ODG Eats

I'm almost done eating my 10 pounds of chitlins, and I'm kind of tired of talking about them, so I thought I'd take a moment of self-indulgence to talk about some of my guiding philosophies regarding food as these are some of the few convictions to which I cling tightly. Food waste and disparity I believe that food waste is both one of the greatest and one of the most easily rectifiable problems in the world today. Estimates for the amount of food waste in the US alone  range from 45-60 million tons . That translates to 145 billion meals, or, if you're more economically-minded, over $450,000,000,000. That's 450 billion dollars, and that's just in the United States. Worldwide, the estimates increase to 2.5 billion tons. To make that even more ridiculous, a little math tells us that, if just the food we waste was used to feed all 8 billion people on the planet, that would be 985 meals per person. Just to make this absolutely crystal clear: every single person on t...

 If you'd told me a year ago that for dinner I'd be cooking BBQ chicken feet and chitlin fried rice for dinner, I'd have thought, "Eating it? Sure. Cooking it? Naaaah..."  And I would have been wrong. I started off by marinating my chicken feet in some Japanese barbecue sauce. I got it all mixed in and rubbed over the alien hands.  I let those sit for a while before tossing them into my Dutch oven with a mix of sesame oil, rice vinegar, and soy sauce. Got them simmering, flipped the paws a few times to get a little color on them, then added in the rest of my ingredients. I decided to add in some peeled and diced Roma tomato, some diced onion, and a couple of sliced mushrooms. I also poured in a bit of red wine and water to give everything some liquid to cook in.  I covered that up and let it simmer for a couple hours while my chitlins boiled on a separate burner. When the chitlins were finished boiling, I dredged/egged/bread crumbed them again for my fried rice. T...

When this post goes live, I will (hopefully) be about 2/3 of the way through a 24 hour stream of 7 Days to Die. I had to plan ahead for the stream, making sure that I'd taken time off of work, that I would have something to eat on breaks when I was hungry, that I'd have energy drinks stocked, etc., so I decided to make a pot of stew and keep it simmering while I stream. I picked up some turnip greens at Kroger over the weekend, so I figured "why not do chitlins and turnip greens?" A few minutes later, I noticed the delicious irony of eating soul food while killing zombies. I've gotten a lot of mileage out of that one. I dredged the chitlins in flour seasoned with salt and pepper, and I chopped the greens up a bit. Really simple prep work for that shit. I started off by browning the chitlins in butter, then added in my chopped greens to sauté with them. Once the greens had cooked down some, I added in some roughly chopped vidalia onion because that shit makes every...

Alright, so the wontons/dumplings/whatever-the-fucks turned out really well, so what's next on the chitlin journey? You guessed it: it's pasta time, bitches! After inspecting the rest of the chitlins I boiled before making the wontons (I've got most of them frozen and am thawing/boiling them in batches), I dredged them in flour seasoned with salt and black pepper. I'm doing the extra inspection because it's my first time doing all of this process, and I'm finding little bits of membrane that I didn't get off pre-boil; they're a lot faster to pull off once it's all boiled.  Luckily, I had plenty of my wonton filling left over, so I didn't have to do any veggie prep. Just dredge the chitlins, boil the pasta, and prep is done. I fried the chitlins in butter and olive oil, probably about a tablespoon and a half to two tablespoons of each. Remember, the meat's already cooked, so this was more just to give a nice crispy texture to the meat. Once th...

Last time I tried to make chitlin-wrapped wontons, it was an inedible disaster. So, this time, I boiled the chitlins for 2 hours before doing anything else.  I seasoned up the boil with a bit of salt, some peppercorns, and a few bay leaves. After the boiling was done, I drained the chitlins and stuck them in a plastic bowl for the night to cook up the next day. Aside from that, everything else followed pretty much the same pattern. I diced/minced up a couple radishes, a slice of vidalia onion, four cloves of garlic, a couple mushrooms, some green bell pepper, and a few thin slices of roma tomato. I also tossed in a red cabbage leaf.  All of those veggies were lightly sautéed in butter with a little salt and pepper. While those veggies were cooking, I laid out the chitlins and tried to figure out how to wrap the veggies up with them. I eventually settled on wrapping the veggies in one piece, wrapping a second piece around the bottom, and skewering them together. After that, it...

Do you know how fucking long it takes to fucking clean ten goddamn pounds of fucking chitterlings ("chitlins")? Well, if you're my punk ass, it takes 2 fucking hours. It's bullshit. I hate it. I'll probably be doing it again next month sometime. "But, ODG," you ask, "why would you even start out dealing with this shit?" Well, let me tell you: chitlins are cheap as fuck. Ten pounds cost me $21. Incidentally, a pound of chicken feet only cost $2. I bought that, too, because I FUCKING HATE MYSELF. I decided I wanted to create something new and exciting because I'm a fucking moron. I minced up some radish, vidalia onion, and orange or yellow bell pepper. I don't even remember anymore. Then I also minced up some garlic, red cabbage, parsley, and mushroom because I needed more things to hate about my day.  Remember the chicken feet? I scraped what little skin, tendon, and fat I could off of the fuckers. That took way too fucking long and I...