Missionary of Meat

Story

The Mission

I've been documenting and building around food since the late 2000s.

In 2008 I was cooking more than was strictly reasonable and photographing all of it. It was the peak of the food-blog boom, and I wrote along with everyone else: what I made, how it went, what I'd change next time. The photographs on this page come from that stretch. They were taken on whatever camera was in my pocket, in home kitchens and backyards, and they look like it. I've left them that way.

A Christmas rib roast was rubbed, wrapped in bacon, tied, and finished over charcoal. Short ribs were braised in sherry on a January night. A sausage was wrapped in bacon and crisped in a pan because it seemed like a question worth answering. None of it was for a restaurant. It was learning by doing, then writing it down so the next attempt went better.

  • A tall bone-in rib roast crusted with cracked pepper and herbs on a white plate.
    1. Rubbed — winter 2008
  • The roast fully wrapped in overlapping bacon strips and tied with butcher's twine.
    2. Wrapped and tied — winter 2008
  • The bacon-wrapped roast browning on a dark grill grate over indirect charcoal.
    3. Over charcoal — winter 2008
  • The finished roast, deep mahogany, resting on a platter in its own juices.
    4. Rested — winter 2008
  • Bacon strips rendering in a red enameled Dutch oven.
    Rendering — winter 2009
  • Bone-in beef short ribs seared dark brown in the same pot.
    Seared — winter 2009
  • A whisk working sherry into softened onions at the bottom of the pot.
    Deglazed with sherry — winter 2009
  • Finished short ribs sitting in a glossy braise with sprigs of thyme.
    Braised — winter 2009

I also showed up with a camera when the city's food scene gathered. In the fall of 2009 that included a conversation series that put whole-animal butchery in front of an urban audience to ask where dinner comes from. I was in that audience. I watched a hog broken down on a steel table, from skin to bone to primal cuts, listened to the questions the room asked, and photographed it.

A teaching kitchen full of seated guests facing a steel table where butchered pork is laid out.
The room, from the audience — fall 2009

These photographs are what I documented from those evenings: the weight of the animal, a knife following the seams, a room leaning in close enough to see.

  • Two people in aprons working over a whole hog on a steel table while a third talks to the room.
    The conversation begins, from the audience — fall 2009
  • The hog partly broken down into primal cuts across the table.
    Breaking it down, from the audience — fall 2009
  • A whole hog stretched across the steel table, guests seated close in the foreground.
    Whole animal, whole room, from the audience — fall 2009
Seen over the shoulders of two guests: butchers at work on the hog at the front of the kitchen.
From the second row, in the audience — fall 2009

Bacon got its own studies along the way: plain strips in a skillet, a turkey wrapped in a woven lattice and stood over coals, and a breakfast stop where someone had already decided a doughnut needed bacon on top.

  • Four thick strips of bacon starting to render in a black skillet.
    Strips — late summer 2008
  • A turkey covered in a dark, crisp bacon lattice, standing upright over glowing coals.
    Bacon-lattice turkey — fall 2008
  • A maple-glazed doughnut topped with two strips of bacon next to a paper coffee cup.
    Breakfast, Portland — winter 2009
A bacon-wrapped sausage, crisp and blistered, in a skillet of rendered fat.
Bacon-wrapped sausage, crisped — winter 2008

Why this site

The intersection of technology, food craft, and hospitality is where I've always worked. The tools change. The table doesn't. Missionary of Meat gives that work a permanent address.

Technology was never a separate life from this. The habits that make good software are the same ones that made that roast work: try it, watch what happens, change one thing, and write it down. A well-run table is a system. So is a well-built site.

New ideas get tried here first. Some will turn into something, some won't, and all of them get written down. See what's on the bench.

A butcher working at the steel table as guests lean in, a tray of cooked pork belly in the foreground.
At the table, from the audience — fall 2009