#16: Breast Milk

Folks…

There are such things as boundaries. And there are such things as being brave enough to risk crossing them, despite what the consequences are. We’ve spoken of this in prior entries and we won’t belabor the point now, suffice to say that the true spirit of exploration does not settle for testing the boundaries of what’s known, but rather pushing itself ceaselessly towards the edge of the boundary of the UNKNOWN. Stretching the limits of what could even be considered limits to begin with.

And so we end up with tit milk. In short – the administrators and various associates behind this process-based project that implies motion through space and structure in time have themselves been growing older, as is inevitable, and as such have started to procreate and do the natural things that that act implies, and over the course of this project the idea of a couple of dear friends of this writer (who shall remain nameless from now into perpetuity, so please don’t even bother asking) had was to document the experience of drinking real actual human milk from a human. And so we did. Or rather our nameless, faceless, homeless, soulless tasting engineer did, for your edification, as is his duty. This is what he was built for. So watch him do it.

STEP ONE: you pump the milk. What, you didn’t think we were actually going to consume it straight from the tap, did you? You perverts. There are limits to what even this laboratory is willing to undertake. Also, please pause to recognize how uncomfortable and disturbing the sound of this freaking pump running is. We strongly advise against setting up this short video clip to run on an endless loop until you pass out, spontaneously ejaculate, or urinate on yourself, or some combination of all three. We advise against that.

So these are the liquid fruits of the solid labor put in by our dear friends. It doesn’t look like much, to be fair, but DID YOU KNOW:

• Unpasteurized raw human milk SEPARATES shortly after expression? When we received our sample it was separated more or less into cream and liquid. Very much like a former taste subject whose vile name we will never speak again.
• Tit milk spoils amazingly fast? Like, even after maybe two or three days in the fridge, it’s no longer suitable for human consumption? So for a change this taste test was performed on a DEADLINE – excitement!

DID YOU KNOW that it smells very strongly of cardboard? Did you know that it bears a remarkable similarity to raw cow’s milk? Do you know what that says about our similarity to beasts of the field? No I mean seriously, I’m asking

Obviously there was only one appropriate receptacle from which to consume what we suppose can only be described as literally “the milk of human kindness.” And of course it’s a rebel yell shot glass. Long live the south. Although speaking for the rest of the country I can say that we’ll all be just fine if you never rise again. It’s all good. Really. Relax

WE HAVE BECOME SIDE TRACKED. Here are the basics. The smell is very strong, and dense, but somehow simultaneously mild and overwhelming and the same time. Like, flat, but in your face all at once. When you buy cow’s milk from the store (and we’ve discovered in recent years that people’s opinion on milk varies to a wildly disconcerting degree – we personally love it and have it with every meal) the pasteurization process imbues it with a certain sweetness that is not actually naturally occurring in milk from most animals. This is essential to its preservation and availability in stores as an object of sustenance, so we really can’t object, but it does render what is essentially the water of life (whiskey notwithstanding) somewhat adulterated.

If you can sense a mild degree of trepidation in the tone of the transcription of the relation of the thoughts of the tasting engineer on this particular subject, then you’re remarkably perceptive as an audience member and deserve both congratulations and also condolences. Here’s why:

1. The thought of consuming fluids that were produced by another human is a daunting thing. There’s a degree of intimacy that’s inherent in the process that we’re leapfrogging here for the sake of science and bravery and exploration, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It’s a testament to the friends of this project that all involved were able to put that aside for the benefit of analysis and cruxability (okay I just made that word up, sorry) and progress and advancement and whatever such.
2. If you stop to think about it, we (almost all of us anyway) grew up on this shit. It’s the most basic functional thing that mammals do, after procreation: nursing. The process of producing and consuming breast milk is one of the most central things that has ensured our survival as a species. BUT
3. All of that happened a long time ago in most of our lives. (This is assuming there aren’t any 2 year olds reading this blog. If there are, what’s up preternaturally intelligent and capable kids! Have fun ruling the world some day. Just don’t ever read a poem called “Ozymandias.” It’s a real bummer) We’ve all long since forgotten what the actual taste of breast milk is like. Which is perhaps why this particular entry might draw some attention. Because who doesn’t want to know? Who doesn’t want to get back to the cradle? BUT
4(last point, I promise). Who isn’t a little scared by that idea?

