinking with friends, we sampled the late night street fare along Passeig del Born in the Barri Gtic. A baguette sandwich with Iberian ham, the baguette rubbed with garlic and tomato, no lettuce, no cheese, no additional condiments. Simple and precise. Ashley said, Hopefully this sandwich will get you to shut up about that McFoie. Ah! And so it did! June 19, corner of Carrer de Pizarro and Ginebra Vegetarian For lunch, our friends Julian, Emily, and Oliver (their small child) take us to Jai-Ca, a classic neighborhood haunt where the locals eat standing at the bar over trays of seafood. We order a few glasses of vermouth and select some of the fine Andalusian-influenced dishes by pointing. Razor clams, chipirones (fried baby squid, lightly battered), large prawns sauted in olive oil and garlic, anchovies, cod croquets, patatas bravas, and pimientos de Padrn, my favorite small green peppers. I believe this is what is known in Spain as vegetarianism, and it was nice to try it, if only for a day. After several drinks, we retreat to our rooms for siestas. Ashleys bag arrived too, and just in time, because at lunch I had spilled a little vermouth on her last clean blouse. De nada. June 20, Lunch at the Hotel Banys Orientals Veal Carpaccio It is becoming more and more evident to me that we arent going to have enough time to relive the McFoie at Tapas 24 since tomorrow we are due in Madrid. But then we had the veal carpaccio at Seynor Parellada, inside the Hotel Banys Orientals on Carrer delArgenteria. Cold, thinly sliced strips of veal livened by a coating of olive oil and blackened capers with a touch of

sea salt. Meat doesnt get any rarer when youre eating it raw. I like to think of carpaccio as a meat salad because somehow the dish is incredibly refreshing. After lunch, we endure a long siesta and dont wake up until dinner time, still full from lunch. Oh well, McFoie, I already have a new flavor to hold me over till we meet again. Your rare cousin, Carpaccio. June 23, Madrid Dinner at Javier Bardems There is no denying it. I am hooked on veal. I dread the plane ride home without it. First the Carpaccio, now the veal steak at Bardems. The actors family owns a restaurant, and a pretty damn good one. La Bardemcilla, in the Chueca district, serves the most tender cut of veal sirloin youre likely to have in all of Madridand like Bardem, its beautiful to look at. Theyll even slice it up into little pieces, Elvis-style, if you plan to share as we did. Despite the movie posters that adorn the walls, the restaurant is by no means cheesy. Its more like eating in Javis family kitchen where a proud mother displays her sons achievements for all to see, as well as some family photos. The Bardems seem to have a good sense of humor about the whole world famous thing. And Id like to nominate the bocherones (fried anchovies) for a best supporting role in this feast. Crisp, salty, vinegary, and by no means oily. Off by the restrooms, the Bardems allow you to write on their walls with chalk, and I compose a poem about veal which I title Live Flesh in homage to my favorite Bardem film. June 27, Last day Unmovable Feast at Sobrino de Botin Predictable? Maybe. But this being our first time in Madrid, we have to go out for the cochinillo asado (roast suckling pig) at Sobrino de Botin, a major tourist trap, old Hemingway haunt, and the oldest restaurant in the world, supposedly. I always have my doubts anytime Guinness World Records is the authority on a particular claim, but seeing the oven for myself and the racks of roasted little sucklings on the wall waiting to be served, I tell Ashley with confidence: We made the right

choice, indeed. I ask the matre d for Ernest Hemingways table and I am greeted with a light chuckle. Though it was one touristy wish I wouldnt mind coming true, I let it slide. Now the roast suckling pig may seem like all out barbarism to some. At Botin, the piglet is aged a mere 21 days (from birth) and then deemed ready for serving. Thats the way theyve been doing it since 1725, and for this weary traveler, theres no reason to stop now. We begin with a salada salad so uninspired and dry that only a place that serves serious meat dishes can produce. So we take it as a good sign. Peter Lugers isnt still doing business because of their Caesar. And then, our waiter, who has been serving the cochinillo asado since before I was 21 days old, brings to our table two carefully portioned carvings of roast suckling: the belly and the haunch. The skin, a crunchy wall of saltiness that reminds me of the flavors of my childhood, a Filipino cookout at my Uncles farmhouse; the middle layer of fatchewy and delicious; and the meatmoist and tender. Ashley and I say were going to stop so that well have room for dessert, but instead, we devour each of our portions, satisfied, moved, a tad guilty, but ultimately happy.

David Rogers Two Sounds of Autumn

An autumn breeze Moves the grass to whisper And Kobe to sizzle

Jeff Simmermon Mopping Up

Alright, look: In the Australian summer of 2003 I worked as an assistant to a kangaroo shooter in the Outback. I wasn't allowed to actually operate a firearm, rendering me essentially a golden retriever with opposable thumbs. We'd hunt at night and I'd stand on the back of the truck as we drove through the bush. I'd spotlight kangaroos and he'd shoot them. Then I'd jump down off the truck and drag them up to the side where we'd quickly gut them. I'd throw the carcasses up on the truck

and repeat until nearly dawn, when we'd go back to this tin shed that was our case camp and sleep all day. We were on a one million acre ranch about six hours' drive from cell phone coverage, camping near the garbage dump. Reading a lot of Hunter S. Thompson and generally having a lot of awesome tattoo work did not prepare me for this job nearly as well as I had assumed it would. I'd just do clumsy stuff, I'd slip with the knives and bang 'em on a rock and send a shower of orange sparks out into the night. I'd slip in a pile of steaming kangaroo guts and shriek. And every time, I'd hear Craig mutter "bloody useless, bloody useless," under his breath. You hear that two or three hundred times, it starts to get to you. So one night, we're driving back to the camp with a truck full of kangaroo meat and the truck busted a flat tire. I saw this as an opportunity to prove myself a little. "Aw, man, I got this," I said, and I jumped down off the truck and got under it. I started to jack it up off the hard-baked dirt but right as it was at the top it slips off of the jack and just thuds down onto its wheels above me, hard, with a tremendous creaking thud. All that meat and truck and everything in it fell down, and it scared me, bad. This cold stuff started dripping onto the back of my neck and I thought "oh God, there's a coolant leak or something now, too." It turned out to be okay. That cool, viscous drip was just blood oozing out of a kangaroo's severed neck stump. So I did what anyone in my position would have done: I leapt to my feet and issued a series of high-pitched, girlish squeals. Craig was just standing there looking at me. He was covered in blood and dirt. So was I, so was everything else. He's one of those fat guys who's also muscular and made out of bulletriddled leather and his ears have callouses on them. Craig just looks at me and says "Thought you knew how to change a tire, mate."

