Pork: The Viagra of Meat?

The beef-crazy people of Argentina, who on average consume more than their body weight in beef each year, are faced with a national shortage of the red meat.  Their fearless leader is encouraging them to try an alternative: pork.

The Independent reports that Argentina’s President Cristina Fernandez is using sex to sell the other white meat.  According to the paper, “She has given a speech touting pork as a cheap alternative to Viagra – and suggesting that she had personal experience.”  They quote President Fernandez , during a speech announcing subsidies to the swine industry, saying: “‘I didn’t know that eating pork improved sexual activity, [but] it is much more gratifying to eat some grilled pork than to take Viagra.” 

If the above quote had been made by a U.S. politician, Pfizer, the parent company of Viagra, would have already filed a lawsuit for slander.  Of course, no U.S. politician would dare challenge the pharmaceutical industy so it’s a moot point.  At any rate, if Valentine’s Day was not enough to put the romance back into your life, then maybe you should learn from the good people of Argentina.

The world's most delicious aphrodisiac?

First Toyotas, Now Pork

Achtung baby!

A North Carolina company is following in Toyota’s footsteps with a massive recall of a life endangering product.  In this case, the recall has nothing to do with defective gas pedals and isn’t actually that massive.  According to this article, The Murphy House of Louisburg is recalling roughly 2,850 pounds of pork barbecue.  The company’s pre-packaged five-pound buckets o’ ‘cue “may contain an undeclared allergen, soy flour,” according to findings by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service.

Consider this recall further proof that soy has no business within 25 yards of barbecue.

As a slight aside, you should sleep easier knowing that U.S. Department of Agriculture staff–when not gorging on five-pound buckets of pork–have created a food safety website called Ask Karen.  The website features a “virtual representative ” named (can you guess?) Karen who “is a knowledge base with information for consumers about preventing foodborne illness, safe food handling and storage, and safe preparation of meat, poultry, and egg products.”

Not only is Karen incredibly knowledgeable about food safety, but she is a looker too.  Nothing is hotter than pillow talk about the safe preparation of meat, poultry, and egg produucts, right?  More from me another day, I’ve got an e-date with Karen to get to…

Swine Flu in Your ‘Cue? Delicious!

If a newspaper called the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer is to be believed, there is no risk of contracting swine flu from eating barbecue or other pig meat. If you don’t trust anything claimed by papers with the word “Enquirer” in the title, then maybe you’ll trust this article from the Los Angeles Times.  If you don’t trust anything from L.A. either (or if you just noticed that the Los Angeles Times ran that same Ledger-Enquirer story), well, we don’t blame you for that.  Nonetheless, it does appear that pork is safe to eat even if the pig it came from had a 105 degree fever and was vomiting a few days before he landed, chopped and sauced, on your plate.  Does that make you hungry for a plate of swine flu ‘cue?

BBQ in the News: December 2009

Today marks the debut of an occasional feature called BBQ in the News, in which we share ‘cue related stories that come from near and far, and range from unimportant to not that important. Enjoy.

The Grinch Who Stole the Birthday Brisket – This story comes from Houma, Louisiana courtesy of The Daily Comet, which I think may be the paper Clark Kent worked at before moving up to The Daily Planet.  This sad story begins with Jonathon Pepper buying his wife Brandi a brisket for her birthday.  (That’s the gift that keeps on giving, Clark.)  Unfortunately, after 2 days of marinating, the brisket was stolen from the couple’s smoker while it cooked.  “I would honestly like to know who steals someone else’s barbecue in their backyard,” bemoaned Mrs. Pepper.   My theory:  Mrs. Pepper herself, in a fit of rage that her husband bought her brisket instead of a pork shoulder.

Free New Year’s BBQ in Fayetteville – According to the Fayetteville Observer, “The public is invited to a free feast of barbecue, collard greens, sweet potatoes and black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day.”  Need I say more?  Get thee to Cumberland County!

The Barbecue Gazebo – Okay, technically this is not a news item.  Still, did you know that you can purchase a “barbecue gazebo” from your good friends at Hammacher Schlemmer for less than $1,000 plus shipping?  Well, actually, the website says this item is no longer available.  Oh well, in that case I won’t mock it.

Barbecue Fork Involved in Stabbing  – According to Australia’s AdelaideNow, “TWO men spent their Rudd Government stimulus packages on drugs before one viciously stabbed the other in an argument over sugar.”  The article is very choppy and difficult to understand–as if the reporter was also using drugs–but it sounds like the meth using stabbing victim wielded a barbecue fork, while the meth using stabber wielded a knife.  Knife trumps fork.

Lexington Barbecue Tourism – According to The Dispatch, the slightly more than one year-old Lexington Visitor’s Center has been an asset to the local economy, in no small part due to its promotion of barbecue-related tourism.  More than 3,300 visitors have come through the doors since the Center opened on December 1, 2008.

McRib’s Revenge – The greatest threat to real barbecue since the invention of the propane cooker, the McRib has returned… at least to Las Cruces, according to hometown paper the Sun-News.  Run for your lives, good people of New Mexico, save yourselves!  Or at least heed the journalist’s advice: “Don’t ask too many questions.  What kind of meat is this? Don’t go there. If you overthink this, the McRib will start morphing on you. If you think, ‘This sort of tastes like chicken,’ it will. It can also sort of taste like beef and sort of like pork.”

Aporkalypse Now

2009 brought us the aporkalypse. No, not the continued advance of gas-cooked barbecue, but the fear-mongering stemming from the ill-named swine flu. Because really, what did swine, and by extension barbecue, ever do to deserve so much hatred?

