the journey of an aspiring meat artist.

Half of a lamb was hanging from a hook and I was holding the knife. I looked down at my hands accusingly, as I smeared blood on my extra small-sized butcher jacket. How the hell did I get here?

I am a post-vegetarian. Wait, don't stop reading. I'm not going to get up on my salami box and force my bloodthirsty agenda down your throat. This is simply my story. It just happens to be about a girl who formerly lived off soy sausages and faux-chocolate dipped protein bars making the decision to pursue recreational butchery.

After sharing a backyard with a spotted cow in Ireland while studying abroad during college, I looked into Betty's big brown eyes and on a whim, promised I would no longer eat her or her family. And I didn't, for quite some time. During my vegetarian stint, I tried with all of my might to justify my dietary choices, but my pity for Irish cows often fell short. I heard the words come out of my mouth, “Raw meat is gross; I feel so much healthier; beans with rice is the perfect meal for a frugal single girl…” But I often found myself imagining little-girl me sneaking the spicy-sweet sausages out of my mom's pot of simmering spaghetti sauce.

My life was meat-free for six long years. Then my tired, anxiety-ridden, iron-deprived body gave in. My throat tightened at the sight of my staple salted nut snacks, stomach lurched when presented with yet another spinach salad. My favorite tofu coconut Thai take-out landed me hacking and wheezing to Urgent Care. All of the stand-by veggie proteins were quickly ticked off my "safe to eat" list. I couldn’t take it anymore and I turned my back on Betty. Big time.

Upon my first carnivorous trip to the grocery store, I immediately realized I was clueless about meat. Never having cooked it myself spare boiling chicken breasts for a sixth grade girl scout badge, I was mystified by the butcher counter; I didn't know tenderloin from trotter. All I knew was that my years of animal-avoidance taught me better than to sink my teeth into a fast food chopped and reshaped chicken-wich. The horrors of factory farmed meats, mysterious presence of wheat gluten and high fructose corn syrup in deli slices, and warnings of cancer causing nitrates in cured bacons reminded me to not take my decision lightly. If I was going to eat meat, I had to satiate my carnal desires; to slice my knife through sizzling steaks, seared perfectly on my own stove, and trust who sold them to me. I left the store hungry but inspired. Should I take up hunting? Nah, too backwoods. Visit a slaughterhouse? Too political. Raise chickens? Too hippie. Much research followed. Perusing the New York Times, an article jumped out at me. Were butchers the new rock stars? Butchery. That's it. I needed to get my hands dirty.

Living in Los Angeles, we all have zany aspirations. Any given coffee shop is pouring over with aspiring writers typing brilliant screenplays on any given afternoon. Thespians perform at tiny theaters to crowds smaller than their crew dreaming that their big break will happen opening night. Every retail store is staffed with art school grads and singer-songwriters. Still, I found my vision was a tad off-kilter and would require a journey north to San Francisco, a surprising happy meat hub, where I found the artisan butcher shop, Avedano's. Not only did the lady-owned shop provide their local customers with top-quality meats, but they also taught an amateur butchery workshop. I licked my chops and sharpened my knives. Let the adventure begin.

I approached the butchery class with my usual stance-- cynical but optimistic, a spongy observer, opinionated but often overlooked. Taking a deep breath, I opened the front door. In that moment, my mind jumped back to the conversation I had with a male staff member several weeks before. "It probably goes without saying, but remember to wear something that you don't mind getting..." he tapered off. Does he say "bloody"? Would that be offensive? Disrespectful? What had I gotten myself in to? But at first glance of the shop, I was within my comfort zone. Gritty wooden shelves were stacked with pricey pastas and pestos. A small refrigerated case showcased fancy bottles of juices and natural sodas. A curved meat counter was neatly arranged with Real Meats, not the plastic-wrapped supermarket kind that beg for droopy iceberg and gluey white bread. Meats were labeled "dry aged" and seafood "sustainable" instead of "natural" followed by an asterisked FDA statement. I knew I could relax a bit. These were my people, mindful eaters who loved and respected their meats blood and all, without a touch of pretentiousness.

The first to arrive, I was welcomed warmly and invited to step behind the counter. A shaggy-haired dude led me through the burrows, past a small kitchen and a musty room that looked like my dad's garage, ancient band saw and all. I entered a wood paneled side nook that begged to house cozy dinner parties for the meat elite of Northern California and was invited to sit at a long buffet table. While fantasizing about demi-glace and osso bucco, I was handed a crisp, white butcher jacket. The rest of the students followed shortly; four men nearing middle age, playfully bantering with each other about their meat conquests. A young girl poked her head into the room. "Daddy?" she chirped, "Try to bring home the pig's head, okay?" I then realized it was Father's Day.

