MENU MENAGERIE

With a return flight to Atlanta this evening, I was unfortunately unable to join Lair Simon and his Houston-area cohorts for a Crawfish ’n’ Gumbo Extravaganza at the Rajun Cajun this evening.

The occasion, of course, is International EATAPETA Day: Eat A Tasty Animal for PETA.

In anticipation of the day, I’ve taken great pains to enjoy Tasty Animals regularly.

Last Saturday, I enjoyed Roast Duck.



Tuesday afternoon, at the Houston offices of the Great Corporate Salt Mine, I tucked into several hearty slices of Roast Leg of Lamb, dressed with a glossy demi-glace jus. Fairly serious fare for a company canteen, but the Salt Mine takes its food seriously.

For dinner, I ordered up a nice, medium-rare beefsteak from Room Service. Oooohhh, how I love Room Service.

Today, lunch was a bowl of tortellini in marinara sauce, decked out with various chunks of Animal Protein. Chicken, sausage, a few ex-denizens of the deep.

I left the office at 4:40, just in time to become embroiled in the heinous Houston afternoon rush-hour traffic, which begins at 1:30 pm and ends sometime around 8:00. This got me to the airport with enough time to spare that I could have another Yummy Animal. I selected the Humble Chicken.

Chicken is the perfect Meat-Animal for this day, assuming one has no immediate access to a slab of red-dripping beef. This is because the chicken is portable: you can easily eat it on the run, especially in fried form. It is also because the chicken has political value, having been the focus of an egregiously insulting PETA campaign which equated the raising and slaughter of chickens for human consumption to the murder of European Jews in the Holocaust. And, finally, the chicken’s outer form betrays its origins. You may delude yourself that a chunk of Prime Rib is really some kind of Tofu-Fungus (and I am sure that there are types of Tofu-Fungus available that look remarkably like Prime Rib) - but there is no mistaking where a chicken leg comes from. You bite through the crispy skin (encased in a crispy, spicy layer of breading), taste the spurting hot oil and juices, scrape your teeth against the bone and gristle. When you eat Fried Chicken, there is no avoiding the fact that you are snarfing up an animal.

It was delicious.

So good, I just might eat another animal or two tomorrow.

Technorati tags: EATAPETA, Meat, Food