ASK FLUFFIESAREFOOD
Volume 1 Number 22
Happy Friday, Fluffherders! It’s time for another edition of Ask FluffiesAreFood, the advice column that seeks to answer questions of fluffherders and fluffy eaters everywhere! If you have a question, just PM me on the Booru!
Our first question comes from anonymous:
Do you have a recipe to cook a whole fluffy family, is for a family reunion, we are 16 persons, how many fluffies could be enough to feed that number, foals not included.
It depends on the dishes that you want to prepare, anonymous, but typically, a whole fluffy has enough meat to feed sixteen persons seven to nine ounces each. Here’s how that breaks down:
FLUFFY STEAK: The rear portion (“below” the ribs) of a side of fluffy is referred to as the steak. It’s a boneless portion with a quality of meat that is better towards the top (near the back) than towards the belly. Nonetheless, one could cook it as one does beef steak. Each side has one pounds of steak meat, for a total of two pounds. You could serve each member of your family a two-ounce portion of this meat.
FLUFFY RIBS: Fluffy rib meat is looser and fattier than the steak meat. However, if smoked, or marinaded and grilled, this can be an entire wonderful dining experience all its own. An entire fluffy has twelve ribs on each side; each family member can get a rib, with eight available for second helpings. Or, strip the meat from the ribs, and you have two ounces of rib meat per family member.
FLUFFY LEGS: Fluffy leg meat is denser, lower in fat and higher in iron, than either the steak or ribs. There are hundreds of ways to prepare it, but my favorite way is Chicken Fried Fluffy, where the leg meat is flattened, breaded or battered, and then fried in fluffy tallow or cooking oil. An adult fluffy has four pounds of leg meat, with more on the rear legs than on the front legs. You could serve each family member a four-ounce portion of leg meat.
Now, seven to nine ounces doesn’t sound like a lot, but an average ounce of fluffy meat has eight grams of protein, and seven ounces of fluffy meat has enough protein (56 grams) for an adult male for an entire day! Once you add in organ meats, chirpies, and foals, you have more than enough protein and calories from fluffy to satisfy an entire family.
Another question comes from guodzilla:
What kind of advice can you give for preparing live-foal fondue?
This is a great question, guodzilla! Although fondue started out as a way for Swiss communities to make the best of scarce and often stale provisions, a hundred years ago it became an American sensation after an aggressive marketing campaign. After The Fracturing fondue became important again, as a way to make the best out of the fluffies and stale supplies Eastern Americans depended on for sustenance. With reunification fluffy fondue has again found prominence as an East American dish that has captured the tastes and imaginations of West Americans.
In the West USA, chirpie fondue is exotic; but it is no less exotic in the East USA, despite having originated there. In the days when fluffy fondue first started, the idea of wasting a chirpie, which could easily be raised to an adult that feeds a family of four for as long as a week, on a single morsel of fondue, would have been considered wasteful in the extreme. It was for precisely this reason that it caught on with the EUSA’s Russian occupiers. For the privilege of dipping a live, voided chirpie in melted chocolate or cheese, one used to pay $5000 EUSA (about $5 WUSA or Confederate). That’s more than an average East American earned in a day, per chirpie.
Today, of course, chirpies are readily available at your local butcher shop, thanks to mass breeding required to keep “milkbags” producing milk, and so the eating of chirpies is more commonplace.
Now, let’s move on to the topic of live chirpie fondue.
First, stick to chirpies. Live chirpies from your butcher shop should be furless, with their eyes still shut. Once they get fur they are nearly impossible to include in fondue without skinning and gutting them, which makes it next to impossible for them to survive long enough to make it into the fondue pot. Skinning and gutting will also ruin the sweet taste of undistressed chirpie.
Second, make sure you have the right combination of cheeses or chocolates. Traditional chirpie fondue uses imported Swiss cheeses: Emmental and Gruyère, melted together in a base of kirsch and corn starch. Chocolate chirpie fondue uses Swiss bittersweet chocolate melted in a milk base with a touch of vanilla. You can substitute distilled fluffy tears for the vanilla for a more caramel flavor.
Third, make sure your chocolate or cheese is very hot. Melt it at a temperature of 95 degrees centigrade and then keep it warm at 77 degrees centigrade (about 170 degrees Fahrenheit). Keep the pot at that temperature until the pot is nearly empty; turn it off when there’s only a bit left, to prevent the rest of the cheese or chocolate from burning.
Fourth, void your chirpie before eating. A washcloth soaked in lukewarm water should be enough to stimulate the bowel and get the chirpie to empty itself. This will significantly enhance your enjoyment of the chirpie.
Fifth, put the fondue needle all the way through the chirpie twice. The first time should create two holes to let out steam - this is important since chirpies can explode if the steam builds up! The second time is to hold the chirpie in place for cooking.
Sixth, put the chirpie in head first. This will prevent the chirpie from screaming too loudly and will almost certainly cause it to inhale the hot cheese or chocolate, speeding up its death and cooking.
Seventh, leave the chirpie in for three minutes to ensure that it is cooked completely through. Do not leave it in too long, however! Overcooking your fluffy will make it tough!
Eighth, give your cheese- or chocolate-covered chirpie time to cool before you eat it. About thirty seconds should suffice. Eating it too soon could burn your mouth!
Lastly, enjoy!
A word of caution: it is ill advised to cook live chirpies while a fluffy or ambulatory foal is within earshot. Chirpies stabbed with a needle will emit distress peeps and cause a foal to panic, or adult fluffy to investigate. A fluffy who sees you eating live chirpies is likely to run away, attack, or tell others. It will certainly NEVER trust you again, no matter how you pamper it. On the other hand, eating live chirpie fondue in front of a restrained and gagged fluffy is a fantastic way to psychologically torture it before slaughter, for very savory meat
Enjoy!
Ask FluffiesAreFood is a service of the Fluffherders’ Association of America. If you have a question about raising, slaughtering, or eating of fluffies, you may comment here.