This Is Why You’re Fat
No, really. This Is Why You’re Fat.
Click through for hot dog pie, the McNuggetini, bacon cheeseburgers with chocolate covered bacon, and so much more.
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Deer Prudence
With the solstice upon us, so too comes that modern newspaper staple, the tale of hunters-donating-to-soup-kitchens:
As its name suggest, the Oxford-based charity [Hunt to Feed] donates venison to the hungry by way of the Connecticut Food Bank, according to its president, Joe Tucker, also of Oxford.
“Each deer produces 40 to 50 pounds of deer meat,” he said. The first year we donated 700 pounds of venison. Last year it was 1,250 pounds. And this year, we’re on track to go over a ton.”
While I have nothing but respect for someone who slays so that others may sup, these kinds of stories tend toward the formulaic, right down to the obligatory snarl from an anti-hunting spokesperson:
“I think that this gesture is meant to build the image of the weapons enthusiasts,” said Priscilla Feral, president of the Darien-based Friends of Animals. “I see it differently. They’re not hunting to feed families. They’re out for trophies. The problem of hungry people is solved with jobs, not deer flesh.”
It helps the joke if you understand that Oxford, HQ for the hunters’ group, is a middle-class town in CT’s blue-collar Naugatuck River Valley, while Ms. Feral’s Darien is the second richest town in America. Regardless, these antipodal sentiments bring to mind another story from Tuesday, in which we learn that wild boars have pierced Berlin’s borders more expertly than the Red Army:
The hairy beast was one of thousands of wild boars that have discovered the charms of urban living in Germany’s leafy capital city. When the creature trotted out of rush-hour traffic one morning last month to root around the flower store, Ms. Klose’s first thought was: “That is one ugly dog.”
After a second glance, Ms. Klose phoned the police for safety — and a local tabloid for publicity. The police called in Matthias Eggert, one of a crack band of hunters with license to kill hogs in urban areas. But Mr. Eggert’s plan to dispatch the boar appalled Ms. Klose. The hunter says the tabloid reporter brandished a camera and warned him he’d have the whole of Berlin on his case if he pulled the trigger. Mr. Eggert sensed a PR debacle, so he phoned around until he found an animal sanctuary 40 miles from Berlin that granted the boar asylum and named the swine “Amanda.”
The story goes on to illustrate the sympathy the donuts citizens feel for the boars, with Mr. Eggert alone expressing that Hunnish vigor we’ve come to know and love:
“We should just gather hunters at the these feeding sites, make the civilians stand aside, and feed the swine with lead.”
What’s interesting about this story is the complete absence of the obvious final solution for bacon on the hoof. Did the writer not think to ask about what was done with the dead boars? Are Berlin’s food kitchens well stocked without them or are there proscriptions against donating the meat? I would imagine the strongest case for boar butchery would be made by appealing to the need of Berlin’s less fortunate — but it’s never addressed.
As a Bacon Lover, Celts Diehard, Jilted Manny Fan, and Randy Newman Hater, So Easy to Say ‘I Hate LA’ (Bacon-Wrapped Bleg Included)
Reason’s Katherine Mangu-Ward blogged yesterday about the latest and saddest chapter in Los Angeles’s war against crispy-food vendors. I’ll first crib her quoting of LAist:
At Hollywood and Highland last Friday night, police cracked down on the little ladies with the cars selling those street favorites. All the food and all their equipment were confiscated and trashed.
And then M-W’s own words.
An LAist photographer was there, and he caught a series of horrifying images, including the one above, which depicts illegal hot dog carts being fed into the gaping maw of the dumpster truck. This is a cruel variation on the proper order of things, which should include grilled bacon dogs being fed into the gaping maws of drunk idiots.
She writes that “[t]he story has everything: class warfare, racism, protection rackets, relish, and mustard.” What–no catsup?
All kidding aside, I can think of no better (nor more infuriating) example of why I went to law school than this latest travesty of justice–that and virtually everything the city of Los Angeles has recently done to kill its reputation as a place for yummy food.
