Grrl Power #1448 – Meat dish concatenizer
Sydney hadn’t called on the part of her brain that stores normal meat dishes, and then suddenly the dam broke, and every recipe, meat related or not, spilled out.
Maxima does have an extensive shopping list, but an Earther can’t just go and buy a food replicator and expect it to work. For one, the plug isn’t compatible. But primarily, there’s no way something like that would run on 120 volts, or even 240. She’ll also have to buy the equivalent of a Mr. Fusion for each replicator too, and that just for household appliances.
From my understanding, the hardest thing about de-vegetarianizing is that the texture of meat becomes quite off putting, which honestly is understandable. A good piece of meat is about the best thing there is, but a gristly steak, or a drumstick with a bunch of tendons or a rib with some of those floaty cartilage bits at the end can be really off-putting, even if you’re fully on board with the omnivorousness. And I can see where even the nicest slice of a perfectly prepared porterhouse wouldn’t be cromulent to a vegetarian if they’re used to eating anything but meat.
Say you’re the Demolition Man, and you’re biting into your underground sewer burger, and you’re told it’s actually a rat burger. You’d probably pause before your next bite, and that’s if you don’t spit it out. Sure, 90% of your concern is that chances are, the rat meat isn’t USDA certified and you don’t know what kind of diseased meat you’re currently grinding up with your teeth. But part of that is reflexive. “Oh, no! Rat meat is gross!” But is it? People eat rabbit all the time. Also, I imagine, squirrel, groundhog, beaver, and all kinds of other rodents. Rat meat probably isn’t all that popular, not because it tastes especially weird or anything (I have no idea, maybe it does) but I have to assume that any animal under a certain body weight becomes more trouble than it’s worth to slaughter for its meat. Depending on the species of rat, they weigh from like a 0.25 to 1.5 pounds? And how much of that is meat? Honestly rabbits seems like they’d be on the edge of that effort/reward curve. Of course, any food is food if you’re hungry enough. I just mean there’s a few reasons we don’t mass-farm tiny mammals for their meat.
Anyway, I guess my point with the Demolition Man ratburger thing is that it isn’t so much that rat meat is gross, it’s that most people aren’t acclimated to the idea of eating it. I think there’s part of our brains that recognizes that all meat is kind of gross, up until we decide it isn’t. Chewing muscle and fat tissue that someone used to use to use as a leg… Just don’t think about it too much. Vegetarians arguably have thought about it too much. Though I suppose there are some people who are vegetarian strictly due to the reduced carbon footprint, I think the vast majority make the switch due to ethicalness and/or the gross factor.
I’m almost ready with the new vote incentive. I have the nude version almost done, but not the clothed one. I’ll try and have that ready for next Monday’s comic. It’s a non-censored (obviously) version of one of the panels from the topless watch party, but honestly, I got kind of bored with it, and started working on a different picture that I like quite a bit more. It’s actually quite far along as well, but I realized it’s kind of… spoilery? I think I need to wait on that one till the tournament progresses a little further.
Ah! I thought I had more time till March. I’m bad at looking at dates apparently.
Here is Gaxgy’s painting Maxima promised him. Weird how he draws almost exactly like me.
I did try and do an oil painting version of this, by actually re-painting over the whole thing with brush-strokey brushes, but what I figured out is that most brushy oil paintings are kind of low detail. Sure, a skilled painter like Bob Ross or whoever can dab a brush down a canvas and make a great looking tree or a shed with shingles, but in trying to preserve the detail of my picture (eyelashes, reflections, etc) was that I had to keep making the brush smaller and smaller, and the end result was that honestly, it didn’t really look all that oil-painted. I’ll post that version over at Patreon, just for fun, but I kind of quit on it after getting mostly done with re-painting Max.
Patreon has a no-dragon-bikini version of of the picture as well, naturally.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
USDA certified meat? The rat burger might be healthier.
Yeah, after watching the news the last couple weeks, was thinking the same
Why do you think there is a ban on most US meats in the EU? Here is a hint, it’s not the price. In fact, only meats that are specifically free of all the crap they put in most US meats pass the bar to be imported into the EU because its that bad for you.
