Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Nobody really likes cranberry sauce


Cranberry sauce hasn't changed much since I was a kid. My mom used to pop a tin, slice up that can-shaped jelly into a loaf, and it followed the turkey around as everyone took the smallest amount they could get away with. At least now the jelly stuff has whole cranberries in it, but it is a testament to the near-universal dislike of cranberry sauce that, even though we have it on sale year around, it only ever sees any orders around during turkey time.

I decided I could make it better. So after playing around with a few cans, I came up with a recipe. I had some friends over for a turducken yesterday, and at the end of the day there wasn't a drop of cranberry sauce. Here is what you do:

1. Empty a can of cranberry sauce into a small pan.

2. Add a quarter stick of butter (butter, much like bacon, makes everything better!)

3. Throw in a pinch of cloves, a pinch of cinnamon, and salt and pepper to taste.

4. Let it simmer, stirring occasionally, until the butter melts, and the jelly turns into a thick sauce.

Serve warm, also tastes great on roast pork, chicken, and pretty much any game meat.

Happy Turkey Day!


Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Newsletter v.20


Meat News!
Volume 20 - Octo-fest-erific!


Standard disclaimer and un-subscribe info: This is a newsletter that is being sent to you because I thought you might be interested or because you requested a subscription. If you are not interested, the un-subscribe link at the bottom of the page will send us away forever. If you are not interested, have told me so but are still receiving this letter, don't worry, we'll all be dead soon.




Stock up Now, The Sky is Falling!

Dance!


And the seas are a rising!



Autumn is in the air, and here in Southern Nagoya it smells a lot like diesel fumes. Still, I know that sometime in the next month, we will have a good solid four or five days of great weather before packing it in until next spring. I think I’ll be barbecuing a turkey.

There are a whole lot of holidays coming up soon that require big meats; turkeys, ducks, hams, roasts, etc. (hint: we sell these things). A lot of you are probably already getting very excited about this so I feel a bit bad about being the bearer of bad news. You see, most likely, this will be the last holiday season ever.

You might have noticed that this past summer was a bit hot and long, but next year’s will be worse. Global warming is here and the end is nigh. On top of that, it looks like China will be invading sometime soon, and the Japanese economic situation continues to be compared to Greece. And I think we all know what happened to Greece, from the photos in the tourist brochures it pretty much looks like there’s not anything left but homo-erotic pottery shards, stone rubble, and some goats.

Within a year we could all be huddled up around the base of Mt. Fuji watching the waters rise. While that on its own is enough to comprise a dire situation, there is one thought that could make it even worse. That is the image of everyone in Japan thinking, in unison, “damn, I wish we’d bought twice as much meat from The Meat Guy last year!” My visions of grandiose are not so inflated that I can claim to help alleviate the first part of next year’s catastrophe, but at least I can help with the second. I urge you, for the sake of dispelling any future regrets, to bulk up your meat orders while there’s still time!




Turkeys

Kangalicious!


We've got our birds all sorted out just in time for Canadian Thanksgiving, eh? Get yours now or place an order to be delivered later in
the season.
Frozen


Product ID T006

Size 10-12
LB
Cost

4,980 Yen



Tirol Cheese




One of our awesome new cheeses from the Austrian Alps. This is super for fondue, or just for adding a bit of stink in your life.
Chilled



Product
ID
CZ005

Size about
450 gm
Cost

1,485 Yen



Pie Set




Dooms Day Bargain!! 13% OFF a pack of three meat pies. Offer ends October 10th.
Frozen




Product ID PI008

Size 3
Pies
Cost

1,170Yen









Awesome T-Shirt Give Away!
Order 10 Strip or 10 Ribeye Steaks and get a free T-Shirt!
Can be worn wet or dry!
Write: "Free T-shirt" in the comments section when you checkout.
Limit 1 per order. Offer ends 10/10/10
10 Striploin Steaks - Free Shipping!
330 grams each, thick and meaty!
9,980 Yen

10 Ribeye Steaks - Free Shipping!
300 grams each, juicy and tasty! (and meaty)
9,980 Yen


1Yen Cheese! or Maybe 1 Yen Pizza! Over the last couple of months we've been getting in samples of various cheeses, we've also had our pizza supplier mess up a couple of times and send us the wrong kind of pizza. If you'd like to get your hands on some of this for a penny it's yours. You can't choose which one you'll get, it will all depend on what happens to be closest to your meat box. You won't be able to find this on the site, the only way to order is through the link below. Limit one per customer (we will think you're cheeky if you
try and order more than one). Offer ends Sunday, October 10th, 7:43PM (we expect you to purchase something else in addition to this 1 yen surprise)



cheese

Buy
Now!



By the way, MB PRINTS makes all of our t-shirts. Great service in English, inexpensive,
fast. They rock! Literally, Mike, the owner, is a drummer in a rock-n-roll band!

