Portland Meat Collective

We’re teaming up with Cooks, Pots, and Tabletops down in Eugene to offer two classes … More »

When my rabbit story aired on This American Life in December, I received an amazing amount of emails from people all over the world who wanted to know if there was a Meat Collective where they lived. Or, if not, how they could start one. It’s always been my goal to be able to create a model for butchery education and alternative meat economies that could be applied virtually anywhere. More »

This coming Wednesday I’m joining forces with Dan Beekley of Corkscru wine merchants to celebrate all things Gascon! We’ll be treating 22 lucky folks to a traditional cassoulet dinner. We’ll start everyone out in the store with a trio of grower’s champagnes accompanied by figs with duck prosciutto and duck liver mousse with caramelized onions. Then, everyone will grab their favorite Gascon wine and take a seat at a communal table in KitchenCru, where we’ll enjoy Gascon wedding soup, salad with duck rillette croutons, and rich and delicious cassoulet More »

Recently, Chris Onstad, a lovely writer for the Portland Mercury, took my Pig Head Butchery & Charcuterie class and wrote a very good piece about it. I especially thought it interesting that Chris used the article to explore notions of decadence. And I found myself pondering why it is that a recipe like Porchetta di Testa that has undeniable peasant roots has come to be seen as something decadent. If the very definition of decadence is, as Chris says, something that makes your mouth water and your hair stand on end, I’m quite interested in the “hair standing on its end part” especially within the context of eating animals–or rather, every part of an animal. When did using parts of the animal like the head or the feet make our hair stand on end? This most certainly wasn’t always so. What psychological shift occurred to make these parts of the animal creep us out?

I reached the end of the article, and then, there was this: a lone reader comment. More »