A few years ago – a couple of years before COVID – I suddenly (and thankfully temporarily) lost my sense of smell and taste. It went on for months. I can’t tell you how genuinely awful most foods are when you can’t taste them. Buttered toast was like eating oily cardboard – in fact, any foods seasoned with or cooked in oils was frankly awful. Meat was stringy and gross, doubly so if it was well marbled. Eating vegetables was like chewing grass. I lost about 45 pound (admittedly I needed to) simply because eating was so dreadful.
yea i was having trouble making myself eat because nothing felt good to eat without taste
My grandparents had a farm, and I had fun interacting with the cows, but at no point did I not understand that their entire existence was to become a freezer full of YUM!!!
Ahem…..
RABBITS ARE NOT RODENTS!!1
Rabbits have some of the key traits associated with rodents, particularly the large always-growing front teeth. They may not be classified under Rodentia, but they’re related. Also worth noting that the only Lagomorpha species besides rabbits and hares are pikas, which _look_ a lot more like mice than they do rabbits or hares.
They might be more closely related than two randomly picked species of mammal, but that doesn’t mean a whole lot. Rats and rabbits are about as closely related to each other as a tiger is to an anteater, or you are to a tree shrew. Don’t assume that just because two species look somewhat similar that they must be closely related.
Divergent evolution at play, mon ami. Rabbits are part of order of Lagomorpha, not Rodentia. To be more exact they are part of the Leporidae family, one of the two families within the Lagomorphia order, the other being Ochotonidae. Now that being said, Lagomorphia IS part of the Glires clade, the same as Rodentia, but being part of a clade does not make them relatives, as that’s more akin to having a common ancestor some 200 generations past. And while that could be viewed as a relation, but only in the most technical of terms, not genetic.
That’s convergent evolution.
Yeah, I know, but sometimes you have to let your pedantry out for a bit.
True, got my terms mixed up, I blame not being a native speaker.
Mellow Maxima is quite beautiful.
Waiter: Would you all like to see the menu? Or would you care to meet the main Dish of the Day?
Arthur: Meet?
Trillian: What is it?
Waiter: It’s an Ameglian Major Cow. I’ll bring him over.
Zaphod: Ok, we’ll meet the meat. that’s cool. [a large pig-like creature is wheeled in on a trolley]
Dish of the Day: Bweeeh… [clears throat] Good evening, Madam and Gentlemen. I am the main Dish of the Day. May I interest you in parts of my body? [Arthur and Trillian go “Huh?”]
Ford: Oh, well.
Dish of the Day: Something off my shoulder, perhaps, braised in a little white wine sauce?
Arthur: Your shoulder?
Dish of the Day: Well, naturally mine, sir. Nobody else’s is mine to offer. [clears throat] The, uh, rump is very good, sir. I have been exercising and eating plenty of grain so there’s a lot of good meat there. [moos] Or a casserole of me, perhaps?
Trillian: You mean this animal actually wants us to eat it?
Ford: Me? I don’t mean anything.
—-That whole dialog is too good not to quote more of it—-
‘That’s absolutely horrible,’ exclaimed Arthur, ‘the most revolting
thing I’ve ever heard.’
‘What’s the problem Earthman?’ said Zaphod, now transfering his
attention to the animal’s enormous rump.
‘I just don’t want to eat an animal that’s standing there
inviting me to,’ said Arthur, ‘It’s heartless.’
‘Better than eating an animal that doesn’t want to be
eaten,’ said Zaphod.
‘That’s not the point,’ Arthur protested. Then he thought about it
for a moment. ‘Alright,’ he said, ‘maybe it is the point. I don’t
care, I’m not going to think about it now. I’ll just … er … I
think I’ll just have a green salad,’ he muttered.
‘May I urge you to consider my liver?’ asked the animal,
‘it must be very rich and tender by now, I’ve been force-feeding
myself for months.’
‘A green salad,’ said Arthur emphatically.
‘A green salad?’ said the animal, rolling his eyes disapprovingly
at Arthur.
‘Are you going to tell me,’ said Arthur, ‘that I shouldn’t have
green salad?’