If for some reason, next year does not turn out to be a global catastrophe, we apologize for the inconvenience.




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Thursday, August 12, 2010

Food for Thawt


I read a lot about food, I probably think more about food (mostly meat) than just about anyone you know. In fact, the only thing that I think about more than food is boobies...but I'll leave that for a different post.

I ran across a couple interesting reads this week. The first is a great Huffington Post piece written by an online friend of mine, and follow meat lover, Craig "Meathead" Goldwyn, owner of the site AmazingRibs.com. Craig examines some of the arguments for and against including meat in your diet and has succeeded in cultivating a very civil discourse in the comment
s section. I recommend checking it out, his site is also a great reference point for all things barbecue related.

The second article, "Is Food the New Sex" comes from a writer at the Hoover Institute, Mary Eberstadt. I have no idea who she is but she does take an interesting look at the recent trend with consumers to demand more information about where their food comes from, and the emergence of using food choice as a morality indicator.

I have benefited greatly from consumers seeking greater transparency in their food choices. Whenever people are paying more attention to what they eat, niche marketers like me can benefit. This is because we know a lot more about each product that we sell than your typical employee of a supermarket with tens of thousands of pre-packaged items in a never ending turn-over of "New and Improved!" product roll-outs. My business, and thousands more, might not exist at all if customers weren't demanding more choices than traditional retailers provide. This is a great thing.

Unfortunatley, this greater interest in food has some shortcomings as well. The market is incredibly fragmented with labels like "organic", "sustainable", "humane", "natural", etc. thrown around, many times with little relevance to the actual meaning of the words. It's confusing for those of in the food industry, even more so for consumers I suspect. The result is that these days there is a lot more data available regarding your food choices, but not necessarily more knowledge.

In the article I mentioned above the author refers to a housewife in the 50's compared to a single woman in modern times with the conclusion that the modern consumer is much more aware of what they eat. That's only half the story though, in the 1950's over 80% of the population was less than 1 generation away from production agricultural. Either they had grown up on a farm, or their parents had grown up on a farm. They might not have read labels closely or been too concerned about whether their beef was grass or grain fed, but that's because they had most likely spent a lot of time witnessing the actual work of producing food. They had knowledge of where it came from so they weren't frightened by it.

These days, in the developed world, less than 2% of the population is involved in production agricultural and the other 98% are several generations removed. For most people farms are either something quaint like a post-card, or something frightening like a factory. To overcome this lack of knowledge, they have a thirst for data and often get mislead. I don't really have a point here, just something to think about.

If you actually do manage to get through the article, you'll notice a pretty distinctive right-wing tilt to it. For the record, I don't agree with most of it. She actually claims that the sexual revolution was a bad thing, that's like saying loose women are a bad thing, pretty messed up...

Here is a picture of a meat pie, which is the closest thing on our site to the intersection where food and sex collide.


Q. Who loves ya?
A. The Meat Guy loves ya!

What do you think?

Thursday, April 22, 2010

The Meat Guy

Meat News!
Volume 17 - Bases are Golden!



Standard disclaimer and un-subscribe info: This is a newsletter that is being sent to you because I thought you might be interested or because you requested a subscription. If you are not interested, the unsubscribe link at the
bottom of the page will send us away forever. If you are not interested, have told me so but are still receiving this
letter it is because pirates have taken over the internet. It's not my fault.


ALL YOUR MEAT ARE BELONG TO US!

All Your Meat

Have you done your part to fight meat piracy?



A lot of people don’t know this, but we’ve claimed exclusive distributions rights for all of the meat in all of Japan. We’re aiming to be like the recording and entertainment companies. In our, admittedly, Meat Guy centric view, all meat that doesn’t come directly from us is unauthorized. Remember, the consumption of pirated meat is crippling to (our) artistic creativity. It’s like stealing the lifeblood from babies, in this case we are using a rather broad definition of “baby” to include one particular chubby, middle-aged man, and by “lifeblood” we mean “money for beer”.

That’s not to say that pirates aren’t cool, because they are

very cool. In fact, The Meat Guy is pretty much the only online gourmet meat purveyor that is endorsed by 9 out of 10 pirates, impressive considering that pirates rarely agree on anything. The only bad pirates are meat
pirates, although if you’ve been to prison you might have other pirates on the “bad” list.

Unfortunately we don’t have any sort of enforcement authority for our rights, so we’re pretty much powerless to stop you from buying meat somewhere else. But you should know that, if you do, you are probably risking some sort of eternal damnation.

Also, Golden Week is coming up and we are selling a bunch of stuff really cheap so that you can have nice barbecues.

Offer ends Tuesday, April 26th, around 10:00 AM or so.




