This Saturday Cochon 555 Des Moines goes off with the usual assortment of top chefs (from Des Moines, Mount Vernon, and Kansas City), 140-lb heritage bred hogs, winemakers (most from Napa, but one local) and butchery demos (from Aaron King, exec chef of gateway Market).

If you are in or around Des Moines and looking to feast on some pork use the discount code “LLS” to get $20 off admission when you buy tickets here, or get GA at the door for $75.

After this round the Cochon makes just four more stops (DC, Seattle, Portland and San Fransisco) before landing in Aspen on June 20 for the Grand Cochon where each regional winner will compete and the ultimate winner will be decided. We’re still putting our money on Blue Hill’s Adam Kaye in Aspen, but Matt Jennings of Farmstead looked sharp in Boston.

And watch the video from the Boston Cochon where Jennings was crowned Prince of Porc below if you want to get psyched (and we, do mean psyched — the clip features the type of generic driving guitar interlude generally reserved for football highlight shows — and  at 19 seconds a guy cuts a pig in half.)

Looking for a little pre-Cochon action? Look no further than Murray’s Cheese shop on Bleeker. Yesterday the Cohcon folks emailed: “One bar of limited release ‘Chicharron Chocolate Bars by Xocolatl de David’ will contain two tickets to the event. ($250 value) and can only be purchased at Murray’s Cheese on a specific day next week.”

The specific day is Wednesday afternoon. Watch Cochon’s Twitter and Facebook for updates on the time. We can only imagine the chocolate bar will definitely contain fried pork, and may even contain your pass to Cochon. Yes this golden ticket is better than Willy Wonka’s.

Dear Reader,

We apologize. We let you down. We admit it.

The Gold Coast Mail, a paper in Australia, ran a contest whereby willing ladies could win a date with a dashing young butcher — apparently with a giant loin, judging by the subtle photo used to promote the campaign (now we see why GofAG‘s Rachelle likes Aussies so much)– and we did not alert you in time to apply. Yes, ladies, applications for “The Butcher Wants a Wife” have closed.

We’re sorry.

First off, the pitch for the Foodista Best of the Food Blogs Cookbook sounds like a bad self-publishing come-on:

“Have you dreamed of being published in print? Want to see your writing in a book?”

And with that, we lost our lunch.

We are all for “blogs to books,” or blooks as they are somewhat annoyingly called. We see the impulse-buy nirvana of “This is Why Your Fat” and even think there is a place for the best online food writing to be curated and published, but this contest — and they are calling it a contest — sounds like some ’50s-housewife-entering-a-radio-jingle-to-win-a-prize bullshit.

But really, what more can you expect from a website that willingly calls itself Foodista? Unless they are a liberation army of Nicaraguan rebel chefs they should change that name immediately.

The idea for the Foodista cookblook, apparently came out of a blog-to-books panel at Foodista’s International Food Blogger Conference (which we won’t even get into), and it should have stayed there.

So we now have a bunch of people ripping recipes out of cookbooks and cooking them, putting the recipes on their blogs, and now they are coming back into book form? No wonder publishing is dying.

Depending on whom you ask July is either National Hot Dog Month (per the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council) or this Thursday, July 23 is National Hot Dog Day (per The Village Pourhouse in New York City’s East Village). Now we are not about to cast dispersions on either truly great and respected organization, but we are going to tell you that the Pourhouse is hosting a Pig in a Blanket eating contest on that day. The entrance fee is $10 dollars and the challenge is to eat as many mini-hot dogs swaddled in delicious and flaky puff pastry as possible in 10 minutes.

Sharpen your Zen pencils, readers. Serious Eats is giving away passes the the Big Apple Barbecue Block Party for the best haiku. Most people seem to be under the mistaken impression that the only criteria for a haiku is the old 5, 7, 5 pattern, but traditional Japanese haiku are also supposed to meditate on the natural world. Not exactly New Yorkers’ strong suit (especially judging by the entries filling the comments section thus far).

And the prize tickets are no ordinary ones, oh no. They are Fast Passes, which gets you in the express line. You get the chance to gorge on pork and gloat at suckers waiting in long lines at the same time.

I had a longing

but ribs would be all gone soon

only sauce stains remain