Remember two weeks ago, when my dear friend Summer left two bags of puffy Cheetos (and possibly a midsized bottle of Absolut that might have been drunk) on my porch? She’s at it again. Today she showed up with Christmas gifts: two Vosges Mo’s Bacon Bars (that would be a high-end chocolate bar filled with bacon) and a ham.

Oh, not just any ham. It’s not in a can. Or deviled. Or deli sliced. This bad-ass meat chunk is a leg, bone included. It’s from Wenneman Meat Market.

You know it’s good ham when it comes from a place that uses “You can’t beat our meat” as  their catch line. When I opened it and Clara Jane, beside herself with glee shrieked, “Oh! I wanna have that for dinner tonight!”, I almost threw it in the oven right then and there. It’s so big that dinner would have had to happen at 3 A.M., but still. I can eat ham at 3 A.M.

Geez. Give Summer a styrofoam cooler full of sausage for her birthday once and the pork just keeps coming.

(Really, I’m thrilled. This will most likely be my favorite gift this year because let me tell you, I really like ham. A lot. I also love that Summer doesn’t hesitate to leave Cheetos on my porch and give me a giant smoked pig leg for Christmas. That’s a person who truly gets what makes me tick.)

Now that I’ve got you all hungry, I’m going to bring on the guilt.

If you’ve been reading for any length of time, you know I’m a sucker for hunger relief organizations. While I will help my friends raise funds for their pet causes, when I’m deciding where to help, I always go for the hunger organizations. For one thing, if people aren’t getting their most basic human need met, well, something’s seriously fucked up. There’s absolutely, positively no reason why anyone should go hungry. Ever. Also, having gone through culinary school, run my own tiny catering company, taught people to cook, and written about food for a good chunk of the past decade, I feel obligated to help people get fed. Not just the ones who can afford catered events or wine-soaked classes on how to throw cocktail parties, either.

A few weeks ago I found out about a St. Louis organization called LiveFeed. How I didn’t hear of them earlier, I have no idea.  Hell, I’m a little pissed at myself for not coming up with the idea myself. LiveFeed works with bands and music venues to raise awareness to the hunger problems in the St. Louis area, and provide a means for people to help organizations like Food Outreach and Operation Food Search.

Live music? Feeding people who need it? My word! How could this possibly get any better?

They needed a contributing editor.

Live music, feeding people, and writing? Holy shit! Add knitting scarves for musicians to the mix and I might die from perfectness.

So that’s what’s new in my life. I was planning to go to a show tonight that was raising funds for St. Louis’ 100 Neediest Cases. Alas, weather interfered, but mark my word, things will be moving soon. As I learn more, I’ll be sharing it here.

(I know my links are all but invisible these days, but I haven’t had a chance to fix it. There are some really important links in this post, so please click on the below links if you missed them above:)

LiveFeed

Operation Food Search 

Food Outreach 

St. Louis’ 100 Neediest Cases 

Wenneman Meat Market (because you probably know someone who could use a ham.)