So here’s what it’s like to be overwhelmed by the taste of something. It wasn’t NOT sweet, but it wasn’t sweet, it wasn’t necessarily salty or overpowering in the way raw cow’s milk is, it was just… not what you’d expect. A LOT of not what you’d expect. Concurrent with the aroma, the flavor was mild but somehow massive at the same time. Flat like, well, cardboard is the thing I keep coming up with, but the phrase “liquid distilled overwhelming flat wet cardboard” is just stupidness in its pure essence so I won’t say that, let’s just say that it has a complex mixture of flavors and leave it at that.

Actually, no. I shouldn’t say that. It tasted… honest. Decent. Like the person who produced it had a decent diet and ate okay things. Much like the colloquial aphorisms about certain types of food influencing the types of fluids that the people who consume them produce (i.e. asparagus and such), we can now verify with some certainty that that assertion holds true, at least in the regard of this one limited situation.

Ok. So there’s that. If that’s all there was to this experiment it probably wouldn’t be very interesting. So what, you drank breast milk. Almost all of us have, and any dude who can knock a lady up has a decent shot at getting another taste if he’s polite enough about it. But sometimes you take things to another level. Sometimes a suggestion from a close and beloved person transforms an ordinary experiment into a deed of legend. Sometimes you climb upon the back of a dragon and ride it to glory.

For the benefit of any non-drinkers in the audience (are there really any people who read this and don’t consume alcohol? If so, I find you fascinating) this is what’s known in the parlance of our times as a “Caucasian” or a “White Russian” if you’re not into the whole brevity thing. It is THE drink of choice for gentlemen of leisure and distinction, bowlers and golfers alike, Chinamen and rug pee-ers, urban achievers and bums (who lost btw) the world over, it is the one and only thing you can do with whatever amount of breast milk didn’t fit into the original tasting vessel. Normally prepared with vodka, kahlua, and cream or half and/or half or milk or some equivalent thereof, we have stepped out into true strangeness by substituting the latter ingredient for fluids that came out of a human. What you have here is a breast milk white russian. Also fuck the Eagles

YES YES YES SHUT UP WITH THE MOVIE REFERENCES HOW DOES IT TASTE ALREADY

Delicious. Better than a normal white russian, hands down. The problem, you see, with most cocktails is that they’re usually sickeningly sweet, much to their detriment. There’s a small but growing contingent of mixologists who know how to prepare a good savory cocktail (because not everything is supposed to taste like fucking candy) but the wave has still not hit full crest, and if there are any aspiring drink makers out there I would strongly suggest that you put some sort of savory white russian in your arsenal, perhaps using some raw cow’s milk (not that that’s legal or anything, so I technically can’t endorse it, but I also can’t endorse any of the things that I’ve ever written about in this space, so what else is new) or breast milk if you find a game subject because take it from us, the kahlua provides more than enough sweetness to balance the drink, and the raw robust flavor of the milk gives the beverage in question a body that it’s usually sorely lacking.

So. What’s the final verdict. On its own, it’s very good, but more savory than sweet. Very creamy and robust. As an ingredient in things? Oh my god it’s amazing. Cocktails, cream sauces, hell, put it on your corn flakes if you’re really feeling brave. Here’s the thing, though:

Get over it. The strangeness inherent in this experiment is only a reflection of the provinciality of its viewers. We drank our friend’s breast milk and it actually tasted very good. If this ongoing experimental concern exists to prove any facet of the truth, it’s this – that whatever bizarre, seemingly strange or inscrutable experiences you think exist out there in some sort of weird parallel universe to your own, they really don’t. They’re here, and accessible to you in a drastically easier fashion than you think. Make friends with the right people and they will bring up the idea of drinking something they produce. Go to the right grocery store and you can buy a fruit that tastes like death incarnate. Find the right restaurant and they might just serve you some sea cucumber (soon to come). People. Life is short. Do you really want to someday be some withered old fuck whose best culinary memories revolve around varying qualities of beef? (Nothing against beef.) Because we certainly don’t.

Special thanks to Courtney and Standrew for backup dancing, laughs, and unnecessary drink coaching from the peanut gallery. Until next time…

STOP SMELLING IT BEFORE YOU EAT IT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD

o.d.g.w.l.