BOOM!...Steak

Turkey


Named after the sound this big boy will make when you throw it on the grill. These steaks are cut huge-iliciously at 450 grams, 16 ounces, a whole pound-o-steak. One of our suppliers offered us a good deal on some corn-fed, USDA choice striploins and we snapped them up. If you are able to eat this whole steak in one sitting, we will sell you another one for the same price!
Frozen
Product IDUSB010
Sizeabout
450gm
Cost

1,980
Yen


10% OFF

1,782 Yen


Sausage
& Kebab Set

sausage and kebab set


A little taste of a whole lotta good things. You can get a pack each of our Beer Brats, Irelander, Maple, and Beef sausages as well as a pack each of Lamb, Beef, and Pork kebabs. That's 15 skewers and 28 sausages - a feast! There is something here for everyone, even the kids will be happy.

Frozen --- Free Shipping!
Product
ID
SET102

Sizeabout
2 Kg
Cost

4,980
Yen


10% Off

4,482 Yen


Baby
Turkey
Baby Turkey


I've got too many of these little birds in the warehouse and it's time they
were adopted. That's why they are 50% off!







Frozen
Product IDT002

Sizeabout
1.6 Kg
Cost

2,180
Yen


50% Off

1,090 Yen





grill38,000
Yen!
33% Off!
You save
18,800 Yen!





small grill14,100 Yen!
25% Off!
You save
4,700 Yen!



FREE WILD BOAR YAKI
NIKU SLICES WITH ANY PURCHASE! JUST WRITE "MEAT
PIRATE"
IN
THE COMMENTS SECTION WHEN YOU CHECKOUT AND WE'LL GIVE
YOU A PACK FOR FREE! NO STRINGS! ONE PER CUSTOMER
PLEASE! ENDS 4/26, 10:00 AM-ish.

wild boar




We will be closed for Golden Week from April 29th and will re-open on May 6th. Last order for delivery during that time should be made by Monday, April 26.

In Kobe on April 29th? Come taste our sausage at Price Clubon Rokko Island!

In Niseko? EZOSEAFOODS is a great new Seafood business that can deliver first rate Seafood at great prices all around Japan -- try them out! They stock some of our finest products.

Ninjas are also totally cool.


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Friday, February 26, 2010

I Bet I Bento Better Than U Bento

It's true! I'm a god of bentos, I'm bento magic, I'm bentorrific!! Well, at least if you're 5, then you think I'm pretty cool. Fortunately, I do have a 5 year old, and an 8 year old, who live with me all the time, no matter how hard I try to discourage them. And because of them, I often find myself in situations which require me to rub my bleary eyes twice, gulp down coffee while it's still too hot, and slap together some sort of lunch in a box for an event that I just heard about.

If you have children in Japan, then you probably realize that the lowly bento is perhaps the most important tool in showing filial love. One crappy bento and you're kids will get picked on at school and their teachers will look down and shake their heads next the time they see you. It will be obvious that you don't really love them, and when they grow up they'll be destitute low-lifers, or worse...vegetarians...

That's a lot of pressure, but I'm usually up for the challenge. What do you think?



Above: Polish sausages smiles. Notice the green pea noses, they were still frozen when the pic was taken but I think they had thawed out by lunchtime. This actually started out as a bentoesque representation of the smiley/frowny drama mask, but at the last minute I made them both smiley. A five-year-old doesn't need any extra drama in his life.
Below: Sliced deli ham in the shape of stars. Ham-Stars!! That's right, I put ham-stars in the lunch. That's why I rock.




Above: That's some karage made from chicken tenders. I call this one "mister grumpinessy".
Below: Pepperoni Pita bread sandwiches. Notice the excellent use of color in the vegetable section.




Above: With the polish sausage, it's not just for smiley faces, also makes great belly buttons!
Below: Leftover Black Forest Ham on Panini bread. Rockin' the colors with the produce, of course.




Above: Hot dogs on hot dog buns with cous cous. This is fusion bento.
Below: More ham on Panini. I might have left those taters in the fryer a bit too long, but a big glob of ketchup brightens everything up and brings balance to the piece. I'm a bentorista!




Above: Maki-sushi but with ham and some karage. That's two meat groups in one bento. Bentabulous! Disclaimer: I didn't really make sushi rice, just left over normal rice but with some ham and mayo, kids can't tell the difference.
Below: Another hot-dog. Ok, I admit it. This one is kind of weak.



Above: To get this magnificent effect, you cut the hot dog in half, then you splay it half way, twice. Drop them in boiling water and the legs will spread (this doesn't work with women). Then tell your kids that they've got hot dog octopus!

One more final hint, if you want to be a true "Bentador" then it's imperative that your kids actually eat everything in the box. That way their teacher will know that they like your bentos, so they probably like you, so you are probably not a total ogre. The best way to do this--don't feed them any breakfast.

-TheBentoatorGuy