Connections to Home

So I finally figured out how to make sure you know where your food comes from.

Keep the cuts of meat as lively as possible. The other day I was cleaning about 20 or so tongues in a giant stainless steel sink when I thought about all those big, thick, sticky tongues that lick me every day when I milk the cows. I actually had to sit down afterwards and I'm pretty sure that I looked white in the face. Some of the tongues had cute little black spots on them, others were ripped slightly where the butcher's knife knicked the tip a little bit. My job was to clean the blood and excess skin off of them so that they could soak in a salt type base for 3 days and then in water and wine for 15 days after that. I suppose this makes the meat tender enough to eat.

I've never experienced sorrowful feelings for butchered animals but these tongues hit me in a strange way - almost the same feeling as when we perform sugery on a twisted stomach. All I could see was Anne's poor tongue sitting in a pool of blood in the bottom of a sink. As Jared mentioned, *when your parent's say all cows go to a good place, well they meant a strange shop where people are throwing tongues around and pretending to slap them in eachother's faces to freak them out.* It makes me question what *respecting the whole animal* means exactly. Is is using the animal to its fullest, without wasting any of it - or is it supposed to mean that we shouldn't throw meat around in a joking way?

The shenanigans that go on at Dario Cecchini's shop are hilarious, lets just say there are many uses for the meat that is butchered there.