Filet of Fluffy
A repost from the Booru.
Most people assume that because fluffy ponies are vermin, they aren’t worth eating.
But anyone who knows anything about fluffy ponies knows that, properly prepared, the hoofed rats are a treat for the senses
Why? Well, fluffy ponies were engineered to be weak enough not to hurt children, which means they have a low muscle density.
In addition, their weak connective tissue means that their meat isn’t stringy or gamey, and instead has the texture of smooth velvet.
Which is why I run the Filet o’ Fluffy Butcher’s Shop to provide the freshest fluffy pony to the discerning connoisseur of fluffy.
Back when fluffies were first introduced as toys for children, I bought one assuming it would be like a dog that talked.
I took it with me on a hiking trip, only to have it whine and cry the entire time that “hoofsie huwt! Wan go home!”
The fluffy’s whining distracted me, and we wound up getting lost for nearly a week.
It was then that I discovered the wonders of fluffy meat, and I opened the Filet o’ Fluffy a few years later.
Oh, there were protestors of course.
Any great idea that challenges the norm causes uproar from the hippies, but after a sample of my wares, I knew I had them hooked.
My business became successful, and in time, I had broken down the process for the freshest fluffy to a simple science.
Initially, I’d bought fluffies from the shelters, but found that they often were infected by their own filth, or riddled with parasites.
Now I bred my own stock from only the largest and most delectable fluffies.
My breeding mares were chosen from the racks of fluffies for their plumpness and over all muscle mass, which produces some of the finest specimens of fluffy pony one would ever see.
For my stallions, I traded with another breeder across the state. We meet each year and exchange breeders, in order too keep the gene pool from getting to shallow.
The stallions are left whole to mate with the mares.
The foals are given care and affection until they were two months old, when they get taken into the processing room.
One at a time, of course. Having a fluffy panic would only cause damage to the fragile beasts.
Though the mothers sob as their babies are taken away, they dare not protest.
They have all been on the rack, and they have no desire to return.
People may think my processing is cruel, but my methods are all for a very important reason: fluffy meat must remain fresh.
Fluffy ponies decay like it’s their job. A fluffy left to rot will be completely gone, skeleton and all, in less than two months.
Freezing fluffy meat takes away from the buttery texture their meat is famous for, so you can’t go that route, either.
So I hang my fluffies until they’re ready to be served.
It starts by petting the fluffy, and telling him everything’s going to be all right.
They always believe me, saying things like “Nawt huwt fwuffy?”
It’s almost sad, how trusting they were made.
I find that if you scratch a fluffy’s chin the right way, they’ll stretch out their neck for you.
As they stretch their neck out, you aim between for the fifth vertebra and give it a sharp tap with the blunt of your cleaver
If you hit the right spot --and I always do-- the fluffy will drop to the block, paralyzed from the neck down.
Any higher, and the fluffy dies in moments. Any lower, they can still kick their front legs.
Sadly, though their muscles are paralyzed, they can still feel pain, which makes the next part the worst step in the process.
A stainless steel chicken hook goes through the spinal column at the broken vertebra.
They often squeal when I slide the hook through, asking “why no move weggies?” as I place them on the line.
Oh, how those fluffies cry and beg for “huggies” as they slide down the wire into the next room.
There, they join their friends, all similarly hung above stair stepped troughs that collect their waste.
It’s quite the sight to see six dozen fluffies hanging by their spines in a 40 degree room.
The shivering keeps them quiet, though they still cry and beg enough that it makes me glad I’ve lost most of my hearing.
Now all I have to do is shut off my hearing aide when I go into the fluffy hanging room.
The entire left wall is earth fluffies, chosen for their quantity of meat, whereas most of the left side is pegasi.
Smoked pegasus wings are, without question, better than buffalo wings any day of the week.
Below them is a row of unicorns, which for some reason, aren’t as popular.
They often hang there for weeks before someone orders some, and most of the time, it’s just for the “Fluffy Sub.”
The fluffies at the front of the line are always the worst off, as they can see into the room beyond where the final processing happens.
I didn’t do that intentionally, it’s just that the only flaps I could find to keep the room cool, yet accessible, were made of clear vinyl.