The class description stated students are taught to break down two animals, lamb and pig. Suckling pig, to be exact, a very young pig that has never been fed solid food or developed its muscles fully, a delicacy for lovers of tender meats. For us butcher students, this meant we were in for quite a sight upon walking into the meat locker. The pig had arrived from the slaughterhouse relatively intact, head and trotters still attached. Basically, full-on shock value. My nerves began to creep back. I hovered behind the dads, grateful that I had not been selected to attempt the first cut of the day.

The first cut was the head; removed by dad number one and placed on a tray for his little girl.

Next, the trotters.

Then it was my turn. Thankfully, what was now lying on the table began to look more like dinner than pet. With the guidance of a crinkled diagram, I removed the kidneys (the only organs left by the slaughterhouse*), wiped the cavity clean, and made the first cut to divide the beast into sections. We used three tools-- a flexible boning knife, a hand saw, and a cleaver with a mallet. There didn't seem to be specific tools for specific cuts. Instead, we were instructed to use what felt comfortable and appropriate for the task we were given; an intuitive process.

After my initial cut, my queasiness dissipated. The pig was portioned and put on ice for us students to have cooking fun with later. My mouth watered, anticipating strings of homemade sausages. Next up was lamb, and this time, I was first in line for cutting. A whole lamb hung from a hook dropped from the ceiling. I was tossed a knife. The dads watched me, wide-eyed. I dug in. Split and tore off the flanks and skirts, cleaned out the cavity. Then came the fun part. The money cut. First, I made an incision through the chest, and then sliced horizontally on both sides. Next, with much guidance, I wrapped my leg and arms around the animal, squeezing it to snap the spine where I had made the cut; an awkward skinny girl straddling a lamb on a hook. I supported its weight on my leg and cut behind the spine, caught it on my knee when it dropped, and hoisted it up on the table. The dads stared.

With one swift slice, I earned my new way of life. Carnivore guilt, be damned. The butchery has just begun.

*Slaughterhouses remove and clean out the animals before they arrive at a butcher shop, resulting in a much less gruesome process than I imagined. Butchers actually have to purchase many of those parts back from slaughterhouses if they want to use and/or sell them.

a circus of meats

We planned to honeymoon in Argentina for the beef. Sure, my new husband and I wanted to see the brightly painted rows of houses, watch women in red chiffon dresses swirl to the tango, and fake the Euro-transient hosteling lifestyle on our 3-week trip, but we knew why we honestly chose our destination-- promises of cheap and plentiful red meat.

Amidst the stress of wedding planning, I had grown weary and anxious about the prospect of international travel, but some quick research about Argentina sparked my interest. I discovered that this South American country consumes more red meat than any other country in the world. I saw pictures of happy brown and white spotted cows lounging on lush, green grass in the shadows of purple mountain ranges. I read about horseback riding ranchers in leather caps and jackets making parilla, fiery grills filled with fresh meat slabs, for their horseback riding families. I was sold. Surely, Argentina could appease even my appetite.

Immediately upon our arrival, we found what we were looking for. Our days in Buenos Aires were filled with white table clothes and red wine. Asado de tira, bife de chorizo, lomo-- we ate extravagant portions of Argentine cuts of beef equivalent to porterhouses and double filets; ate like celebrities on a low-carb diet.

After two weeks of fancy eats, I began to feel like we were missing something. We tried to fit in with the locals. Afternoons were spent sitting at cafes, my husband ordering Quillmas beer and eating thin crusted pizzas with ham in his broken Spanish while I stuck with wine and plates of cured meats. But what did the Argentine folk eat when they went out for a meaty evening meal? Surely, they didn't indulge in prime cuts of beef daily; there had to be a casual dining option to satiate their carnivorous appetites. So where was this middle ground between the crisp-collared waiters downtown and the flame-spewing trash can grills we saw on the edge of the city?

On an exhausting afternoon hike between wine tastings, weighed down by my Malbec-filled backpack, I spotted crowds of lunch-goers pouring out of a small cafe near the touristy Florida street. They were chatting happily and eating thick, steaming sausage sandwiches. Had we found the secret alternative to the empanada? Blood sugar falling from anticipation and hunger, we dropped off our bags at the hostel and stumbled back for dinner.

What followed was certainly not the healthiest, most pristine, or even most trustworthy meal of my life, but it was possibly the most satisfying. We were gluttonous. Instead of opting for the safe-looking sandwich, my husband pointed to the "grill for two" option on the menu.



