An Omnivore’s Dilemma

Today when I opened the Delicious Bookmarks app on my phone, the first thing I saw was “Spiced Pork and Apricot Stew”. Sounds amazing, right? I put together the shopping list and after work I picked up the ingredients.

The recipe calls for 2.5 lbs of boneless pork shoulder, excess fat removed, in 2 inch pieces. Living where I live, there’s no local butcher. I therefore trek to the grocery and find that my options are pork shoulder, bone in, the size of my head or larger. Improvise, adapt, overcome.

I lug the smallest shoulder – 7.75 lbs, for the record – to the checkout with the rest of my supplies. There’s an audible thunk when it hits the conveyor belt. Fast forward home, where I unpack the massive chunk of meat and the rest of the supplies are shuffled into appropriate locations.

This is where I tell you that I’m not a fan of pork. Never have been. In the last two years, thanks to some experimental recipes, I’ve declared a tenuous truce with pork (provided it does not include fried pork chops). It seems that recipes involving fruit work best for me, so the stew sounds PERFECT. I just have to figure out how to whittle down this massive slab of meat.

I start by hacking it in half. “Hacking” is not an exaggeration, by the way. I manage to cleave the beast and have to rope the spouse into putting the other half away before it begins taunting my weakness. I’m still not quite sure who won – me or the shoulder.

I spent TWO HOURS attempting to debone and unfattify that GD pork shoulder. TWO HOURS. My neck hurts, my hands are cramped and I’ve managed to mildly gross myself out by identifying the anatomical parts before chopping into them. Note to self: objectify your food. It’s okay. You can be thankful for the pig later, when you’re not admiring the striations of its subscapularis. THANKS ANAT AND PHYS. After all that work, and exhausting my most creative invectives, I’m left with a pile of meat and a pile of fat -which appear to be roughly the same size. The good news: I’m back in the stated goal range of 2.5 lbs.

At any rate, I now understand why they make this unforgiving section of meat into SPAM. I like SPAM. I especially like it fried. And from now on, I will eat SPAM like other people grudge-fuck. Payback for the two hours of my life I will NEVER GET BACK. And that stew had better be motherfucking delicious. Tomorrow. When I’m not too tired to make it after fighting a pig shoulder.