"I do, in America, in a driveway, in the daytime. Just give me a second, I can take care of myself here," I replied. He spat, sighing. "What you know about taking care of yourself I could write on my cock with a mop," he said. Then he rolled under the truck and fixed the flat with one hand while rolling a pack of cigarettes with the other. That was just him, he had something for everything. He could handle every little situation and just verbally eviscerate you and be over it in ten minutes. I'd just fume for hours. I'd only brought one pair of pants with me, and they were so soaked with animal blood that they were sort of like this wearable scab that I would pull on and off. They actually drew flies, which worked well for me. Otherwise, the flies would try to drink from my lips and eyes while I was sleeping. I kept the pants in the corner of my room and the flies would generally sort of bunch over there. I sweated myself awake at about noon one day. It was about 110 outside and we were sleeping in a tin shed without the benefit of shade. I looked into the corner of the room, and my pants were gone. This was troubling. Because like I said before, it was my only pair. I looked around the room, and then I looked under my bed. A six-foot long lizard was hunkered under my bed, vigorously gnawing at my pants. They're called racehorse goanna, a type of monitor lizard. They're scavengers and they crawl around the Outback and eat any old dead thing they can find. My pants were so soaked with blood that it thought they were meat. Racehorse goannas are dangerously stupid. Whenever they're frightened, they try to climb up the nearest tall thing, which, in an Outback kind of a situation, is usually you. Their claws will just lacerate your flesh, and because these lizards don't exactly wash up after they eat, the little bits of rotten carrion on their claws will drag through the wounds and make them go septic really fast. We'd have had to drive six hours to even call 911.

So I'm whipping books at this thing to run it off. My pants represented a score for this thing, I guess, because it ran for the door and dragged my pants along with it. The only way to look worse to Craig than I already did would be to report to work that night without any pants on and explain that I had allowed a giant lizard to steal them. Now I'm whipping books like Discs of Tron and I eventually scored one right in its ribcage. It spat my pants out and ran off. I was really looking forward to bragging a little later and saying "yeah, I totally ran off a giant lizard. It was no big deal." Just as I am drifting back to sleep the door to my room kicks in, and Craig's standing there, silhouetted in the doorway. He's wearing nothing but a pair of squalid bloodstained Ugg boots and a tiny little black pair of undies that Australians call "budgie smugglers." He's fuming, and pointing at me, and all I could think to say was "Whoa, man. Looks like that lizard ran off with your pants, too. I managed to keep mine." He yells "YOU KNEW, YOU FUCKING KNEW ABOUT THIS AND YOU DID NOTHING!!" "Knew about what?" I asked. "COME HERE" he shouts, and drags me across the concrete porch to our camp kitchen. Our cooler is upside down and all our eggs are smashed on the floor and the milk is spilled all in it and there's lizard footprints all through the whole mess, where it had licked up the eggs and the milks and danced around making a sort of french toast batter on the floor and then ran off. Craig says "Right, LISTEN. Next time you see one of these things, you run it off the property properly, alright? It's not just about you and your little pants, it's about all of us, okay? Think about someone other than yourself!" "Listen, man," I replied. "The next time a giant lizard comes around and tries to eat my pants, I'll observe the protocol that you've just laid out. But you cannot sit here and tell me that

this is like a normal thing that I'm supposed to know about. Do I sound like I know about these kinds of things?" I continued, heating up, "I'm not like you, man, I didn't grow up killing kangaroos or swimming with sharks or killing sharks by punching them or something." "Ah, sharks are nothing, mate, if you don't want to fuck with a shark, you just stay out of the bloody ocean. They're not like bears or something." "What," I said. "They're not like bears, mate." "Bears," I said. "Let's ... pull it back a little." "Well," Craig says, "I've seen a fair few nature television programs in my day, and it's my understanding that bears can swim, they can run, they can climb. They can do everything apart from fly. If a bear decides it wants to eat you, you're pretty well fucked!" "That's a way of looking at it," I said, "but my parents have seen bears while hiking plenty of times, and I've camped and they've come around my campsite. If you know what to do with your food, they're not going to bother you." He stops mopping the floor and leans forward on the mop handle. " You were camping and bears came round your campsite? What did you do?" "Well, we just laid low and waited, and we'd already packed all our food deep into the car. So it sniffed around for a while and eventually got bored and left." Craig just looked at me, wide-eyed, and says "Ah mate, I'd have been so bloody scared."