#15: A Goat Head

Throughout history, great men have pushed themselves beyond the limits of society, sanity, safety, and sobriety in the name of exploration. Shackleton trod the Antarctic. Hillary summited Everest (although not without a heaping helping of Norgay to get him there, but still). Armstrong stepped on the moon. And if you ever found yourself in a position to ask any of them “Why?” I assure you, to a man, you’d get the same answer:

Because it was there.

We, the good people here at Oh Dear God Why Tasting Laboratories and Institute For Things, don’t know what that has to do with anything but here is a goat head and we are going to eat it. Available for purchase at a cost of roughly 8 dollars or so from the Mediterranean Market off of Highland and Park, this tantalizing delight has daunted us from almost the inception of our collective project. So we recently concluded it was time to address the issue once and for all. Flummoxed, initially, by concerns over the preparation method, we consulted several sources and settled on the suggestion provided by our dear friend and previous co-conspirator in a series of ill-concieved ventures, the one and only Zachary Whitten:

And so that is what we intend to do. We have acquired several heads of garlic, a medium-to-large sized onion, a whole bunch of stolen rosemary (special thanks to the neighbor around the corner with the enormous rosemary bush that grows directly onto the sidewalk), a big ass orange, the remnants of a bottle of exceptionally nice red wine, and what the hell an apple thrown in for good measure. Here is our mise:

We feel pretty comfortable saying that no matter WHAT happens to this fucker, it’s going to come out tasting like SOMETHING. So. After some surgery and inspiration and magic, here’s what we’re putting in the oven at 350, to braise:

Here’s your basic ungulate cranium (notice the eyes are still watching you), more or less drowned in a bath of red wine, garlic, huge chunks of onion, generous helpings of rosemary and immense boulders of orange and apple. The BRAIN CAVITY of this particular animal was partially exposed so we leapt on the opportunity to jab a few cloves of garlic, a piece of onion, and a rosemary sprig in there. Did bits of brain get on our fingers? Perhaps. Did we audibly exclaim “oh eeegh aaaagh uuuuugh agh” when that happened? None of your business. Now into the oven it goes, to slow roast at around 350 for somewhere between 2 and 3 hours, is the plan anyway. We will be checking in with it as time goes on, perhaps adding more liquid or doing a basic braise type activity situation, and evaluating the progress as time goes on. As there is no clear road map for the progress of a whole roasted goat head (you know it strikes me as I type this that it might actually be a lamb head. can’t remember. let’s just press on regardless), we here at the Blah Blah Blah Whatever I Call This Thing Place are more or less playing it by ear. Wish us luck.

—

Progress report: this is what we’re dealing with after about a half hour of roasting, covered, in a dutch oven at 350. Eyes still intact, looking fairly cooked already but we’re not taking any chances here, if our tasting engineer is consuming goat brain it’s assuredly going to stay in the oven for a minimum of 2 hours, come hell or high goat head. May remove it and baste with juices at slightly more regular intervals. Plan to remove lid of dutch oven at the 1 hr mark to reduce liquid volume somewhat. Also to make sure that our tasting laboratory never smells like anything other than animal skull and oranges ever again.

—

Progress report 2: after a little over an hour of roasting, the bones are really starting to blanch and the meat’s looking pretty well cooked. Odds are this is going to be ready to go right at the 2 hour mark, maybe sooner, but we’ll err on the side of OVERcooking it, since we’re talking about tongue and brains and stuff here. Regrettably, the eyeballs seemed to have burst to some degree, but we anticipated that contingency and are prepared to roll with it, consuming whatever eyeball fragments remain and narrowing our focus to the cheek and tongue and brain. We still possess a high degree of confidence about the outcome of this experiment.

—

OK. So here’s what you end up with when you put a goat head in an iron pot with garlic, rosemary, onion, apples and oranges and bake the fucker for two hours at 350 degrees. Reminds me of a certain album cover…

Now, the idea is to let it cool for a minute, and then start pulling it apart and separating out the edible chunks from the basic viscera and bone. As much fun as it would be to try and just straight up eat it like a popsicle, there are teeth and other sharp hard parts here so basic safety concerns are worth obeying. Nonetheless, we feel compelled to give you a few glimpses into what the process of dismantling this thing is like, so here is a brief photo essay entitled “the night we pulled apart a fucking goat head.”

Say ahhhhhh

Oops. Jaw came off.

The eyes were a bitch. I pulled out its eyes. I PULLED OUT ITS FUCKING EYES

Something something get cheeky with me something something something turn the other cheek something something.

