Three food related items for your late lunchtime consideration:
- Preserving a Dress. A Burbank taxidermist has the job of preserving Lady Gaga’s meat dress. Actually, this was quite an interesting article. Luckily, the dress was frozen after it was worn (so no maggots, but it still smelled). It took more than a month to clean and preserve the meat, including treating it with bleach, formaldehyde and detergent to remove bacteria. Once it was preserved, it was reconditioned to be semi-pliable, glued the meat slabs to a mannequin outfitted with a pattern cut to resemble the original dress and then dyed it a dark red to resemble its color when Lady Gaga wore it. Here’s the real interesting part: where the meat came from! Fernandez, the designer, said he purchased about 40 pounds of beef for the dress from Palermo Deli in Granada Hills, where his Sylmar parents are longtime customers. He ended up using about 35 pounds of the meat for the dress and its accompanying hat, shoes and purse. Daniel Vega, co-owner of Palermo Deli, said he selected cuts of beef that would hold together and would not be dripping blood, after Fernandez explained what he intended to do with it. The beef was priced at about $3.99 a pound.
- Bad News for Bacon. According to Planet Money, pork belly futures are no longer being traded. Pork bellies, otherwise known as bacon, were at one time the most popular product on the trading floor in Chicago. The futures market was created when traders realized they could buy up shares of frozen pork bellies in Chicago warehouses and sell them off when demand for bacon rose. March was always a good time for pork bellies, because of Easter brunch. The really big season for bellies, though, was late summer — tomato season. But today? The industry standard is more of a fresh belly, they don’t want a frozen belly. Further, the demand for bacon is no longer changes with the season. Bacon is good anytime!
- You Fried What? The obligatory country fair article on fried food, this time from the Orange County Fair. This year’s fair brings… fried butter, battered and fried bacon; bacon dipped in chocolate, then battered and fried; fried bacon sandwiches; fried grilled cheese; fried quesadilla strips; and something called the coronary combo that included the fried butter and chocolate covered bacon. Don’t like that? How about brownies, Oreos, Klondike ice cream bars and avocados — all battered and deep-fried. There are even fried Kool-Aid balls.