Frank Smith A Simple Recipe for Cooking a Steak

Start with an M-class planet. Place it about ninety-two million miles from a yellow dwarf star. Toss in a few other planets nearby that aren't suitable for life but do make pleasant decorations. Fill your M-class planet with water (H2O), carbon dioxide (CO2), oxygen (O2), subscription cable channels (HBO), and let it simmer. Allow the first one-celled life forms to split in half and begin to create multi-cellular life forms. Let them splash around in plenty of primordial aquatic muck. After a few billion years, a species of footed fish creatures will take their first steps onto land. Resist the urge to squish them. Over the next couple of hundred million years, these be-footed fish will continue on their trek across the soil shell of your Mclass planet. They will evolve and change as they travel in order to adapt to their new environment. One very special creature will grow nipples and then move these nipples to a bag under its guts that it will fill with milk. It will munch on grass and straw and hay or (often) be force fed corn. Name it a cow. Take a hominid, make it walk and become human. Introduce it to a cow. Watch the humans develop language skills that they put to good use. Let them brand cows with symbols to let other humans know who owns what cow and let them also begin to name certain types of cows based on where they were raised: names like the Belgian Blue, Danish Red, Eastern Finncattle, Brahman, Angus, Polish Red, Latvian Brown, Alentejana, Bel Pied, Norwegian Red, Istoben, American White Park, Eastern Finncattle, Galloway, Georgian Mountain, Arouquesa, and Longhorn.

Once all of the different kinds of beef cattle have names, find a butcher. Watch him or her begin to diagram and chop them up into different cuts of meat: a flank steak from the underside of a cow, which isn't as tender as a rib eye, which is pretty tender and maybe the best cut, according to some (well get to these picky fellers in just sec), a round steak (from the rump!), a sirloin (all about the hip!); a flat-iron (shoulder blade!), a filet mignon, (which some people think is too soft to be a good steak), so just give them a nice 24-ounce rib eye. When you've got your cut, just grill it for about five minutes on each side in a medium-heat cast-iron pan. Bon appetit!

Audrey Ference Profiles in Meat-Eating: Unlikely Carnivores

On a planet like ours, where the food chain is shaped more like a pyramidfat at the bottom with plankton, crabgrass, arugula, algae, sunflowers, and bananas; dwindling at the top to one or two lonely wolves or lions or peopleits easy to think you can tell by looking who the meat eaters are. Theyre the ones with the sharp teeth, bloody talons, venom sacs, or cattle stunners. But the same way that one runs across tiny women who can put away huge, bloody steaks, evolution in its massive diversity of genetic mutation has snuck in some unlikely-looking candidates for consuming flesh. Here, then, carniphages, meet some of your brethren from the odd corners of animalia, plantae, and fungi. Cordyceps Do not type cordycepts into YouTube. I always say that to people and they do it anyway. What you will see is a video of an innocent caterpillar, wandering along, thinking about leaves, until it stutters, stumbles, and a mushroom erupts out of its brain. Cordyceps is, almost incomprehensibly, a parasitic fungus. It infects its insect host, controls its little ant-y brain, driving it to find just the right spot for the cordyceps to put down mycelial roots and expand. As soon as it is satisfied, it eats the bug from the inside, breaking down the tissue to feed its fruiting body. Starfish Starfish, to me, are hard to picture as meateaters. How could they hunt? How do those things even move, except getting tossed around by currents or flung by kids on the

beach? Not so! Starfish are violent eaters who vomit up the outer of two stomachs, enveloping whole and alive whatever prey they find, to be digested, still mostly alive, in the second, nonthrow-up-able stomach, and finally excreted through a hole somewhere topside. This expandable, removable stomach-mouth allows them to eat prey that is huge, in relation to their bodies, including oysters, clams, small fish (!), and even other starfish (!!). Some starfishor sea stars, since theyre not really fish at all, but members of the appropriately celestial-sounding class asteroideacan force their expelled stomachs into the shells of clams and mussels, eating them from the inside out. Shepards Purse (Capsella bursa-pastoris) Sure, everyone expects it from the Venus flytrap or pitcher plantsome lush tropical glistening in some rainforest somewhere, creepy plant teeth in full display. But Shepards Purse? C. bursa-pastoris is one of the junk plants growing up out of the sidewalk everywhere. Youve seen it, even if youve never noticed it. Your dog, if you have a dog, has undoubtedly peed on it. Its got dandelion-looking leaves at the bottom, a long stalk, and is continually in flower. Probably the most noticeable part of it is the spirals of heart-shaped seedpods that stick out from the stem. They look kind of like an adorable heart ladder for little bugs. Very foolish, delicious little bugs. The seeds are covered in a sticky goo. This goo, called myxospermy, attracts, traps, and digests insects, providing nutrients for its future offspring, which will more than likely have to make do with whatever garbagy soil it can find in the sidewalk cracks. Science still quibbles over whether the bug trapping is a happy accident or whether the Shepards Purse is doing it on purpose, but you and I know, friend. Lets not fool ourselves. Look down sometimes and youll see them, eyeing you, hungry for meat.

Butterfly FLESH EATING BUTTERFLY! What? Yes! Well, technically its a flesheating caterpillar, but its all part of the lifecycle for Feniseca tarquinius, a.k.a. the Harvester. No innocent little leaf muncher, the Harvester butterfly lays her eggs among woolly aphid colonies to provide a ready meal for her meat-hungry hatchlings. Lest you think a chilling serial killer name like The Harvester is wasted on some dumb caterpillar, know this: after feasting on aphids, f. tarquinius will make like Buffalo Bill and wear the bodies of its victims, attaching the aphid husks with caterpillar silk to fool the ants that would be pissed that someone ate all of their aphids. The Harvester is the only carnivorous caterpillar in North America, so the aphids never even see it coming. Cat Yes, yes, everyone knows cats eat meat. But cats are members of a relatively exclusive biological club: the obligate carnivores. Cats not only do eat meat, they must eat meat. Theres a reason your vegan roommates vegan cat looks like its starving: it is. Cats lack the ability to digest most plant foods. Theyre joined by crocodiles, polar bears, jungle cats, sharks, and birds of prey. Mean animals, scary red-in-tooth-and-claw predators, I-think-I-just-heard-something-snapping-in-thebrush-shark-fin-ominous-shadow-creeping-across-the-field nightmare creatures. Cats are in the category of food chaintopping hunters that literally have to kill to live. And they seem to enjoy killing something in the slowest, most painful possible way. Next time you open up that can of chicken-in-gravy-style Fancy Feast, think about those eyes watching you work open the poptop. They are not the eyes of mans best friend. You are

being watched by the cool shark/crocodile/jaguar/raptor gaze of a creature who doesnt just have to eat other animals, but truly enjoys it. Maybe thats why we get along?