‘Well,’ said the animal, ‘I know many vegetables that are
very clear on that point. Which is why it was eventually
decided to cut through the whole tangled problem and breed
an animal that actually wanted to be eaten and was capable of
saying so clearly and distinctly. And here I am.’
It managed a very slight bow.
‘Glass of water please,’ said Arthur.
Did Arthur consider asking the water first? I’m told it’s not very pleasant to be drunk.
Rats and mice specifically have a reputation that makes them offputting as food in ways that other rodents aren’t, and it’s not just about size. Larger rodents tend to be primarily herbivores, but rats and mice will literally eat anything they can bite that doesn’t taste like poison to them, will keep eating well beyond the point that other critters would consider their stomachs full, and will squeeze and chew their way into the most inaccessible places to look for it (often forgoing easier but less calorie-dense food to do it), while being entirely indiscriminate about where they poop, and having a continuous breeding cycle rather than a seasonal one. On top of which, the kinds of sanguivorous insects that like to eat/ride them like to ride humans (and dogs and cats) just as much and are very good at hiding, and tend to carry diseases that are even nastier to humans than to rodents, jump from victim to victim pretty much spontaneously, and to multiply extremely rapidly with a large animal to infest. They are literally the original reason that humans domesticated cats.
Humans didn’t domesticate cats. It’s accepted that cats are self-domesticated. They found that humans weren’t interested in eating them, but there were lots of tasty prey around humans (looking for what the humans were storing). It was an acceptable partnership for both sides, at least until the Catholic church decided that cats were only kept by ‘witches’. Which then led to some of the excuses for Jewish purges, because the ‘christians’ would end up with disease problems and the Jews (cleaner, with cats catching or driving off vermin) didn’t. So therefore the ‘Jews’ with their ‘evil’ cats were causing the problem.
Pretty sure the cats and witches thing where cats were purged is an urban legend.
Contrasting this to DaveB’s original post makes me wonder if meat-rats could be raised safely in captivity; most of the issues you cite seem like they would apply primarily to rats that are in the wild.
Jeebus Phucque…
Give that woman a Double Bacon Cheeseburger, and a Medium Rare Ribeye.
She can decide Stretch Goals from there.
Huh… the panel got me to thinking on which meat-based dish I would select first if calories (problem with weight gain) and high cholesterol weren’t a problem with me. I kept waffling between a thick medium double cheeseburger and a thick medium rare ribeye.
That’s exactly 7 I think, so a menu for one week. I’m very tempted to make them, though maybe not in a single week. About two months worth if I make one special. In the spirit of I’ll try anything once, I’m very interested, especially if it’s space veal that wants to be eaten (I don’t tend to eat veal or lamb or anything smarter than me).
That nudge is right about where the famous “down elevator button” is on the average human. It’s notorious for breaking tension, requiring a quick bathroom break, and inducing labor.
I always get a kick when someone goes into “ewww” because of something someone else eats. Case in point back in the mid 90’s there was a hamburger joint called “Vics Hamburger Haven” that specialized in “exotic” hamburgers. Off the top of my head from him I had Ostrich, Emu, Venison, Alligator, Rattlesnake, kangaroo , horse, and capybara which if you are unaware is the largest member of the rodent family to my knowledge. My bet for the ratburger was something similar to a capybara if not an actual one.
Now if y’all really want a gutcheck moment?
My list of yes i really ate that includes
Battered and fried Grasshoppers / locusts
Chocolate ant brittle
Hot Lix candy company used to put a meal worm at the bottom of a sucker they sold in Pismo Beach California
Boiled Crawfish with the heads on (you snap the head off and shlurp the goodies out of the head then eat the tail meat)
Deep Fried Mountain Oyster and Deep fried Turkey nuts
Oysters/clams/abelone I’ve pulled up from the mud shelled on the spot rinsed in the surf and then ate raw.
But the real Gut check is travel to a place where the locals are sneaky.
Christmas 2004 We are pulled into port for christmas eve. By we i mean The USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN CVN-72 and her escorts rolled in and you could hear the reels spinning behind every local.