While I’d never heard the term before this week, amazingly, it made The New York Timesbuzzwords of 2009 list. Here’s their official definition of aporkalypse:

Undue worry in response to swine flu. Includes unnecessary acts like removing nonessential kisses from Mexican telenovelas and the mass slaughter of pigs in Egypt.

image by IanVisits via Flickr

I’m against undue fear in all forms, but especially when it prevents telenovela smooching. And anything that threatens my barbecue and, by the (delusionary) commutative property, my livelihood. I’m not, however, against a little humor surrounding this topic.

Then again, if there’s any truth behind Aporkalypse Now–the online game–maybe the fear isn’t so unnecessary. Be afraid of anthropomorphic zombie pigs wearing suits. Be verrry afraid.

Update on Loopey

Last month we reported on a pig named Loopey who was removed from the home of his (human) family due to a ban on swine within Fayetteville’s city limits.  The City Council in Fayetteville promised to revisit the issue in early September.  True to their word, according to an article in the Fayetteville Observer, on Tuesday night City Council debated the merits of pigs in the city and searched for a compromise position. 

The Council debate did not go well for beloved family pet and Autism therapy animal, Loopey.  According to the Observer article, “The City Council deadlocked Tuesday by a 5-5 vote, unable to agree on whether to draft a new policy that would allow Loopey – a domesticated pig kept at a house in the College Lakes subdivision off Ramsey Street – to return to its owner under certain conditions.” 

The deadlocked vote should, in theory, put the Loopey story to rest.  However, I have a  feeling this pig tale has legs, at least judging from the almost uniformly irate online comments on the article, which include:

“‘”Hookers’ walk the streets of Fayetteville and the city council is worried about a pet pig. A lot more needs cleaning up in Fayetteville before officials focus in on a childs pet… .” – RL

“DONT THE FAY. COUNCIL MEMBERS MEET THE DEFINITION OF SWINE?” – WADUHMINNIT!

“… i see a rigged vote on city council. i smell a bunch of rats not swine. and i smell a lot more coming from hay street rather than what i normally smell coming from the eastern part of cumberland county on certain days. and the stench reeks of dirty politics.” – chitownjoe

“We should have told the council that Loopy can pay taxes. This way they’d have already annexed her and given her a trash can… .” – Paul

Sex Sells ‘Cue (at least up north)

Recently we received a message from Burgeoningfoodie, who shared this link to a short news report about a sexy mannequin helping sell barbecue in Cincinnati (rest assured, this is a CNN video so it is safe to open at work).  Watching the video brought several questions to mind, none of which are particularly insightful but all of which I will share anyway:

  • Would any North Carolina towns abide such a brazenly bold buxom barbecue display?
  • Do the good people of Cincinnati have a difficult time distinguishing between mannequins and real people?  The video indicates that passersby have been fooled into believing Bar-Be Q is a real woman.
  • Did the restaurant owner consider finding a “sexy” anthropomorphic pig-woman to advertise his restaurant?  And would that be more or less disturbing than his current approach?
  • Are there any examples of sex being used to sell barbecue in NC?
  • Can we trust the people of Cincinnati–a city known for its bizarre, cinnamon-chocolate-chili–to judge good barbecue ?
  • Finally, why does Greensboro, NC–a City located in the heart of Lexington-style barbecue country–have a Cincinnati style chili restaurant but no barbecue joints downtown?  And should we put a sexy mannequin outside as a form of retribution?

Swine Flu: The Only Thing We Have to Fear is Flu Itself

As you no doubt have heard by now, unless bbqjew.com is your only source of contact with the outside world (in which case we fear you have more serious problems than the flu), the SWINE FLU has emerged as the leading threat to humankind.  As best we can tell, the SWINE FLU! will either a) quickly fade away and be forgotten or b) decimate humanity.  Here’s to hoping a) is correct.  “But how does this potential epidemic impact dedicated barbecue eaters like me?,” you might ask.  Or you might not.  After initially fearing for the lives of our family and friends, this is exactly the disturbing question that entered my mind. 

The good news is that, while the SWINE FLU!!  may soon decimate the world’s population and bring a sudden end to civilization as we know it, it is perfectly safe to continue eating barbecue in the meantime.   According to an informative Q&A posted on MSNBC online, “People cannot become infected by eating pork or pork products. Cooking pork to an internal temperature of 160 degrees Fahrenheit kills the virus as well as other bacteria, notes the CDC.” 

A victim of the swine flu or the global economic downturn?

A victim of the swine flu or the global economic downturn?

Barbecue is certainly cooked to 160 degrees so there is no need for alarm.  That’s right, folks, please continue to eat barbecue all you want.  However, just to be on the safe side you may want to steer clear of eating barbecue at restaurants that have other customers or, to be extra safe, employees.  Yes, it turns out the SWINE FLU!!! can be transmitted person-to-person as well as pig-to-person, so you may want to carry out your next barbecue plate  and eat it inside your locked, HEPA-filtered, Tamiflu and meat thermometer stocked basement.  But really, we assure you, there is absolutely NO NEED TO PANIC!!!

As an aside, the swine flu was first identified in hogs in 1930, which coincidentally (?) was around the beginning of the Great Depression.  Now we are in the midst of another economic crisis and the swine flu is back in the news.  Mere coincidence or public health fear mongering intended to distract Joe Public from economic fear mongering?  You be the judge.  As for me, I’ll let you know my thoughts on this matter just as soon as I emerge from my basement.  See you in 2011.