Pitchaya Sudbanthad Judas Goat (An Excerpt)

Walter had only been driving a meatpacking truck for a year when his draft number came up. He did basic training at a small fort in the Midwest before getting sent to Pleiku, where he then drove a gun truck in convoys that routed through the An Khe Pass. He called his truck Moses and outfitted it with armor plates and thick windshield glass that tinted the world outside green. The convoys climbed like slow centipedes along the mountain highway. The heat rarely let up, and the ambushes came often. When they did, Walter did his best to keep moving ahead. The gunners opened up with their mounted 50 cals and he felt the entire truck rattle with each shot. Enemies no older than he was burst into ribbons of flesh a few yards away. Every blade of elephant grass by the side of the road swayed suspiciously. Mortar shells landed on whom they may. No matter what, Walter kept his foot on the pedal. He had the reputation of being a capable driver and mechanic. His crew trusted him. They admired his guts behind the wheel. They often showed him pictures of their girlfriends and recent wives back at home, mostly to brag, but seeing the photos always gave Walter a rush of nerves. If they asked him if he was worried, he lied. Nobody had to know he woke up in the middle of the night from nightmares he couldnt remember. Or that he wished he had run off to Canada. He learned to keep what he felt to himself, one, because he was scared of anyone thinking less of him, and, two, because if it got out that he expected to drive his crew to the end of their world, it would actually kill them all.

Anne Yoder Futurist Meats

F. T. Marinetti, father of Futurism and author of the Futurist Manifesto, is far less known for his role in leading the Futurist food movement meant to revolutionize Italian cuisine. In the early 1930s, during a period of economic pitfalls and panic not unlike our own, Marinetti proposed altering the staples of the Italian diet to help revive the sluggish economy and alleviate the nations worries. He campaigned against pasta and for an aesthetic way of eating that utilized scientific machines like ultraviolet lamps and autoclaves in the kitchen. Futurist cooking was an antidote to this panic that is: optimism at the table. The Futurists opened a restaurant in Turin dedicated to serving their new cuisine. The Holy Palate was the site of the first Futurist dinner party, one of many conceptual dinners that

served Futurist recipes in accordance with their creed. Food sculptures were consumed without knife and fork; each dish was preceded by a perfume circulated by electric fans. Music was limited to intervals between dishes, except when it was added to enhance a specific dish. At the Futurist Aerodinner in Chivari, the menu consisted of appropriately aero-themed dishes like Roars of Ascent, Candied Atmospheric Electricities, and Ox in the Cockpit (made of mysterious meatballs laid atop bread airplanes). The Futurists also proposed a number of theme dinners for interested parties and unlikely occasions, which were collected in the Futurist Cookbook. The Heroic Winter Dinner, a banquet conceived for a group of soldiers about to hit the battlefields, featured the dish Raw Meat Torn by Trumpet Blasts, whose preparation included passing electrical currents through cubes of beef and marinating the beef in a mixture of liquors. Each mouthful was to be chewed for a minute and followed by a trumpet blast. A Simultaneous Dinner offered dishes with dual functions, like a thermos-bottle fountain pen filled with hot chocolate, so that businessmen could continue their activities while dining. As weve moved from the airplane to the internet as the epicenter of advance, and ideas travel around the world in a matter of seconds, its time again to revolutionize cuisine for the twenty-first century. While computer chips shrink in size and speeds of transmission increase, we should strive to find ways to teleport our bodies and reduce ourselves to microscopic sizes. In the interval since Marinetti first wrote his Manifesto of Futurist Cooking, his unwavering optimism in technological advances, exoticism, and speed has been tarnished, in part, by carbon footprints, among other things. Perhaps theres a way to revive the Futurists wonderment with speed, novelty, and artfulness in eating economically. In this spirit, I propose a series of new Futurist-themed dinners, incorporating some vintage Futurist recipes and also creating some anew.

Electric Transmissions Dinner All meats will be cooked with a current, while messages are transferred through wires and projected onto a screen. The courses will include: The Ben Franklin An electric eel kite served with rice noodles tossed in peanut sauce, set at the bottom of the eel. The rice noodles delicately wind around the plate to the eels mouth, where a small key is placed. Electroconvulsive Therapy Cow brains will be served in a lemon sauce with capers. Soak the brains in vinegar first to keep them supple and white. Be Still My Beating Heart A current is passed through veal hearts set in a row so that they contract as if theyre alive. Garnish with slice of beets, and coat all in a beet-juice gravy.

The Abibi Special Another Futurist classic, representing Zanzibar. Half a coconut is filled with chocolate and placed on a bed of finely chopped meat. All is steeped in Jamaican rum. The Cannibals Dinner Following courses include: Placenta Stew A chopped human placenta sauteed and served in a traditional ragout Breast Milk Shake A frosty mix of gelato and chilled breast milk, flavored with strawberry rhubarb or Tang. The Khemer Rouge A plate of browned veal hearts to be eaten with ones hands. Pickled Pigs Feet Serve the pigs feet atop a steaming bowl of Hoppin John AntiVirile Another Futurist classic, where slices of boiled calfs tongue are arranged lengthwise on a plate, and two rows of roastedspit prawns are placed on top. Place the body of a shelled lobster between the rows of prawns. At the tail end of the lobster, rest three halves of hard-boiled eggs, cut lengthwise, with the yellow resting on the slices of tongue. Six cockscombs should be laid at the front, and along with two rows of little cylinders, composed of lemon wheel, grape slices, and a slice of truffle.

