perfidy

It was only a rumor. A legend.

Spanish cured ham so silky, so toothsome as to practically defy description. And one terrible side effect of our nation's rules and import barriers was that the Food and Drug Administration prohibited its import. Like many raw-milk French cheeses, the unfettered and wild processes of bacteria, enzymes, and sheer time presented a horrible spectre of infestation to the crabbed pencil pushers who thronged its halls.

Like, come on! The whole point of curing meat or milk is to render it impervious to rot or infestation. Why the hell can't it come into the country? It's only been three thousand years since mankind perfected the process!! Am I to believe that a raw-milk Camembert is, on the face of it, more harmful to the good of America than Mohammed Fucking Atta? Who they let in the country?? JESUS CHRIST!!!!

Shit.

Where was I?

Right. So there's this ham they make in Spain, from pigs from Castille that are fattened on acorns and whose loin is rubbed with a combination of herbs and spiced before being painstakingly cured with great love and care in the gentle Spanish breezes. Salt and bacteria do their thing. The enzymes in the cells of the loin of pork do their thing. The spectacular alchemy of man and nature coalesce in a transcendent display of pinnacle of the art of charcuterie. And you couldn't usedta get it here.

But not no more. It's here. Yesterday when I bought some it was $99.95 a pound. Today it's $199.95. A pound.

Some dudes eat a pounda steak as an appetizer.

So I bought some. I'm a big fan of European cured meats. There's this French stuff they make out of pork that sort of smells like a urinal but tastes like God himself came down and put the taste of manna on your tongue. The Poles make dry kielbasas that don't so much fill the stomach as feed the soul (many props to Mrs. GeekLethal!). And I'm the kind of asshole who, when staring face to face with a piece of a dead animal that has been through a process and a series of trade barriers that renders it as costly and valuable as good-ass weed, I have to try some.

I say again: I like meat that smells like bum piss. That's some amazing stuff. Silky, smooth, sweet, salty, subtle, astonishingly good. That stuff is about $15 a pound. Is meat that today goes for ten times that price ten times as good? Can anything that eventually becomes shit possibly be worth that much money?

I'll tell you.

I bought twelve paper-thin and translucent slices of fine Spanish ham. Just north of one ounce for $7. Took it home. Laid it out on a plate. Absorbed its aroma. Savored its flavor. I ate twelve paper-thin slices of fine Spanish ham all on their lonesome, and I'll tell you.

Ehh, it's pretty good.