And now, a bit of a bleg. I propose a “race for the cure[d meat]” fundraiser to support a legal campaign by the bacon-dog vendors…. An illicit-bacon-dog eating competition, with bets placed, prizes awarded, and the house shipping its cut out to bacon-dog lawyers on the left coast. Any DC-area venue and/or bacon + dog sponsors out there?
More coverage from Crispy on the LA bacon dog debacle here.
Update: The malaise spreads as San Francisco cracks down on taco trucks.
Crispy Podcast Episode 4
In the fourth episode of our weekly podcast, we discuss the news about food shortages, Burger King’s ill-fated Foie Gras Burger, PETA’s synthetic meat initiative, miracle fruit, Duckathlon IV, the alleged dangers of competitive eating, and this week in bacon – LA bans bacon dogs.
BTW, that’s me with the meat is murder t-shirt recording the podcast. If you ever want to watch and listen to us live as we record the show, just follow me on Twitter (@jerrybrito) and I will tweet when we’re ‘on the air’ and provide a URL. We have a chat room going while we record and we take listener questions and comments. Pretty nerdy, but pretty fun. Live versions of past shows are here.
We hope you enjoy this episode and that you’ll tell us what you think. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to the show for free. You can grab the RSS feed or click here to subscribe in iTunes. That way you’ll get it every week.
This Week in Bacon
I was happy to see the maple bacon lolly get some play in The Onion this week, but the real bacon news comes courtesy of everyone’s favorite libertarian game show host, Drew Carey, at Reason.
Watch as Drew travels through L.A., where he uncovers the truth behind the illicit trade in… bacon hot dogs.
Crispy first brought you the plight of L.A.’s bacon dog vendors a couple of months back.
A (Bacon) Tale of Two Cities
If the medianoche (the Cuban sandwich featuring ham and pork) got into the turducken (the Russian doll-ish turkey stuffed with duck that’s stuffed with chicken) in the same way your chocolate got in my peanut butter, the result might be the bacon-wrapped hot dog. It’s big in S.F., says YumSugar:
Whenever I find myself drunk and hungry in San Francisco’s Mission District, I hurry over to the stand selling hot dogs wrapped in bacon. According to my sister, this delicious hot dog — topped with caramelized onions, mustard, and ketchup with a grilled jalapeño on the side — is a specialty of Mexico. Wherever it’s from, it’s pure porky heaven.
It’s popular down the coast in L.A., too, though it’s under attack by the food police there to the point where selling it can get you arrested:
Not quite Mexican and not quite American, the bacon-wrapped hot dog, like the city that so fervently embraces it, has a curious romance about it. You can smell one from blocks away. The grilled bacon, twisted around a wiener, is topped with grilled onions and a mountaintop of diced tomatoes, ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise. Then one whole grilled green poblano chile is plopped impossibly on top. You take a bite and think, This is so good, no wonder it’s illegal!
Among working-class downtown shoppers, belligerent clubgoers and adventurous foodies, devotion to the famed “heart-attack dogs” is strong and strident, a source of raw L.A. nostalgia.
“I probably saw my first one while I was trying to pick up 18-year-old girls at Florentine Gardens,” says Eddie Lin, a food blogger at deependdining.com, who has rhapsodized about the bacon-wrapped dogs on local public radio.
To get them, “I go to places like the 99 Cents Only store in Reseda or other Hispanic working-class neighborhoods in the Valley. Parks are good too. It’s the only street food L.A. can really claim as its own,” Lin adds. “It’s illegal and yet it’s a ubiquitous part of L.A. culture.”
So you can imagine the frustration of vendors like Palacios, caught between the demands of the market and the demands of the law.
She would love to sell bacon-wrapped hot dogs — trust her — but a trip last year to the women’s county jail, a trip she says officials orchestrated to “make an example” of her, finally pushed her to give up the bacon and illegal grilling device she used for so long. Instead, she prepares dogs the only way the county Environmental Health Department currently allows, by boiling or steaming. Not grilling. And grilling is the only way to make a classic L.A. bacon-wrapped hot dog.
More the LA Weekly.