Cranky demeattis On Hot Dogs

Technically, Im not allowed to eat hot dogs. Not even the good ones with the natural casings that get all crispy when you grill them. Of course I do, but then Im ashamed. The butcher shop I work at is as old as I am; my boss is my father. Its not what Id planned on doing, but Im not much of a planner. Meat, Italian foodits what happened to me when I wasnt looking. The way you just picked up Photoshop or carpentry. One day someone asked you to do it, and you did. Of course, when your father is a butcher, meat has a soft, permanent place in your heart. I took pate de foie gras to lunch in kindergarten. I ate carpaccio in middle school. When you had chicken cutlets for dinner, I had veal. When you ate hamburgers, I ate steak. School lunches were prosciutto di Parma, homemade soppressata, fried cutlets on Italian bread.

No bologna. No ham and cheese. I did eat a lot of Nutella and peanut butter, but that belongs to a different Italian-American story: The one with grape vines in the back yard and sauce on Sundays. Meat was as present in my life as Kraft Macaroni and Cheese was in yours, and it wasnt always the classy stuff. It was pigs feet and pig skin and tripe and cows lips, too. (Please, dont ever eat cows lips.) But it was always honest meat. Honest because it never pretended to be better than it was, never hid or masqueraded. Not like a hot dog. We all know about hot dogs. When I got to college, I dabbled in vegetarianism. There was no meat in the cheap restaurants or school cafeterias that had the simplicity of the food Id grown up with, so I just gave it up. Partial list of unworthy foods: hamburgers that arrived frozen in a box, chicken that was breaded off-site, cold-cuts, ground poultry of every description, sausage. Sausage of all things, should be honest. This is what goes into good sausage: pork shoulder, salt, and pepper. Its ground and mixed and stuffed and sold. It smells sweet and feels firm and dry. The flaccid, damp sausage you buy in the supermarket? Well, lets say theres a reason it comes in all kinds of flavors. Theres a reason you wouldnt want to see it being made. But, like all food, if you dont want to see it being made, dont eat it. If you dont want to know what part of the cow it comes from, dont eat it. If it was ground in a different state or country, dont eat it. If you think you have to wash it before you cook it, you probably shouldnt eat it. When I buy meat, I want to see a manwho is neither handsome nor delicatetake a beef hip, hoist it up onto his shoulders, and come back in three minutes with a sirloin steak. Im in the business, as they say: I know what lies get told. And heres the truth: if you cant see meat being cut where you buy it, you might as well wipe it across the seats of the G train. Im not saying theres lye in frozen hamburgers or that su-

permarket meat is 90 days old. But who would tell you if it was? The machine that mechanically separates poultry cant. Neither can the teenager tossing meat into the 200lb capacity grinder at Pathmark. Nor can the machine that emulsifies and extrudes the hot dogs. By the way, I really do love hot dogs. Ketchup, mustard, relish, Wonder Bread bun. But then, maybe your parents are republicans, so maybe you understand.

Amal Aboulhosn The Real Mioukhiyeh (An Excerpt)

Mom adds lemon juice directly to the mloukhiyeh immediately after putting it into the pan. She says that this is the most important thing. The lemon juice prevents the leaves from losing their texture in the cooking process, keeping them fresh and intact. Mom says that if you forget the lemon juice, your leaves bi-makhthu. In almost-direct translation, this means they will run like snot. She says she likes to wait until the very end to add the meat to the dish. Especially the chicken, she says, because you want it to stay white. The mloukhiyeh leaves will darken the chickens color. Lets set some aside before adding the meat, you suggest. What do you mean? Its just that I want Lydia to try some, but shes a vegetarian. So? No, I just want her to be able to try some. You cant make it without meat. Her voice does not show the slightest hint of sarcasm or bitterness. Her tone is purely informational. But we can just take some out before we put the meat in, right? But we havent put the meat in yet. I know. Lydia doesnt eat meat. I just want her to try some mloukhiyeh. But that, she says, pointing to the empty bowl you have pulled from the cupboard, is not mloukhiyeh. I mean, I know its not exactly the same thing, but she can still have some mloukhiyeh without the meat.

There isnt mloukhiyeh without the meat. You need a minute to replay this conversation in your head. Sometimes its necessary to review and think carefully about the words you use in your less-fluent language. This time, though, it was all there. But Lydia can just taste some now. But we didnt put the meat in. Nothing has been lost in translation. Both you and your mother are verbalizing exactly that which you believe to be true. You are confused because you have never known this woman to not want to feed others and give everything there is to share about food. You are confused because you believe recipes are flexible. You cut recipes out of magazines and make your own version of them. You mix one bloggers ingredients into anothers process. You modify your existing experiments based on the comments and opinions of complete strangers in an online forum. Like her, you rarely measure anything. She watches you take a ladle and set aside a small bowl of

meatless mloukhiyeh. It will not taste like anything is missing to Lydia, who will enjoy it over rice, with the vinegar-onion garnish and the toasted pita topping. But when you three are sitting around the table with your bowls in your hands, youll listen while your mom expounds for your roommate about what she has in front of her. She gestures to Lydias bowl. This is not the real mloukhiyeh, she begins.
Mloukhiyeh 1 whole chicken 1-2 lbs. meat (top sirloin steak) 3 lbs. dried mloukhiyeh 2 onions, diced 1 bunch cilantro, chopped 5-6 cloves of garlic 2 lemons, juiced cup white vinegar 3-4 round loaves pita bread 1 tsp. all-spice 1 tsp. cardamom 1 cinnamon stick 3 cups white rice Salt, to taste Remove stems from mloukhiyeh leaves. Wash leaves thoroughly and leave to soak overnight. Clean a whole chicken with cold water. Cook it with all spice, cardamom, salt, and a cinnamon stick. Debone the cooked chicken. Save the broth in a separate bowl. Cook the steak in the same way, and save the broth in a separate bowl. Set aside onion. Add remaining onion and garlic to simmer over olive oil in a large pot. Once onions are golden, add cilantro. After multiple rinses, drain the mloukhiyeh well until all water is removed, and add it to the pan. The trick is to add the lemon juice immediately over the mloukhiyeh leaves. Let cook for 8-10 minutes. Add the broth of the chicken and the meat until it covers the mixture. Let cook on medium heat for at least two hours. Add more broth as necessary. Add chicken and meat 30 minutes before removing pot from heat. Cook rice. Garnish: Place remaining onions in a bowl. Add a dash of salt. Add vinegar and cup cold water. Serve over mloukhiyeh. Toast pita bread in the oven until light brown. Serve in a bowl in this optimal order, from bottom to top: rice, mloukhiyeh, onion garnish, pita chips.

