Charcoal Revelation from jeff ely on Vimeo.

 
We’ve just found a new depth of respect for college economics professors here at the Butcher Blog. Just in time for the weekend, the easiest method we’ve ever seen for opening a bag of charcoal has been revealed. Generally, we just attack the bag with the nearest sharp object. Often we’re left with a ragged misshapen opening to reseal. No more. As the video above demonstrates, it’s easier than flossing to open the bag. Three easy steps as the good professor notes on his blog:

Step 1:  Orient yourself.  There is a front and a back.  The front side has clean loops, the back side string is ragged and knotted at the end. You have to pull the string from the back side.  It unravels from left to right.

Step 2:  Understand what you are doing.  There are really two strings here woven together.  There is a string on the front side which is pushed through in loops through each of the little holes in the bag.  Then a string on the back side is threaded through them also in a looping fashion.  The end of the string on the left side is then knotted onto the leftmost loop.  What you need to do is remove that knot and free up the end of the backside string so that you can pull it.

Step 3:  The endgame.  Once you have the end of the backside string all there is left to do is pull and the whole apparatus becomes unraveled. You can then extract the frontside string leaving you with two strings in your hand, a flap of paper to lift off the bag (and recycle) and finally a wide open bag of non-fossil fuel.  No hassle, no pointless yanking, no scissors.

It’s Friday, so fire it up.

Statefarm’s slogan might be “Like a good neighbor,” but, while we appreciate their proactive stance in making a primer on how not to deep fry a turkey, we’re sort of glad we don’t actually have neighbors who blow shit up in their garage and experiment with homemade poultry pyrotechnics, no matter how controlled and well-intentioned the demonstration is.

Despite the fact that this PSA is meant to show what not to do while frying your Thanksgiving bird, we suspect the folks (who may or may not be firemen and are dressed as if they are dealing with unexploded ordinances in Iraq) who made the video for Statefarm — in which turkeys deep-frying are intentionally and repeatedly made to explode  in spectacular fashion — were the sort of kids who stuck M-80s up your cat’s ass when they were children. Not good neighbors at all.

Attention supermarket shoppers: Please do not eat the raw ground chuck.

Now, you’d not think a message like this would be necessary, but apparently in Florida it is. One of the owners of the Deep Hollow Ranch in Montauk (founded in 1658 and the nation’s oldest cattle farm, if you go in for trivia) was actually arrested Monday for devouring a packet of ground beef while strolling the Rines’ IGA in Indiantown, Florida. Maybe she was just craving iron?

Montauk’s Diane Leaver grazed away on the open pack, carrying the styrofoam tray with $1.98 worth of raw ground beef around the store, then dropped the package and proceeded to the checkout, like she had done nothing more than eaten some purloined M&Ms. Both impressive and completely disgusting. Horrified clerks called the police, though it’s not clear if they were upset about the misbegotten meat, or worried Leaver might be some sort of zombie.

That’s what living in Montauk year-round can do to you, kids. All we can say is, those horses better watch out when she gets back.