Still, whenever a hand reaches through the flaps, the fluffies all squeal in terror as another of their friends disappears into the room, never to return.
Unless they’re being used for the “Fluffy Sub,” in which case, they probably would have been better off simply not coming back at all.
My business partner, Alphonso, invented a sandwich which involves the freshest fluffy parts available, and invented his own slicer to make it.
It’s actually two slicers bolted together with a heating coil on each of the spinning blades.
The fluffy comes out of the cooler, and his legs are placed into the guide blocks.
The machine then slices off quarter inch segments of their legs with the super heated blades, cooking the leg meat and cauterizing the wounds at the same time.
Alphonse seems to enjoy the terrified squeals and heaving sobs of the fluffies as he segments their legs.
Personally, I find it just irritating.
Once he’s done, the fluffy goes back on the hook and back into the hanging room.
It’s always traumatic for the fluffies to see one of their friends come back with another missing half inch of their “weggies,” but on a busy day, we can generally go through a few sets of fluffy legs without any problems.
I do feel bad for them when they return to the cooler without legs, but there’s no use in wasting the rest of the fluffy, now is there?
I try to feed them afterwards, as payment for their missing “weggies.”
The corn mash and honey slurry pumped down their throats is probably the highlight of their day.
Because after all, a happy fluffy is a tasty fluffy.
And Filet o’ Fluffy only serves the best
Part 2
There really is nothing more enjoyable than a fluffy sub on your lunch break.
Alphonso really out did himself on that invention, even if it is tragic for the fluffy pony.
Still, it’s time to get back to work.
As you can see, the fluffies hanging in the cooler sob all the time, begging to “make weggies wowk, pwease!”
While I can’t give them that, I can make sure that they stay alive and otherwise unharmed during their stay in the cooler.
We only use sterilized hooks to hang the fluffies, and for the first few days, I clean the hook site with 91% alcohol to keep away infection.
Because of the way their repair systems were designed, their skin actually grows back around the hook in a matter of days.
It prevents them from bleeding out as well.
Marvelous things, these fluffy ponies.
After they’ve been hanging for a few days, there’s nothing more to be done till it’s their turn on the chopping block.
You certainly can’t pre-shave the beasts. They’d die in the cooler if you did that.
Instead, when they’re taken off the line, the hook is transferred to the “Fluffinator”
Another one of Alphonso’s inventions, the “Fluffinator” uses a set of rollers to squeeze the feces out of the fluffy, followed by a set of wire brushes to de-hair the fluffy after it’s been squeezed.
They are, of course, alive up until this point.
I prefer to finish off the sobbing mess of fluffy with a cleaver after they’ve been “fluffinated” but Alphonso insists on keeping them alive for the entire butchering.
He claims that suffering makes the fluffy taste better.
Personally, I can’t tell the difference, and I think it’s cruel to butcher them while they’re alive.
My methods may be questionable, but I’m not a monster.
The fluffy pony is generally prepared in several cuts, usually shoulders, rump, loin, and ribs.
Though I prefer sauce, a rub of cumin, tarragon, salt, paprika, butter, and onion powder makes melt in your mouth fluffy ribs.
The legs, if they’re still there, become great roasts.
Most of the insides of a fluffy get ground into a paste and sent out to low end dog food manufacturers, but there are a few things one can do with the internals.
For that, we need to go into the specialty cooler.
It’s similar to the main cooler, only here we have a dozen or so fluffies on the same line.
Pegasi are being stuffed to the gills with grain to fatten their liver for a fluffy foie gras.
The earth fluffies are being starved to empty their bowels for tripe.
There they hang, the fois gras fluffies fat and miserable; the tripe fluffies, starving and miserable.
Sadly, the added weight will occasionally cause their spine to break, and tear out their backs.
More than once I’ve come in to find a fluffy face down in trough of his own feces, and his rack mates sobbing that “fwen nu fwy 'way.”
But that’s been solved via the clever use of twine in the form of a truss.
If the spine breaks, they do hang there for a while, but they survive until they’re needed.