All he wanted was meat.

Jeffrey Rotter No China Suckling (An excerpt from a novel)

It was too early for the inelegant fact of a hog truck. Too early in the day and too late for us, two decent people about to die. The morning hadnt added up to much yet. Vacant streets and little warmth. Light that was crazed at the edges like fine glass. It would be easy enough to smash Brooklyn back into night, and a mercy. Sylvia laid a sleepy head on my back, yawned into my spine. Id slept badly; she hadnt slept at all. Sylvia never could sleep before a road trip. And imminent death has a tendency to give you insomnia. Weekdays I delivered meat for Hand & Sons, a high-end butcher. I drove a white Chevy van with a Greenpoint address stenciled on the door. Our clients were New York Citys most conscientious restaurants. We stocked them with a new kind of flesh: grass-fed, farm-raised, well-adjusted, a Fisher-Price farm flayed, filleted, and vacuum-packed. That Saturday morning Hand & Sons was sending me on a special assignment. We sourced our pork from a Catskills farmer named Cecil Mays. The owners wanted Mays to start raising a heritage hog called Caloosahatchee Red. Only one breeder in the States had bred them, and he operated out of Georgia. My job was to transport four piglets back to Cecils farm, a six-hundred-mile circuit, in three days. My girlfriend, Sylvia, was along for the ride. My boss, Ben, had given us a map, gas money, and a cryptic word of warning: Those piglets should be no trouble. Just keep your distance from Mommy. I climbed into the cab and turned the key expecting failure, but the truck hummed like a Lexus. Syl ground her back against the wood beads of the seat cover. She moaned and clutched my knee. The expressway was empty, so was the bridge. Over the narrows Staten Island looked like a colonized moon. We sped past makeshift duplexes and kills that gleamed with spent chemicals. We didnt speak until wed entered the seedy marshlands of New Jersey. I predicted funWe should do this

more often, I said. Get out of the city. Sylvia remained neutral, her way. Privately we both knew this journey was no cause for celebration. Every event was the last of its kind. The last swim, the last fuck. This might be our final road trip. I saw the states arrange themselves like the Five Stages of Grief, a Kbler-Ross of geography. New Jersey and Delaware (denial), Maryland (anger), Virginia and North Carolina (bargaining), South Carolina (depression), Georgia (acceptance). Sylvia took the wheel somewhere around Richmond. I arranged the atlas on my lap and closed my eyes. I felt big in a big truck. I knew this sensation well, machinery confirming my own physical presence. Im a large man. In high school I had the physique of a linebacker and a mind that could not give a shit about competition. For a husky dude I carried myself well, but at forty Id begun to widen. I ate. I drank. My gut flopped over the seat belt. Youd make an excellent pig, said Sylvia. She squeezed my belly, moved her hand farther down. I gave my most lascivious oink. Sylvia, just shy of five feet but sturdy, busty, bigbottomed, could never be diminished by her surroundings. She made the truck look like a go-cart. She knocked the stick into gear with the heel of her hand and demolished I-95. Two fingers at twelve oclock, she wove through traffic as if it didnt exist. I packed a pipe and dug a Bic from under the seat. The cab filled with sticky smoke and we got high on one anothers breath, talking fast about nothing Ill ever remember. I do recall George Jones in the cassette player. That voice that sounds as if its being drawn from the lungs by a hook, like some Egyptian method of embalming. We gassed up at Navajo Joes, a roadside attraction built when there was still fun to be found in Native American genocide. For sale were authentic tommyhawks, saltwater taffy scalps, and kachina dolls of every U.S. president. The centerpiece was

a Navajo colossus made of molded cement. For a fee you could climb atop its feathered headdress to look out over South Carolinas fallow tobacco fields and shuttered textile mills. The view made you wonder who lost. Colley Farms, Id been told, was the only breeder to raise Caloosahatchies in captivity. Theyre supposedly the purest of the Old World hogs, descendants of runaways from Ponce de Leons own stocks. We reached the observation deck. Joes cement plumage bristled with exposed rebar and our feet stuck to the floor. The air was thick with urine and sno-cone syrup. Sylvia stood well back from the edge. I leaned over and puked coffee into the Indians ear. The pig farm lay just outside of Athens, Georgia. Id grown up about two hours east of here, in Columbia, South Carolina. People sometimes wonder why I left the sunny South for the frozen North. Those people have never sat inside a parked truck in Georgia on July 15. Even with both windows down the cab felt like a kiln. Sylvia called out rural routes and the names of gravel roads while I tried to match cartography with the capillary shape of the country. Ah, the arcana of rural life who would ever call this shit charming? Would it be too much trouble to throw up a fucking street sign? At the entrance to Colleys Farm I flubbed the clutch and kicked up a cloud of red dust. The man who rolled aside the gate looked none too pleased. Steve Colley was my height but stouter. His sideburns flared out in tufts on either side of his chin, a style we associate with wild boars and early vice presidents. He wore a billed cap with the word Porker printed on it, dirty work pants and a pristine pocket tee. He removed a glove to take my hand, looked Sylvia up and down but did not shake hers. Later shed refer to his behavior as a pre-rape scan, but Im sure the guy had just never seen anyone like Sylvia before. That Cecils truck? He laughed and I was relieved to see that the mans mouth was capable of it. Cecil Mays was legendary in New York locavore circles, but I was surprised that these

