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The Trouble with Foie Gras

Up here in the Windy City I just found another regional and cultural divide.  

"Foie gras" is the process of overfeeding ducks and geese before slaughter by pushing a metal tube down their throat and filling their stomachs with corn meal which enlarges their livers by a factor of 10. It cause the animals to get so large they can no longer walk and belabors their breathing. All for a popular "fowl" pate generated through the same means which humans have been enjoying for about 5000 years. Though these days is is primarily a French thing.

It is a political football here in Chicago with local bans on not only the process but the sale of it in restaurants.

Being from Texas I have never before heard the term and I am sure most of my breathen are also mostly in the dark regarding high end pates. After all, not only is it a French phrase which is not allowed in our English Only! cuture but it has to do with fancy eating. We don’t do fancy eating. Well, other than Chicken Fried Steak with Biscuts and gravy.

In Texas w do have a similar process before slaughter with the ducks and geese we do eat. We also force a tube of steel down their gullets but instead of corn meal sliding down, we use lead, which we speed up with about an ounce of gun powder. When we hunt we don’t like missing.