THE BOOK OF FIVE MEATS
By Oberon, the Irish Wolfhound
(with a tiny bit of help from Atticus because he has thumbs)
Okay, I’m going to write this, but writing a book is hard—especially with Atticus as your editor. NO, ATTICUS, YOU LEAVE THAT IN BECAUSE IT’S TRUE.
I’m going to tell you the truth about meat now, and it’s the undisputed truth among people who aren’t vegetarians! Are you ready? Here it is: Meat is delicious!
But some meats are more delicious than others. Some meat is overcooked; some meat is spoiled; and some meat is served in 24-hour waffle joints, and it is my duty as a hound to help you avoid the terrible fate of eating any of it. I know that pedantic people—and I should totally get a snack for using pedantic properly—pedantic people could argue with the details of my classification system and say in a snooty voice, “Well, actually, Oberon, blah blah blah,” but I’m not going to listen to them because they said actually with an unacceptable amount of snoot. Even if they’re pedantic butchers, I won’t listen. Humans are omnivores, so what do they know? The way this hound sees it, there are five basic kinds of meat, and I classify them like this: Beef! Poultry! Seafood! Deli! And Sausage!
You are not allowed under any circumstances to leave off the capital letter or the exclamation point when talking about these meats as one of the Five Meats. This is vitally important.
For example: When speaking of beef bouillon or ground beef or other recipe names or ingredients, leave out the capital letter and exclamation point. But when you are in the mood for Beef! for dinner, you capitalize and include the exclamation point. You will be excited and enjoy your dinner more: I promise. You will sit down with your family and say, “We are having Beef!” and there will be joy. I will delve into the other four meats in other volumes—and yes, I am including freshwater creatures in Seafood! because there wasn’t a single human in charge of dictionaries who had the foresight to call it Waterfood!—but this volume is dedicated to the meat nearest and dearest to my heart: Sausage!
In this volume, I’m going to share with you some Sausage! wisdom and recipes that Atticus and I have accumulated over the years and I hope you will find them delectable and filling and maybe you will even have some hot poodle dreams after you eat them like I do.
A warning before I begin: Follow all food safety rules that humans say you should follow. Humans are very good about establishing rules so I will direct you to one of them if you don’t already know how to keep food safe to eat. All of the humans who follow cooking rules are on TV and have bad haircuts.
And TURBO WARNING: You should probably not share these recipes with your own hounds unless you are giving them Immortali-Tea like Atticus is giving me. Hounds will eat almost anything, of course, but human food is not always good for them. Excessive fats in Sausage! could give them pancreatitis, onions can poison their blood, and so on. Enjoy these recipes with your human friends and family and then give your hounds a belly rub and a safe snack to eat.
I should probably also mention that my recipes will have two different settings:
1) “I can do that!” in green text and
2) “GODS BELOW, OBERON, ARE YOU SHITTING ME?” in red text and said in the precise tone of voice Atticus uses when he feels his boundaries have been violated. And yes, I made Atticus do all of these things for testing. You have to test recipes before you print them and we conducted extensive tests because I wanted this book to be good.
Shall I give you an example of these settings from my ingredients?
1) A stick of salted butter from your local store, or
2) A stick of salted organic pasture butter made from the milk of Brighid’s personal heifer and churned by an Amish bachelor named Jedediah on a Pennsylvania homestead. I’m not kidding about Jedediah. Atticus had him whip up a batch on a Tuesday and the man knows his butter; he’s like a Butter Wizard. He might sell you a pound for three ancient Roman denarii or a favor to be named later.
And why do I do this? Better ingredients, better Sausage! Oberon’s!
To be continued… along with “The Way of Poultry. The Way of Beef. The Way of Seafood. The Way of Deli.”