| Archive for The Magic Bus Trip Never get off the Bus! |
| Dean |
Rediscovering the joy of meathttp://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=439713Rediscovering the joy of meat The new carnivore is ethical, environmentally-friendly and will eat the whole animal Allison Hanes, National Post Published: Friday, April 11, 2008 At The Healthy Butcher, on Toronto's trendy Queen St. W., sausage-making classes fill up faster than casings getting stuffed with spiced ground meat, and the participants are as keen as the man who recently wrote co-owner Mario Fiorucci after attending the course to say he had purchased his own meat grinder and was now churning out his own sausages at home. That his customers are so enthusiastic about getting their hands bloody has surprised even Mr. Fiorucci, who opened the butcher shop with his wife Tara Longo, both of them former vegetarians. It is just one example of a recent revival of the joys of carnivorous eating. There are new cookbooks - Carnivore Chic in Canada and The Shameless Carnivore in the U.S. - that celebrate the personal and cultural love affair with meat. Butcher shops are the new shopping grounds of a hip, elite and socially conscious clientele. Full-fledged meatfests are back in vogue as community events. Animal parts, even some too obscure to countenance, are increasingly showing up on menus at gourmet redoubts like Montreal's Au Pied de Cochon. Perhaps more significant, even some vegetarians are abandoning the moral high ground to emerge from their meatless exile. "I do think something fundamental has shifted in our culture," said Susan Bourette, the Toronto-based author of Carnivore Chic: From Pasture to Plate, the Search for the Perfect Meat, who said that a lot of the shift began, ironically, with the vegeterian movement. It is not that eating meat ever fell out of favour, she said, but it definitely went out of fashion for a spell with all the fuss about what the industrial food complex was doing to the environment, waistlines and health. Now meat is in again, she said - and people are consuming it, albeit more discriminatingly, guilt free and with a renewed gusto. Sam Grundy has organized a carnivore's dream to mark the grand opening of his new store Forager Foods, which sells seasonal ingredients from Huron County, including meats. The shop opens next week in Bayfield, Ont., but in June, Mr. Grundy will hold an old-fashioned Beefsteak fundraiser, where medallions of tenderloin will be grilled, diced up, dipped in butter and laid on crusty buns for diners to grab. "People just reach and grab the waiters and get as much as they want - it's all-you-can-eat as well," he said. Daring meat-eating is also on the rise, as a growing number of carnivores adopt a nose-to-tail approach to consuming animals. At Montreal's Au Pied de Cochon, for example, chef Martin Picard serves bison tongue and deer tartare, but his signature dish is a poached pig's foot, garnished with a slab of foie gras. In his new book, The Shameless Carnivore: A Manifesto for Meat Lovers, Scott Gold tried 31 different meats in as many days - including bull's penis and squirrel (which he shot himself). Although he delights in goading vegetarians in his book and on his blog - gushing about eating guinea pig, whiskers and all, and raving about the richness of rabbit - Mr. Gold credits them with helping bring foodies back to more authentic, healthy and responsible dining. "Vegetarianism I suppose became equated with being more emotionally or morally evolved, but now the tide is really turning," said Mr. Gold. "If you try grass-fed, locally, humanely raised meat, it's not only significantly better for your health, it's better for the animal. It's not just good for the environment, but also, ultimately, once again, it all comes down to taste. "I eat less meat now than I ever did, but it's all much better meat." Andree Lau has found an audience eager to share her culinary adventures. She is a consummate carnivore based in Calgary who prefers chicken wings over chocolate and, despite her diminutive size, proudly polishes off giant steaks with the big boys. The entries on her popular food blog include eating delicacies like lamb testicles, goat's head soup, snake and camel hoof tendon. "Some people like to jump out of a plane to seek their thrills. I like to eat new foods," she said. "I was thinking about why I love meat so much. My dad loved meat. His dad loved meat. Meat has always been around. "It tastes good. It's as simple as that." 
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| Kristelle |
I might just go to Pied de Cochon and try them out. I'll let you know how it goes... 
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