Who the Hell Am I and What the Hell do I Think I’m Doing?

Hey there.  I like food.  Like, a lot.  So much so that I decided to start spending my weekends buried up to my elbows in raw meat in order to learn the lost art of meat fabrication.  I apprentice at a butcher shop, but it’s not a traditional butcher shop—those are very rare these days, the big cutting is done at slaughter houses most of the time.  We get sectional cuts, but not whole animals like they used to back in the day.  So unfortunately, there is a very finite amount of knowledge that I can gain from this shop before I’ll have to move on.  However, since I’m only there on weekends (and not even every weekend), it’ll be some time before I reach that point.    

I am not a chef, I didn’t go to culinary school, and I have no special training.  I'm not overly impressed with myself; I don't by any means think I'm covering any new ground.  I know that food bloggers are a dime a dozen and I've long dreaded them and particularly dreaded becoming one.  But I believe that there is a very sensual, physical connection between humans and food, and a “food-gasm” is not mere fantasy.  I believe that there is no valid excuse to eat Ramen unless you are living in a college dorm, and life is too short to not try new things.  I’ll admit, I feel a twinge of disdain when I go to a restaurant with someone who always orders chicken strips and fries no matter where we go.  There are just too many good things to limit yourself. 
I like to tell people that I have a fat kid living inside of me; the fat kid can eat a lot of food, but I punish the fuck outta that fat kid.  Fat kid wants cake, I give it salad.  Fat kid has to work for every damn calorie.  I run . . . three miles, five days a week; lift weights; take a yoga class; play for one to three soccer teams year-round, and moonlight on volleyball and softball teams.  The fat kid has few victories—if any. 

            So where do I get off thinking I can write about food?  Well, I used to be a good writer.  I say “used to” because I don’t think I’ve written anything very noteworthy in the last three or four years.  I won a national writing award when I was 17 . . . have a degree in creative writing . . . was president of my college’s literary magazine . . . briefly worked in publishing . . . and for the last three years I reviewed bands and local eateries for an independent magazine.  I never thought that anyone would pay me to eat food and then write about it, but I wanted to write about more, so I decided to strike out on my own.  And here we are.             

            To follow up on my experiment with ribeye ribs as a substitute for short ribs:  they turned out great!  I served them over brown rice cooked in beef stock and paprika; the meat popped right off the bone and was really tender.  I think that parsley would’ve brightened the dish up a bit, but the earthiness of the sage did it no harm.  Adding the garlic didn’t hurt, either.  And I have a theory that anything left in a crock pot for long enough can’t be bad, which held true for the Guinness sauce that I “double cooked” doing two batches.  The only thing it really needed was some Sriracha to top it off.  It really hit the spot after an evening of drinking beer and admiring vintage motorcycles.

 

Finally, I saw this on the "Bacon is Yummly" Facebook page today and wanted to share it.  'Cause, ya know . . . it's important for a girl to accessorize.