The Other White Meat

Okay, fine. I give up. I guess this is a food blog. I try to think of other things to write about but here’s what happens:

(me, thinking to myself):

What should I write about?
Oh, Leo did the cutest thing.
No, that’s on the expanding blog. This is the non-Leo blog. Surely, I have something else to write about besides Leo.
What about that dinner I made the other night?
Food again? It’s not a food blog!
Well, maybe it is a food blog.


So I’m still not officially making it a food blog but I’m not going to apologize if I write about food every day for a month.

Today I want to tell you about pork. I had never worked with pork until last week. In fact, I’ve even made two REALLY dumb pork-related comments in my life. Get ready. They’re REALLY dumb.

2004: I was working at an ad agency and my client was the Texas Beef Council. I went to their offices to present our plan for their big sports-marketing-sampling program:

“So we’ll have the trailer set up here and then the sampling team will be over here. And then over here in the grassy area we’ll have different games going on. Now these are just tentative ideas but they could be things like toss the pork chop…”

When we were leaving my boss said, “That was a great presentation but you might want to tweak the game ideas…toss the pork chop?”

“What’s wrong with that? Oh, is it weird for people to toss food?”

“Well, it’s just that this is the Texas BEEF Council and they might not like promoting pork.”

See? I told you it was REALLY dumb. I think the dumbest part is that it wasn’t just an oversight. I really didn’t know that pork wasn’t beef.

2005: I was at book club and the hostess had made pork chops. I remember saying, “What are these?” And someone was like, “Um, pork chops. Duh!”

I’m seriously like a pork idiot.

So you can see why I would hesitate to cook pork after both of these incidents.

Okay, this blog has gotten pretty lengthy and I’m running out of time. The moral of the story is that I made Brunswick stew (thanks for the recipe, Claire!) last week with a Boston Butt. And then I saved half the butt and we grilled it last night. It was so good we might never eat chicken again.

And because I was so unfamiliar with pork I had to actually research information on the internet. I know way more about a Boston Butt than I ever thought I would. For instance, did you know that it’s not the butt of the pig at all? It’s the shoulder!

Oh, you already knew that? Well, you probably already knew that pork wasn’t beef either then. Hmmm…maybe I’m not the best person to write a food blog.