How to get to the brains, then. Well, tools of course. You take your scratch awl and your hammer and you just beat away at the top of it until you get a sizable enough hole to scoop out the brains with a fork.

Which is precisely what I did.

Just another Friday night around the ODGWL. So, this is the total yield of meat (divided by the other half I brought in for my coworkers to sample) you get from the skull of a goat:

That is, going clockwise from the front, some brain, a cheek, a few slices of tongue, and last but not least, an eyeball. Also, that’s not blood you see coating the plate, but rather a reduction sauce made from the red wine it was prepared in, along with the head juices. Mmm… head juices. We’re expecting wild variance in terms of taste, texture, edibility, and general insanity but really, we’ve put in close to 4 hours preparing, dismantling, and disseminating this shit so why beat around the bush any further? Let’s have at it. First up: brain.

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR. HRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR. That is… some brain. Is what that is. Right there. It’s really… kind of like a paste, or pate or something. REALLY… uhhh… creamy. And… oof. God, it’s REALLY rich. The flavor is just SUPER concentrated and pretty salty and savory and oh my god I can still taste it. It kind of like coats the inside of your mouth and explodes as soon as you get it off the fork. Texturally speaking, it’s kind of somewhere between some sort of pate, like a foie gras type thing, and really mushed up tuna fish, like with little bits of… threaded musculature type stuff in it. I don’t know, give me a break, it’s hard as shit to describe what it’s like to eat fucking brains. Maybe we’ll have better luck with the cheek:

Wow! Okay, upon initial impact, there’s definitely some greasy gaminess to the cheek that MIGHT throw a less intrepid adventurer off course, but if you persist, the cheek actually has a wonderful tenderness and texture and really rich flavor to it that’s not unlike, say, a pork shoulder or something along those lines. That is actually genuinely good and I would eat it in a sandwich no questions asked. Okay maybe I’d ask some questions but I’d still eat it regardless. Moving on: tongue.

The taste is really not bad, it’s pretty rich and flavorful, very meaty and gamey and all of that, what throws me (and this is just a personal weakness) is the texture of the freaking thing. It’s kind of like sausage, in that when you first bite into it, there’s strong resistance and it’s really really chewy, but whereas sausage kind of gives after a couple of bites, the tongue just hangs on long and strong and down to get the friction on, which it definitely does, for several minutes before it can be swallowed. I’ve actually eaten tongue before, but sort of chopped up in a torta, and it definitely was not as fresh and freaky friday as this stuff was.

I want to talk about this tongue forever. I want to talk about the tongue all night. And the reason I want to talk about the tongue for so long is that when I stop talking about the tongue that means that it’s time to eat the eyeball. And I don’t want to eat the eyeball. I’m scared to eat the eyeball. But I’m going to. I’m going to eat the eyeball. I’m going to eat the eyeball right fucking now.

NOPE. That is not EVEN happening. That was… good god. The texture just goes from spongy mush to crispy to stringy and back, all within the same fucking BITE. Flavor-wise, it’s salty and gamey and meaty and whatever else just like the rest of the head is, there really isn’t an enormous variation in that regard between the various parts, it all just sort of tastes like goat, but… ugh. Ugh oh ick ack. It just was SO inedibly spongy and chewy and rubbery and oh god ugh agh. Granted, I’m no butcher and the parts that were causing me problems may have been all the viscera behind the eye that perhaps should have been trimmed off before serving but regardless. That was just epically awful and inedible. Attempt to consume at your own risk.

Does that look appetizing to you? (Thanks to Holly for the photo bomb)

We roasted, butchered, and consumed an entire goat head (or as much of it as we could manage) today, for the cause of science. A few final questions, though: Do we feel as if we have accomplished something? Perhaps. Are we grateful that we didn’t disgorge the contents of our stomach in the process of doing so? Extremely. And lastly… what have we learned as a result of all this? In short:

Brains are gross
Cheek is okay
Tongue is fine
Eyeballs… don’t eat em.

EDUTAINMENT. Until next time, remember – whatever doesn’t kill you just makes you want to throw up.

ODGWL

#14: Champagne Delight Goose Pate and Malta Guinness (?)

