The Meat of the Matter

Check out my latest article on Saveur.com here. It's a Q & A with Scott Gold, author and carnivore.

To quote the fun ship...

"Sophisticated Dining: Always a first-class dining experience with superb cuisine, fine wines and incomparable service. With choices such as our Filet Mignon with California Cabernet Sauce or our Broiled Lobster Tail with Melted Butter, your palate will only crave for more. By the way, if you want more, just ask! Having two or three lobster tails in one sitting is not unusual on our cruises. Boy, do our guests love lobster!"

Boy did we. But boy, did we only get one tail.


Note: no, I do not have a small child to do all my drawing for me, I did that one all by myself....Yeah, I'm that good. Please, please, don't all try to discover my genius at the same time.

The FUN ship!

Ah cruises...the sun, the water, the drinks, the food....the lots and lots of food...the Americans reacting to the food (is smoked salmon raw? no ma'am, it's smoked. Look at that, a real baguette!) all the while wearing insanely inappropriate t-shirts. My favorite from Villanova: "Freshman Girls, Get 'Em While They're Skinny!"

Yes I went on a cruise to the Eastern Caribbean. A Carnival cruise to be exact, a "fun ship" cruise to be more exact. (Side note: my favorite quote heard on the cruise, when a man was told he could not be drinking while in the hot tub. "Fun ship, HA!") It was awesome. Wonderful to get away and nice to come back crispy, red, a couple pounds heavier and a little be more relaxed.

The food was what you would expect it to be: buffets of fried things, meat things, salad bars things, surprisingly decent pizza, not as much lobster as we swear we were promised (and I will forever demand lobster of Carnival because of it) though it was excellent when we had it.

And then there was this:

Now, you may think that, according to the watermelon, this was an edible buffet.

You would be wrong.

It was a buffet of what would have been considered "nouvelle cuisine" back in the '80's, when such cuisine was actually nouvelle. Most of the ship, come to think of it, seemed to have recently discovered the '80's. Which, for me, is the best kind of vacation: a time traveling vacation.

Not to be out done by the other guests, I too took pictures of the food we couldn't eat.

OMGs! Shaped bread!

Squid! Oh my god, there's a ring of crispy around it! How does it stay up!?

I'm sorry to say that this was supposed to be stuffed pork loin.....er....

And of course a dragon ice sculpture. Because what gala buffet would be complete without one?

About an hour later we came back to the dining room to find that there was a line out the door...just to take photos. It was surreal.

As was this:

Our waiter for the week, Wency. You can't see it, but the man's wearing heels. He's a spectacular dancer with the best kicks I've seen since the Rockettes. Wency, I think we'll miss you the most.

Ah well. Good thing I live in New York, where there's a Wency around every corner, baguettes and real, not raw, but in fact smoked, salmon. But hey, Carnival, where's my F*%#ing lobster!?

Delicious Grass Fed Beef at Diner

So I didn't get offal this week. Turns out Diner only serves liver up at dinner time. What, is offal too rich for lunch? Is it too early for people to handle the delicious, iron-rich umami that is organ meat? If people can handle a dirty water dog or a McDonald's hamburger (and the film it leaves behind) then I think people can handle liver.

Oh well. Instead I had this:


An awesome cheeseburger. Diner does all their own butchering and uses only grass fed meat. Now, for those who have not partaken in grass fed meat, let me assure you it does taste different from your traditional corn or ....whatever else fed meat. It's richer, gamier (in a good way) than corn fed beef, which tastes mostly just like...meat, boring meat. Grass fed beef lingers on the tongue, it fills the mouth and really satisfies. It also doesn't leave you feeling heavy with fat and ickyness (if I may use a technical meat-term). It leaves you feeling like a good carnivore should - happy. The Metallica blasting in the background didn't hurt the victorious, meat-conquering vibe that the burger provided.

The fries were also amazing. They were hand cut and still had some bits of skin on them, which is just how I like them to be. I almost felt bad corrupting them with ketchup. Almost. But I do love me some ketchup.

Offal Quest

Back in California, my father, lover of all things innards (except brains...he says they taste too much like, well, brain) has instigated, with the help of a local dirt expert, Offal Mondays at K & L bistro in Sebastopol. He has been teasing me with pictures and descriptions of the dishes every week. "Best kidneys since La Grenouille," he'll say. "Oooh, pig's trotters next week!" he'll brag and then make a bad pun about them running late...ha....ha. So since I don't have a regular restaurant that takes my suggestions (all steak tartare, all the time, unless I want a cheese plate instead) I have to take matters into my own hands and go on an offal quest so that I too can get some good guts (and anything else that is pushed off the butcher's table, hence the name) every week. I like offal. Not just because of the awesome factor. I'm not looking to impress people, it tastes good. Also I think I like it because I like to finish things. Example: when I'm eating apples I eat everything. Core, seeds, sometimes the stem. It's satisfying. It's really the only way I'm in any way "green." So why not apply that system of eating to meat? Exactly. I should. If I could afford to buy myself a whole animal to eat I would. But that would require a lot of things, one of them being that I would need to have control over more than just one shelf and one drawer in the fridge, which would also need to be at least a full sized fridge. Yes, obviously I'm living the life.

Here's what I'm thinking:

-calf's liver
-kidney
-pig's trotters
-sweetbreads..mmmmmm
-tripe (because I need to give it another chance)
-tongue

First up? Probably liver at Diner next week. Very excited.

Tuthilltown Rye

After researching, interviewing, and having it in mixed drinks I finally tried straight rye. This one is from Tuthilltown distillery, which is currently the only distillery making rye in New York State (they also make a vodka from apples, which I really want to try).

How was it? Bone dry....and light and a tad bit oaky. Very nice on a cold day. I ended up cutting it with some lemon juice because it was the end of the night and I needed something a bit easier to sip on. But I think I could get into the stuff. I can see it being great with some muddled mint, soda water and a touch of lemon juice, like a really dry Mint Julep.

Dylan Moran on Food

Dylan Moran, a favorite Irish comedian of mine, discusses the joys of eating meat....and faces.