Or: Charcuterie 101: Meat Me After Class
I’ve clearly misunderstood the purpose of community education. For years, I’ve signed up for classes that treat personal enrichment like a bootcamp for the chronically overachieving—French, investing, Java programming, classical music appreciation. Even the so-called “fun” ones, like ballroom dancing or knitting, became a weeknight battle between muscle memory and existential despair.
Because that’s what school is, right? Growth via mild suffering. Enrichment through forehead-vein tension.
But last night, I finally got it right. I took a community ed class that enriched exactly one thing: my stomach. Two hours, no homework, and the only test was whether you could eat this without flinching:
Prosciutto. Paté. Sausage. Head cheese. That’s right—I majored in Charcuterie, and I minored in Champagne.
Here’s what I learned:
- You must boil a pig’s head all day to coax the usable meat from its skull.
- Pork belly can be deep fried without absorbing oil (because it is the oil).
- Apparently people think beer goes with salad, and we’re all just pretending that’s fine.
The syllabus was a fever dream:
I failed the pork sandwich. Hard. Might need to audit the class again—strictly for academic reasons, of course.
