May 12th, 2015: Yum Yum Flicka

[xoxoxoBruce]

Pike Place Market in Seattle opening another Horse meat store.

For no less than 30,000 years, humans have hunted, slaughtered, and dined on the rich, stringy meat of horses. Some of the oldest cave paintings ever discovered, in modern-day France’s Chauvet Cave, depict the ritual hunting of horses for sustenance; archeological excavations in the same area have uncovered hundreds of thousands of equine remains in burial pits. Historians estimate that by around 4500 BC, the animals had been domesticated and valued not only for their flesh, but as companions and a method of transportation. This didn’t stop people from continuing to eat them.

link

Looks like the first slaughterhouse to resume the horsemeat trade for human consumption, will be in Iowa. Since 2005 the feds refused to fund inspection, effectively shutting it down. But the fall of 2014 must-pass federal spending bill quietly dropped that ban.
EAT ALL THE HORSES!!

[limey]

I ate this horse steak in Almaty last year. It was delicious. Not stringy. Rich. Like a splendid dark-chocolatey steak. Mmmmmmmmmmm

[Snakeadelic]

I've been a member for like three minutes, but I've read the entire IotD archive and followed the current postings for several years now. That dude who chained himself to a forestry service building like 15 years ago so the front doors were inaccessible? Yeah, that building is about half a mile north of me and I've actually had reason to be in it. I'll have to go back in the archives and find some of the stuff I thought about commenting on but didn't think my input was important enough to join up--I have serious anxiety challenges, and other people are a big trigger in several ways, so I'm not always much of a community person. I do LOVE the senses of humor I see around this thread. And if anyone cares, I saved off the entire 8K+ posts in the now-deleted old archives from the dog thread that had Dogs In Elk, because like the old Geocities-hosted webcomic Buster Wilde, it was too spectacularly funny to let slip away totally.

I only see 2 really serious issues with re-starting the for-consumption slaughter of horses in the US. First, it seems likely that some of the more..."tetchy"...animal rights groups will do stupid things like trying to burn down slaughterhouses. Second, and should be more important to anyone actively supporting (or even apathetically ignoring) the whole eating-of-modern-horses notion, is medications. One of the most common anti-inflammatories given to horses, referred to as "Bute", is highly dangerous to humans--my mom accidentally got some in her mouth while medicating her horse and it made her really ill. PCP? Ketamine? Both are horse tranquilizers. Bon appetit, and sweet (freaking WEIRD at best) dreams if your dinner had tranquilizers in its system!

European horsemeat is from horses raised to be food; they use fast-growing small drafts and draft mixes raised in secret locations (some with armed guards) and do not generally work with them at all until roundup time at just about 2 years old. Safely edible US horsemeat would probably have to come from our old favorite habit of culling mustangs (whereupon the aforementioned animal rights groups will go truly, spectacularly crazy).

For extra amusement in my personal case, while I now live on the eastern slope of the Rockies in southwestern Montana, I still tell stories of a job I had many years ago that was 12 blocks uphill from Pike Place Market.

[Spexxvet]

Welcome, Snake

[glatt]

Hi Snakeadelic, welcome!

I look forward to reading what you have to say.

[footfootfoot]

Hi Snake! May I add to the caveats about eating horsemeat? What makes anyone think that adding horsemeat to the grocery store won't be as much of a debacle as all our other, current meat-raising practices.

Also, 'ritual' in the quoted part seems gratuitous.

[Undertoad]

I have serious anxiety challenges, and other people are a big trigger in several ways

The Cellar has actually helped me along that same sort of journey. I'm a social retard most of the time. Welcome.

[BigV]

Welcome to the cellar Snakeadelic. I look forward to more of your posts. I'm more than twelve blocks from Pike Place Market, but fewer than twelve miles, so your stories will have a hometown ring for me.

In other news, I'd eat horsemeat.

[Clodfobble]

We cooked bison the other night and the kids got a real kick out of the idea. We'd definitely try horsemeat.

[Lamplighter]

Years ago on a business trip in Australia, I came across "Roo Meat".
I think it occupies the same social niche as Horse Meat here in the US.

[lumberjim]

here's your quiz:

1) have you ever been arrested, kid?


2)Did you put that envelope under that pile of garbage?


3)ketchup or mustard on your hot dog?


4)How many donuts can you eat in 4 minutes?


5)what rhymes with 'orange'?


6)what is the answer to question 6?


7)if you thought you could get away with it, would you do it?


8)what's that there beside you?


9)should I stop the quiz now, or go on to a nice round 10 questions?


11)who's yer daddy?