A personal-sized grill piled with meats cooked on the cafe's larger parilla was delivered to our small corner table under the glow of a television playing the night's football match. We ordered cheap wine. And we ate. Pork chops and stomachaches. Heartburn and bright-red plump sausages. Rich, oily lamb chops and crisp, greasy chicken skin piled over... were those goat intestines? This was a whole new class of meats, like that bag of cheese puffs that you crave after a night of too many cocktails even when the best raw milk brie or ripe, pungent Roquefort is just steps away. This was meat junk food; and entirely worth a night of restless sleep and rumbling bellies.

After that meal, we continued on with our fancy eats routine. Cloth napkins and sparkling water, tiny bowls of shiny black olives, double orders of dulce de leche. Though my husband didn't have a leather cap or horseback riding aspirations and my tango was yet to be prolific, our stories of food-filled adventures were our own; our honeymoon of meats was complete.

more about dad than meat.

It didn't come as too much of a surprise to hear, after inquiring about some clanking background noise, that my dad was eating alone at an all-you-can-eat buffet in Mississippi while on his business trip to the chicken farm. "Really, I find it isn't a bad option," he said cheerfully, "when you just want to eat some meat." He proceeded to tell me about the alligator gumbo he had for lunch at a joint in New Orleans that he ducked into that afternoon to avoid a sudden downpour.

Many of the running jokes my family revolve around my dad and I's culinary adventures. When he ran the sound system for ethnic festivals at Hart Plaza in Downtown Detroit, he brought home rescued crates of leftover foods that us lower-middle class Midwestern folk would never have been exposed to otherwise in the early 1980s-- spicy curries, pierogi with thick Polish sausages, Styrofoam containers bulging with hummus and baba ghanoush. Along with his job downtown came trips to Detroit's Eastern Market (the largest public historic market in the country) for piles of cheap produce, leading to an infamous vat of green, lumpy brussels sprouts soup, which was mildly traumatizing for 4-year old me.

A later Eastern Market expedition resulted in a 5-pound box of quickly wilting basil. Two days (and two industrial blenders) later, our cupboards and freezer were filled with dozens of jars of pesto and the house reeked of garlic. During school that year, I faced much ridicule for my green pizzas, but by that time, I knew that my potato chip and bologna sandwich-eating lunch buddies didn't know what they were missing.

When I was a little older, I took up more of an interest in his kitchen experiments. Together, we came up with amazing concoctions. Some of them were simple, like our orzo salad for which tasting the most expensive aged balsamic vinegar was a must or the lavash wraps that always warranted piles of meat and cheese samplings at the deli counter. We will surely be remembered for our more esoteric inventions-- salami and peanut butter roll-ups or our ultimate classic, corn dog bread. Here's the recipe:

1 box of Jiffy cornbread mix
1 package of hot dogs

Follow directions on box for cornbread. Pour batter into casserole dish and drop in hot dogs lengthwise. Bake at temperature indicated on box.

Serve with a knife, fork, and your choice of mustard.

Cheers to my ingenious dad. (Just make sure you brush your teeth when you get home,you know how mom hates it when you have alligator breath.)

have your trendy coffee and save a monkey too.

Two weeks proudly and happily off of caffeine, I find myself in a chilly classroom on a Saturday morning with Shallom Berkman and his crew measuring, boiling, french-pressing, grinding, and whisking coffees and teas to taunt me. Urth Caffe has been taunting guests since 1989, when Shallom and his wife Jilla opened their first shop as a "business of passion."


Brilliantly self-righteous, speaking of the "cheap thrill" of winning over customers from Hollywood celebrities to Downtown Los Angeles hipsters with locally grown produce and elaborate latte art, Beckman's quest for culinary excellence is only half of his mission. Beginning with a run-in with Jorge, a Mexican man cultivating coffee in Peru in the late 1980s, Shallom, Jilla, and later their rosy-cheeked opera singing daughter took up the task of travelling from Colombia to East Africa to Japan to find farmers for whom coffee and tea were their livelihoods. Working with these communities, Shallom found their agricultural practices were becoming detrimental to their local eco-systems; specifically in Uganda, where the native Mountain Gorilla population was dwindling significantly along with their rain forests. By transforming farming methods and encouraging organic, heirloom, and fair trade philosophies (those not being the buzz words in the early 90s that they are today), the Beckman's tasty drinks have brought visible change to the world far outside of Beverly Hills and Santa Monica.

(source)
And, sipping from the four mossy green cups in front of me, I too feel empowered. Why not have my caffeine fix if it can also save the monkeys? Or perhaps that is just the caffeine talking.