two were on a first-name basis. Sure, I know him, said Colley. Hog men socialize. I sat with Mays at the Porcine Society Dinner in Tampa last fall. Youre friends? No. Cecil Mays is a cocksucker. Hes practically put the rest of us out of business by spreading all kinds of malicious crap. He says I use growth hormones. Said another guy was crossbreeding with Yorkshires. Nasty, nasty stuff. At the end of the dirt drive stood a compact white home with matching smokehouse. I saw what had made Colley laugh. His own truck was a spotless Jeep Grand Cherokee. Sylvia lagged behind, frozen in an attitude of listening. The sounds must have been strange to her urban ears, the loud legs of insects, distant semis. I called her name and she ran to me as if she were being pursued. The transistor radio on Colleys kitchen counter played talk radio. I recognized the mild tones of neuroscience. They were talking about our condition, the Sixtyeights, those of us marked for death. Colley scooped Pico from a can and brought a pair of folding chairs from an adjoining office. He studied us for a minute and seemed satisfied that he had us figured out, as if we were a very easy math problem. What line of work are you in? he asked Sylvia, smirking. Nothing. No line. Ah. He took three mugs from the cabinet. A woman of leisure. Sylvia tugged up the sleeve of her t-shirt to show Colley her brown pockmark, the only physical trace of our vaccinations. He turned back to the coffeemaker and goddamned the government. As he poured, the farmer apologized in advance for what he was about to say: I know the last thing yall need is a lecture. But you know this whole Sixtyeight debacle is about a government that dont govern close to the people.

Theres nothing to prove this was the government, I said. True, said Colley. But that adjuvantor whatever they call itit was approved by the FDA. This was not in dispute. I refused milk. Sylvia accepted sugar. Okay, but that could be a lack of oversight, I said. Not some kind of crackpot conspiracy. Couldve been the pharmaceutical company, too. Well, thats my point. He squeezed his fat knees between us, sipped loudly. If Washington didnt force vaccines on everybody, we wouldnt have these problems. Youre a true believer. Sylvia toasted him. Colley laughed. Yeah, I guess I am. But Im not one of those Libertarians who dresses up like Paul Revere or some shit. My thing is just give me the basic package: keep the bad guys out and find me a habitable planet when we finish frying this one. At least you believe in science. Sylvia was warming up to him. Hell, Im not an idiot, he said. We have scientists for a reason: they know shit I dont. Besides whats a Libertarian without Darwin? Colley said he ran his hog farm like an experiment in laissez-faire agriculture. No subsidies, no pens, no feed, and no vaccines. Free-range as ideology. He let the animals run free, forage instead of eat slop. They were free to exchange ideas, kill one another, press the weaker breeds into corners. Hey, Im sorry, he said, cutting himself off. This doesnt do shit for you, all this talk. There are no politics in the graveyard, said Sylvia, and I wondered if this was a famous quote or if shed made it up. I also wondered if it was true. A coffin has to be the ultimate conservative gestureindividualism in perpetuity. A body left to medicineyou cant get any more liberal than that. The mass gravea monument to extremes at either end. The graveyard is nothing but politics.

The radio in Colleys kitchen whispered to us about the transcendent mind, the body as construct, but from outside came a decidedly physical sound. It was a mournful cry with a bludgeon at the end. Colley shook his head. That, friends, is the sound of theory running smack into reality. He swept aside the caf curtains above the sink and pointed out a ruddy blob in the distance. Meet Leonor, said Colley. The only captive Caloosahatchee Red in modern memory. Shes the mama of those pups youre here to fetch. He plucked a photo from the fridge so we could get a better look. A razorback sow stood beside, and dwarfed, a huge propane tank. The animal was spined all over like a sea urchin, the haunches were caked in red clay. Jutting from the corners of its mouth were gnarled teeth the size of powderhorns. One of the only breeds where the gals get tusks, said Colley. Last summer two hunting buddies called him from Miami. They were on the trail of a true hogzillanot some runaway from a factory farm but a primordial boar. He rented a U-haul, packed a bear snare and tranquilizer gun. For three weeks Colley and his pals blew around on a swampboat and waded through the Florida muck. They finally cornered their prey at the end of a dirt road as she rooted around in the entrails of deer. In accordance with Colley Farms policy, Leonor was set loose among the rest of the stock. But not for long. That monster butchered more pork in a week than Jimmie Dean does all year. Colley was forced to build a pen for the newcomer, and the sad irony was not lost on him: the highest expression of his Libertarian principlesthe freest hog in all the world, and Leonor was shitting on his whole utopian experiment. Even worse, that bitch was pregnant. It was starting to look like Alien around here. The good news was that Leonor was alone in the yard. We needed to capture the piglets when the sow wasnt looking. Colley grabbed a rifle and a wad of canvas. He led us behind the smokehouse where he kept a four-wheel ATV. Sylvia and I perched