10)what is this I dont even

[footfootfoot]

We've scared him off.

[Snakeadelic]

footfootfoot Hate to bust ya on both, but I used to run on the Puget Sound medieval recreation & sci-fi convention circuits (about 12 years of SCA, and I was a proguest at Norwescon for 8 years running) so y'all might have to work a leetle harder to scare me off. And I'm not a him.

Undertoad I remember seeing your name on a LOT of comments that have made me giggle or otherwise take note

BigV So, you actually IN Pugetropolis, or are you in what I used to call "The Great Void Of Not-Seattle" part of nw Washington? I've lived everywhere from the U-District to the Tulalip Reservation to Pac Hwy & 108th-ish in Tacoma-tose, the Coma of the Coast . Just not recently.

Clodfobble One of the few red meats I can eat is bison, and lucky for me there's a bison ranch like 40 miles up the only main road in the entire freakin' valley I live in, and they supply the butcher shop 2 miles north of home with ground bison. Tell ya what, folks, everybody suddenly wants to be my friend in August--after I visit my mom during the annual Gallivant Westward, I get to make spaghetti sauce with ground bison and organic, homegrown heirloom tomato sauce, spiced with five-variety organic pesto she makes with basil she grows herself. I live in a second-story apartment with north-facing windows and seriously screwed-up cats, so gardening is right out.

lumberjim: your quiz answers!
1. Nope. Shoulda been a couple of times (stories for another thread no doubt) but the only time I've ever been fingerprinted was decades ago when WA state welfare checks were still paper and I had to thumbprint the back of mine at a check cashing place because banks just laughed at me.
2. Probably not. I don't hang around piles of garbage, which explains why I won't talk to several of my apartment-complex neighbors...
3. Ketchup sure, mustard maybe, hot dog HELL NO. Had my gallbladder out a while back and cannot eat processed meat, heavily marbled red meat, or dark poultry any more.
4. In the wake of gallbladder removal, I have to avoid most donuts, though if I'm having a bad day I can work may way through a custard-filled Bismarck in about half an hour.
5. If you're drunk, or a little kid, you can kinda make "door-hinge" work.
6. This isn't an equation so it's difficult to solve for an answer. Plus I like HUGELY suck at numbers & math of all sorts.
7. What makes y'all think I didn't already do it and get away with it?
8. On my left, the yogurt I'm about to eat for breakfast. On my right, mostly fancy rocks (rare agate, fossil clamshells, and super-rare jasper) and a pile of Magic: the Gathering cards I need to separate into keepers & stuff to sell/trade/ditch. (Pro tip: the "not a him" I mentioned further up leads to hilarity in MtG-related chat rooms...)
9. However ya like. Free will is only valid when applied to everyone, including oneself.
11. That one's actually up in the air biologically, tho not legally (another story for another thread). I've met the fella my mom says it is and we have ZERO in common. I've also finally seen a photo of the man she was briefly married to around about that time and holy hell I am wearing his eyebrows and jawline so much even my half-blind traveling companion noticed it.
10. Welcome to me out in public on an average day.

[infinite monkey]

snakeydelic: if you ever are in Covington, OH (and if you are I'm very sorry) you need to go to Buffalo Jacks http://www.yelp.com/biz/buffalo-jacks-covington


to question 5:

Oranges Smoranges!

Oranges smoranges who said,

Oranegs smoranges who said,

Oranges smoranges who said,

There ain't no rhyme for oranges!

Oranges poranges, there's another one,

Oranges poranges, there's another one,

Oranges poranges, there's another one,

Another rhyme for oranges.

People keep on saying that

The one word that's a gem

It's oranges called that's got no rhyme

But we got news for them.

Ain't they never heard of oranges smoranges, who said,

Oranges smoranges, who said,

Oranges smoranges, who said,

There ain't no rhyme for oranges.

(instrumental break)

Ain't they never heard of oranges, poranges, smoranes, koranges...or kumquat!

--Witchiepoo

[Carruthers]

In the UK there is little domestic demand for horse meat. During times of great privation, eg the 1930s and WW2, it was eaten on the basis that it fended off starvation.
There is a cruel trade in exporting live horses for slaughter principally to Poland and other Eastern European states. Care of the animals is minimal and it is not unusual for several to die principally from falling over and being trampled in transit.

There are somewhat negative feelings towards horse meat consumption and the practices surrounding it here. Additionally, the horse is looked upon as a companion animal and people tend to view the species with great sentimentality, an offence to which I am happy to plead 'Guilty as charged, Your Honour'.
Anyway, could you eat a creature to which you, or someone else, has given a name?