In the other half of the specialty cooler are crates of the bi-horned fluffy sub-species known as “fluffallo.”
I tried hanging them before, but they never bothered to run away, cry, or even complain when they came up for slaughter.
They simply spoke of how they “gif dey wives so da gweat baww of wife keep spinin’.”
I only wish I could train fluffy ponies to be so serene about their fate.
It would save me a fortune in meat hooks.
Part 3
Today is a special day. Our crate of cotton fluffies arrived at the Filet o’ Fluffy.
I’d been hearing about this bizarre subspecies for a while now, and decided that I would try my hand at seeing if they were any good to eat.
Imagine my surprise when the crate contained several thousand of the miniature beasts.
They’d been packed with a few pieces of celery to eat and placed into two dozen jars.
Frankly, I’d expected them to be larger. I have no idea how I’m going to prepare a creature barely larger than my thumb.
And taking one out to experiment proved messier than I had expected.
In trying to feel for meat texture, I accidently crushed the tiny creature in my fingers.
Quite the mess, but these things seem to produce much less feces than their larger counter parts.
I could probably starve them for only a few hours before preparation to clean them out.
But how to prepare them? Since they are covered in hair, I can’t just prepare them like a squab.
And attempting to de-hair them with a wire brush tore the flesh from its bones.
I could tell the creature was screaming in agony, but I couldn’t hear it. Must be too high a frequency for these old ears.
I put it back with its herd mates so that it could get “huggies” or whatever it is that cotton fluffies do for each other.
As it turns out, what they do is eat each other when they’re in distress.
The injured cotton fluffy was gone in a matter of moments after I put him back in the jar.
They just swarmed around him, and when they left, there was only a smear of blood.
I do wonder what in the world I’m going to do with these things.
It’s then that I notice some of the cotton fluffies have gotten themselves trapped in the celery stalks.
They burrowed halfway in and got their heads stuck.
In that moment, inspiration struck. I found a piece of mozzarella in the refrigerator, and stuck it in with the cotton fluffs.
Predictably, they converged around it, and a dozen got their heads stuck after a few minutes of eating.
I cleaned the hair from the cotton fluffies with a lighter, and from there, the stick of cheese and roasted cotton fluffies went into a light batter.
Pop the contraption into the deep fryer for a few moments, and voila!
It looked like rock candy, with each of the cotton fluffs sticking straight out from the stick of cheese.
As it turns out that, cotton fluffs have a sharper, salty taste, as opposed to the delectable sweetness of the fluffy pony.
More importantly, the creatures had gotten to the task of replacing their lost numbers immediately.
Yes, I think this will do quite nicely. I’m sure Alphonso will be happy to add a new item of fluffy on the menu.
Ah, there he is now. And he’s got a pet carrier with him.
“Vhere are ve, Mistah?” asks the crate. “Puffy no like dis dark crate!”
A quick inspection reveals that it’s a puffy griffon, not an exotic breed of fluffy pony.
Alphonso says that he found this one was going through our trash, and that perhaps we could try to make something of it?
Clearly Alphonso has not done his homework.
I’ve had puffy griffon before and it tastes like sawdust mixed with sulpher.
No, this puffy will not become food. I’ll put him with the fluffalos till I can take him to the shelter.
As they day wears on, I occasionally hear the griffon taunting the hanging specialty fluffies, and the fluffies bawling in response to his threats.
By the time we close up shop for the evening, the hanging fluffies in the cooler are sobbing their eyes out begging “make meanie gwiffon go way! No wan gwiffon eat fwuffy!”
Oh those naive little fluffies.
“I promise the griffon won’t eat you,” I tell the hanging fluffies.
“Zey are fat und dumkoffs!” declares the puffy. “Floofy pone es gud only fur eating, yah?”
I pat the puffy griffon as we head out for the shelter, and give him a handful of cotton fluffies to munch on.
They squeal and try to run, but the puffy griffon snatches them up as if they were popcorn shrimp.
As much as I’ve had people complain about my business, this little griffon actually gets it.
Fluffies are terrible pets, even worse companions, and are a blight on society in general.
But they certainly are delicious.
Total Words: 2554
