{"id":2982,"date":"2020-10-28T14:55:35","date_gmt":"2020-10-28T19:55:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/?p=2982"},"modified":"2020-10-28T14:55:35","modified_gmt":"2020-10-28T19:55:35","slug":"hair-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/2020\/10\/hair-today\/","title":{"rendered":"Hair Today"},"content":{"rendered":"

As Nick and I entered the restaurant, I knew the food could not possibly meet our expectations. \u201cPig,\u201d a farm to table restaurant located in the countryside near Bath, England, had been recommended by a local friend when she heard that we would be staying in the Cotswolds. \u201cBest meal of my life,\u201d she said, \u201cWe stayed for hours.\u201d\u00a0 When my husband mentioned the restaurant to a business colleague in London, he expressed jealousy at our reservation.\u00a0 We both flushed with pride at our insider\u2019s knowledge.<\/p>\n

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Our first decision \u00a0as we left the Cotswolds was who would drive and who would navigate.\u00a0 I frankly suck at navigation.\u00a0 Over the years I have learned that I should be the driver, but Nick felt more confident driving on the wrong side of the road.\u00a0 Pig was about an hour and a half from our Cotswold VRBO and we set off with a sizable cushion of time to wander around the farm to see farm to table in action, including the namesake pig pens.<\/p>\n

We chewed up that time-cushion immediately as I had to make consequential snap distinctions between slight and sharp lefts and navigate round-abouts that sent us in misguided directions with no escape.\u00a0 While the restaurant was on the outskirts of Bath, a reroute took us into the tangle of narrow one-way streets in the congealed heart of the ancient town.\u00a0 We arrived at the restaurant tense, barely speaking.\u00a0 It had taken us over an hour and a half to drive the 40 miles.\u00a0 The food had a lot to make-up for.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t think that a meal could be that good.<\/p>\n

The waiter handed us the menu titled \u201c26-mile menu,\u201d referring to the circumference of their suppliers.\u00a0 I wanted to try something quintessentially English and the waiter recommended their cracklings.\u00a0 He pointed to the boisterous diners next to us who were digging into a platter of cracklings and I heard them say, \u201cBrilliant.\u201d \u00a0I looked forward to my platter.<\/p>\n

If I had been at all familiar with Southern US cooking, I would have known that cracklings are a version of pork rind, which vary according to the thickness of \u00a0attached fat.\u00a0 If I had been familiar with Mexican food, I might have realized that cracklings were a version of chicharrons.\u00a0 All are salted and deep-fried.<\/p>\n

If I\u2019d known I would have passed on the cracklings.\u00a0 I\u2019m generally unenthusiastic about eating skin.\u00a0 I leave turkey skin to others at Thanksgiving and peel the skin off chicken breasts.\u00a0 For me, a bucket of the Colonel\u2019s finest, slathered with a secret m\u00e9lange of 19 herbs and spices, is more of a visual reminder of the disfiguring skin diseases I encountered in my pathology residency.<\/p>\n

These British cracklings were wretched, brittle enough to tooth.\u00a0 Tasteless as well, \u00a0unless you had a compelling hankering for salt.\u00a0 This was only the opening salvo in my repulsion.\u00a0 The cracklings were festooned with upright hair robust enough to weather the deep fryer.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I will concede that in my lifetime, I have probably consumed a headful of inadvertent hair.\u00a0 I also concede that a disgruntled kitchen worker might have slipped a hair into food in a paroxysm of misguided revenge.\u00a0 But I have never been presented the opportunity to deliberatively snack on hair.<\/p>\n

Nick and I delighted in our ensuing discussion about eating hair, enlivening our \u00a0lunch and lifting our sour moods.\u00a0 Food can only be so good even it is farm to table, but this food was unremarkable.\u00a0 However visibly hairy food is a sure way to make a restaurant unique and memorable.<\/p>\n

We discussed who eats hair \u2013 aside from moths and carpet beetles.\u00a0 We couldn\u2019t think of any mammals.\u00a0 Hair is protein, so it could be a decent food source, but we discovered that mammals lack the necessary enzymes to break down the sulfide-rich amino acid bonds. \u00a0When we take walks on our local prairie, we distinguish dog and coyote scat by the coyote\u2019s embedded hair. \u00a0Owl pellets beneath trees contain the undigestible bones and hair of their prey.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Researchers tracking elusive grizzly bears dissect spoor to determine whether any hair belongs to a grizzly.\u00a0 Cats and other self-groomers routinely cough up hair balls.<\/p>\n

My British pig hair was not microscopic stubble, but full-on bristles.\u00a0 A perusal of the internet suggests my visceral reaction to hairy pork rinds is not uncommon.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The solution should be simple.\u00a0 The hair can be removed with a butane lighter, though the sulfurous smell of burnt hair might be off putting.\u00a0 Alternatively hair could simply be shaved off to avoid visual nastiness.<\/p>\n

Nick and I could only conclude that the hair at this restaurant was intentional and the waiter agreed. \u00a0I suppose it could be a celebration (in the extreme) of the farm to table ethos, but that is a generous interpretation.\u00a0 Maybe hairy pork rind is a quirky but classical British dish, similar in concept to their \u201cspotted dick,\u201d a pudding with a disturbing visual.\u00a0 I then thought could the international disdain for our president\u00a0tip\u00a0the love-hate relationship with American tourists\u00a0and prompt punitive culinary sabotage?\u00a0 Back there in the kitchen could there be a bin of cracklings for Brits and a separate one for Americans?<\/p>\n

We left the restaurant not well-fed, but thoroughly entertained.\u00a0 Our return trip was scenic and snafu-free.\u00a0 The curiosity of eating hair had salvaged the day.<\/p>\n

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As Nick and I entered the restaurant, I knew the food could not possibly meet our expectations. \u201cPig,\u201d a farm to table restaurant located in the countryside near Bath, England, had been recommended by a local friend when she heard … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food-stuff"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iVc8-M6","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2982"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2986,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2982\/revisions\/2986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}