on the back while he rumbled over broken clay and burnt grass. When we reached a stand of pecan trees he dismounted and we chased him into the wood. We splashed down a milky red creek and Colley pointed out hoof marks in the clay bank. Broken knobs of yam were strewn about. He sprinted uphill and ducked under the trees, crunching last years pecans, until we reached a clearing. There they were, a knot of pink pups butting a plastic tub around in the dirt. They were adorable, no larger than terriers. He unrolled the bundle, a duffel bag, and bagged themone, two, three, fouruntil the canvas strained with piglets. Then we heard it again, that mournful cryexcept this time it was much louder. Leonor charged up the bank of the creek and stopped about fifteen feet away. Colley handed me the canvas bag and Leonor angled toward me. The farmer dropped to one knee and raised the rifle. I couldnt believe anything could pierce that cracklin armor, but this was a real gun. Id seen the same model on National Geographic, the kind that could stop a charging rhino. I looked around for Sylvia, but she was gone. The dart struck Leonor inches below her left ear. The feathered flight hung there like an earring. Her small eyes softened but didnt let me go. I set the bag on the ground and stepped backwards, felt a whiteness behind my face, tried not to faint. Leonor pivoted on her front hooves, a sideways hop put me squarely between her tusks. She dug her rear legs dug in to charge. But with her first steps the front legs buckled and her tusks plowed the dirt. We found Sylvia perched on the ATV, knees drawn up to her forehead, hair draping her bare calves. I tried to contain the bag of piglets on my lap, but it wasnt easy. Colley said I should sing to them, but it was Sylvia who started to hum and then softly croon. George Jones again. He Stopped Loving Her Today. The saddest love song ever written. When the piglets relaxed, she shouted over the motor: Well have to take Leonor, too. Oh, no, said Colley. Too dangerous.

We cant just separate her from the babies like that, said Sylvia. Besides, you said yourself, shes shitting all over your pig utopia. We arrived at the smokehouse. Colley killed the motor but didnt move. He was laughing. Whats so funny? I said. Im just picturing the look on Cecils face when he opens the back of his truck. Wed just edged onto the Interstate when something struck us from behind. I flipped on the blinkers, slowed, and eased onto the shoulder, but in the rearview mirror I saw only empty highway. Backfire, I guessed. Sylvia looked up at me, unconvinced. The piglets, nestled on her lap, seemed to share her suspicion. Colley had recommended we carry them in the cab. Ive seen sows do terrible things to their young. A mile or so later it happened again: a phantom collision from behind. This time the piglets were visibly worried. One of them actually stood up and reached for the steering wheel, which I thought was weird. Then I heard a familiar sound from the rear of the vehicle: the sadness, the sadness about death and the cry of the one who causes it. The whole cab trembled. I swerved onto the shoulder and got out. The pen was dark, but when I shaded my eyes I saw the swaying bulk of the animal. She looked like a large pink mental patient, a lobotomized hulk stripped of his hospital gown. The bars shone with dark liquid. The animal slammed against the slats. Nails shrieked out of the boards. She struck again and the wood snapped. Her damp snout glistened in the streetlight. I heard her back up. Another blow like that and shed be free. Leonor dragged her hooves along the steel floor. The noise was like ice on metal, an old-fashioned aluminum ice cube tray. When I got back behind the wheel, the piglets had buried their faces under Sylvias bosom. What are we going to do? she asked.

Keep driving. Shes bound to wear herself out eventually. Near the South Carolina line, we hit a straightaway and Leonor seemed to relax. Then without warning the rear window shattered, I felt hot breath on my neck and a tusk dug into Sylvias headrest. I braked hard and the truck spun onto the median. The truck rocked back and forth in the grass. Two wheels left the ground. Leonor was trying to capsize us. Sylvia stuffed the piglets into the canvas bag and we jumped ship. We stood back from the truck and watched the wood splinter. I wasnt worried about the pigs anymore. I was thinking of Sylvia. I needed to get her out of here, needed to protect her. I had done a terrible thing bringing her here. She pumped my hand and I looked at her face: she was grinning. She kissed my shoulder. Her expression told me how I ought to feel: amazed, grateful. Leonor handled the truck like a cradle, the chassis cried. She was going to demolish the vehicle. She was going to destroy us, and we kept smiling. We laughed, Sylvia and I, until I felt sick. We laughed as the fine glass of afternoon light finally broke and the night was revealed behind it. And inside the darkness we saw the blue lights of highway patrol, saw the police pull onto the median, heard the radio. But it was too late. Leonor was already free. The truck lay in pieces. Her babies were also free and she slowed down just enough for them to trot along behind, just enough for us to climb on her rough back, Sylvia and I, and let her carry us down the interstate to our home.

Contributors
Editors Jennifer S. Bassett Susan Y. Chi

Artists

Nini Ayach, Melissa Godoy, Lesley Johnson, Britt Mosley, Paul Swartz, Alexis Wuyts

Writers

Amal Aboulhosn lives in Harlem and teaches writing to high schoolers. She doodles pictures of meats in the margins of her notebooks, and sometimes in the margins of theirs. Her favorite food is ice cream, though her mother has actually argued that without meat, it can't be counted as a food at all. Concetta A Ceriello earned her MFA in Fiction Writing at Hunter College where she was a Hertog Research Fellow. She lives in Queens, NY with her husband and daughter. Audrey Ference writes Sex With the Natural Redhead at the L Magazine, and her work has appeared in Slate, the Hairpin, Teen Vogue, Maisonneuve, and this vegetarian magazine one time. Sssh, don't tell anyone. Alex Gilvarry is the author of the novel From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant, forthcoming from Viking in 2012. David Rogers is a writer and editor living in Brooklyn. Jeffrey Rotter is a South Carolinian who has lived in Brooklyn for seventeen years. He is the author of The Unknown Knowns: a novel (Scribner) and has competed in the whole hog division at Memphis in May, placing 38th out of 39. He lives near Green-Wood Cemetery with his wife and son and is at work on a new novel. Frank Smith is an Ohio-born writer and editor living in Brooklyn.

Jeff Simmermon is a writer and storyteller who regularly appears at shows around New York. He's also appeared on This American Life, once, several years ago. He feels a lot of pressure to write something cute and unique for bios like this. Jeff also runs a blog packed full of stories, art, and other weirdness at www.andiamnotlying.com. Pitchaya Sudbanthad is the founding editor of the Konundrum Engine Literary Review and a contributing writer at The Morning News. Anne K. Yoder is a staff writer for The Millions. Her writing has appeared in Bomb, BlackBook, and Tin House, among other publications.

And of course thanks to Josh Ozersky... deadpancollective.tumblr.com