Flash forward to 2200 hours (10pm if you don’t want to mess with conversion)
So my drunk drunk drunk ass is staggering back to the bay so i can hop back over there to the USS SHOUP DDG-86
as i am standing waiting for a taxi i spot an ubiquitous road side vendor selling “meat ona Stick”
well i’m three sheets to the wind and greasy sounds good. i grab a couple from him and there not bad. i polished off the two i had and said okay whats it made of.
His response……? Dog….. to which I replied “not terrible a little greasy thouh”
I’ve been vegan for a decade and I have so many weird feelings about this page. Meat just….. Isn’t food. It’s weird, it’s like, murder yknow? I think if we ever get matter replicator food, we should all do human meat for a bit just to maybe get a sense of the ethical landscape or something. Cuz animals do kinda have a right to life and autonomy and all that jazz, and they really can’t consent to being eaten or milked or bred against their will, and they do have a right to a state of nature.
I respect your work and this comic a lot, please don’t take any of this as criticism. But yeah meat is insanely fucking weird. I think processing my emotions about this page actually made me want to be vegan even *harder* and cheat vegetarian less often
I don’t understand veganism, but I don’t tell people that they can’t do it. The reason I don’t understand it is that we are physically _designed_ as omnivores. Historically, human diets were terrible, and borderline malnutrition, with things such as organ meats and eating proteins from all sources (including grubs and insects) bridging the gap between what could be gathered and nutrition requirements. It wasn’t until the last century that enough foods were moved around to fill in the nutritional gaps globally (and most people still hate eating some of them). What does that mean? “Meat” is food for humans as well as other animals. Do you think of lions, wolves, and other predators as being ‘murderers’ that should be stopped?
Anyway – the latest studies still show that most Vegans have a reduced intake of mean cysteine, histidine, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine, tryptophan, tyrosine, and valine.
From a health perspective, ovo-lacto vegetarianism or the fish eating one make more sense, while still eschewing “cruel” meat. Me? I grew up in a family that didn’t have that luxury, and I don’t have a problem taking care of an animal while knowing the end purpose. (BTW, don’t feel too badly about caged chickens. If you keep putting food in front of a chicken, they’ll happily stay in a nesting box all on their own. We’d do that during very bad weather, and they basically wouldn’t move.)
From a straight answer to your comment? Animals, in ‘autonomy’, the ‘state of nature’, are kill or be killed. If they feed on plants, they end up feeding another animal, and that animal then feeds the plants. That whole circle of life jazz. All we do is say ‘Nope, nope, these are OUR food, not yours!’ to the other predators. :) Seriously, go read up on what happens to deer populations when the predators are removed. It’s not pretty.
Meat is “seasoned” by whatever the animal eats. Rat is terrible. Possum is worse. Raccoon is subpar. Rabbits and squirrel, despite just being rats with good PR, are delicious.
No one loves meat more than a former vegan
About the rodent meat, first french colonists loved to eat beaver because they didn’t have the right to eat fat meat on a friday. They had a bishop send a petition to rome and the pope recognised that with their scally tail a semiaquatic living, beavers were a kind of fish and could be eaten during fasting.
Actually, rat meat *does* taste bad. All carnivores do, there’s a reason we almost exclusively eat herbivores. Carnivore meat is unhealthy*, so we evolved to find it gross. Also carnivores tend to need stronger muscles for explosive bursts, which makes for tougher, less palatable meat.
*evolutionarily speaking. We could raise it fine now, but in nature since carnivores have a longer food chain, accumulate more of the nasty stuff that transfers from prey to predator (parasites, some poisons like heavy metals…).
I have a friend who is obligate vegetarian. She can’t digest the proteins and fats in meat and eating meat makes her sick (and gives her diarrhea ). She makes a totally *killer* vegetarian lasagna, however, that I (complete omnivore) will happily consume in preference to badly prepared meat.
Vegans who say we should never eat or kill animals should read their damn Bible: animals were placed on earth to be dominated and eaten by man
Man has dominion over the animals, not the other way around
I’m getting Milliways vibes from Halo in panel 1.