Hello and welcome once again to the current operation of the Oh Dear God Why Laboratories Tasting And Food Blogging Thing Facility Family Time (that’s the short name). For this particular venture, we’ve chosen two rather confusing substances from the wonderful Mediterranean Market down on Park Avenue

The first of which is the wonderfully titled “Champagne Delight Goose Pate With Port Wine” which sounds like the sexiest thing under the sun, but looks rather unglamorous. A quick perusal of the ingredients list on the side shows that it contains Goose as the first ingredient (thank god…) followed by Goose Broth (which we suppose is a thing), along with a mixture of dehydrated spices and vegetables and such, which makes one think this is more or less going to be like a second-rate foie gras knockoff. Wait, what’s this at the bottom?

“CONTINENT: BLÉ”

OH SHIT this has Blé in it? Not just Blé but CONTINENT Blé? This is a serious problem. As far as we know Blé has been banned in several countries throughout Europe and Central Asia, and is currently under investigation for its inclusion in food supplies delivered to developing nations, partly because of recent reports that it is highly carcinogenic, not to mention destructive to the environment in which it’s cultivated, so much so that its development and harvesting has been almost unilaterally banned from island nations for fear of total destruction of their local ecosystems, which is why you can’t find ISLAND Blé any more, and are forced to settle for the more pathologically sinister, ecologically destructive, chemically frightening strain of CONTINENT Blé that this can apparently contains.

Oh wait we read that wrong, it actually says “Contient: Blé” which means “Contains Wheat” in French. Forgive us. We were looking at the wrong side of the can.

We would mince (further) words about the preparation of this ground avian substance, but if there has been a forward progression of learning throughout the course of this scientific endeavor (that assertion remains very much open to question, btw) then it has been towards the notion that you should probably not dress whatever experimental substances are in question up too much and probably just sort of shovel them into your face. So without further ado let us hand things over to the tasting engineer.

The smell and visual presence is again much like “BEEF“, very much not unlike some type of high end dog food, which is presumably why our dog wandered over and suddenly got so interested as soon as we opened the can. It’s somewhere between Bumblebee Tuna and Braunschweiger, in the smell and consistency scheme of things. But what does it taste like, you ask?

IT TASTES JUST LIKE IT SMELLS!

Which is not bad at all. Definitely somewhere in the foie gras/bumblebee/braunschweiger galaxy, but perhaps with a slighter flavor that dissipates somewhat faster than any of them (because let’s be honest, eating most ground-organ-based substances is a bitch. a lengthy, pleasurable bitch, but a bitch nonetheless.) and if we were to stumble into a particularly high end cocktail party, we would hope that something like this would be served. Our tasting engineer is requesting another pass, this time perhaps on some crackers with a slightly less violent swig of wine.

That was actually rather good. No lie. Champagne Delight Goose in a Can, you receive a Thumbs (and Pinkies) Up Rating from the good people here at Oh Dear God Why Laboratories! Huzzah and thank you! Moving on

Our next selection was made not for novelty’s sake, or even the bright, attractive label. Because we here at Oh Dear God Why Laboratories have had run ins with both Malta and attractive labels before, and neither one of them produced volcanically interesting results. Our limited research (the dire overlords at our tasting facility provide little in the way of consistent internet access to check our information) only revealed a vague association between the wikipedia pages for Malta in general and Guinness in general and all that really told us is that the beverage in question is probably produced in Nigeria or Kenya or some such shit. Which doesn’t amount to much. So, as is standard practice whenever we aren’t sure of the quality of the substance being tested around the Oh Dear God Why Laboratories and Experimental Testing Space and Sometimes We Play Yahtzee, we are going to have our Tasting Engineer chug the entire contents of the bottle and see if anything interesting or noteworthy happens. Here you have it.

Okay, imagine getting facefucked by Aunt Jemima. Imagine an IHOP motorboating your taste buds. This is just a pile of thick sugary nonsense. “Who drinks this” and “why” are utterly foreign concepts to us here at the ODGWL, but we can at least now verify that it exists, and as of this writing, the tasting engineer has not expired from its ingestion. Any further research will have to be conducted at the user’s own discretion, and risk. And there you have it for this entry from the Oh Dear God Why Laboratories. We’re not sure what the next entry will be, but we hope you keep your eyes peeled along with us. Until then…

wait…

we’re getting some static on the line. Unidentified interference. Scanning the signal… processing… relaying relevant data to functioning outlets… formatting…

WHAT THE HELL IS THAT

abort abort abort abort abort

O.D.G.W.L.