SENT: 10:37 AM Oct. 29, 2017
RE: Reliable food sources
Howdy, y’all. Your pal Chester “Zagnut” Johnson here again.
I just can’t tell you how great it is to have Internet back. I believe it’s the thing I’ve missed the very most during this whole undead holocaust, except of course for my dear, departed Velda, whose scrambled and zombified brains I spattered on the linoleum of our very own motor home, and even so, she lives on in my heart, if you know what I mean.
I’m sure that you do.
Not that anyone is answering my email suggestions, or certainly not in what I would call a friendly and civilized fashion. We all have our own struggles in these uncertain times, and we all get tense, what with hordes of the infected shambling after us every time we go foraging for a Slim Jim or a can of tuna. I sympathize, but don’t go snapping at me when I suggest a solution.
And a solution is just what I offer this morning. Protein is scarce, and everybody has to eat, but continual foraging is not a sustainable lifestyle. Hell, people, that’s why the Mesopotamians quit their hunting and gathering and invented farming and the division of labor. Eventually, that’s what we’ll all have to do, set up feudal and primitive villages and such, but it’s a hard transition, I know; Velda and I were on the Zagnut Express CQing all up and down the highways and byways of this great land of ours for two years before she got careless and bought the bug, God love ‘er.
But even if you’re rolling down the highway Zagnut-style, you’re going to get tired of running every time they get a little whiff of your brains. You’ll want to make a stand, but if you do, what will you eat? Even if you’re locked up tight in a grocery store, you’ll either run out of food or finally get so sick of rancid peanut butter and cold beans that you bust out of there and offer your patchy, vitamin D-starved scalp to the first skull-muncher you find. That’s no way to go!
Rest easy, campers. Ol’ Zagnut has the answer. The food distribution chain has been disrupted? Then let the food come to you. Hell, it’s already there. All you have to do is open your eyes.
That’s right. You know what I’m talking about, and don’t pretend you haven’t considered it.
Now, I know that you’re saying to yourself, “Zagnut, you’ve lost your ever-lovin’ mind. You’ve finally succumbed to grief over your beloved Velda.” That’s as may be, but if I am crazy, I don’t want to be sane, because we eat like kings down here in Dixie. Like Kings!
We do so with reverence, of course, toward our fallen brothers and sisters, all children of a just and loving God whose wrath we do not quite understand, but our reverence does not make our Brunswick stew a whit less tasty! And Barbecue? My sweet merciful Father, the barbecue is perfect, especially with my old family recipe. When you do it right, it’s practically falling off the bone. The secret is in the aging, you see.
Now, you’d think the freshest would be best, but there you’d be wrong. This is where Zagnut’s long experience as a connoisseur of fine steaks and prime rib will help you get the feedbag on right!
Don’t go too fresh, if weather permits. Really good prime rib has been hanging for at least six weeks, and over the course of that time, bacterial action has broken up and tenderized the tissue. If you’ve ever noticed how supple they are, wondered if they were as tender as they look, wonder no more, my friends! It’s for real, and this time of year, even the Sunny South is a walk-in meat locker! Look for the thinner ones, no bloat at all, because one very important aspect of proper aging is moisture loss, at least 10% of pre-shambling weight and preferably 15% to 18%. Another thing that’s very important here: a dry, black crust should coat exposed surfaces (cuts and such, stumps of previously hacked-off limbs). A little white, powdery fungal growth on the blackened bits is normal and safe, but if you get some of the more interesting colors of fungal slime, especially accompanied with foul odor, you’ve missed your window, so just tap that cranium and walk away.
That doesn’t mean only the supple are tasty. Those older and stiffer ones will do fine if their hides are whole and if the navel is intact. That means they have never swollen up enough to burst, and you just may have a scrumptious rack of jerky ready for slow smoking and application of pepper oil or tangy teriyaki sauce. Leanness counts here, so look for the ones in jogging suits.
A few words on proper handling of ingredients: Don’t skimp on the gloves! Just a little nick and GRRRRR, you’re in a galley kitchen full of fresh, angry zombie-on-the-hoof. That’s what happened to poor Velda; she was really never much in the kitchen, self-conscious about her cooking since we were kids, and handling ingredients just sort of wore on her over the months, that and the constant pawing and moaning outside the camper every time we stopped for supper. She took to biting her nails to the bloody quick, and then chewing the skin off her knuckles, so just handling that one last juicy steak in her worn-out Playtex gloves … well, that was a hell of a way to end four decades of marriage, I’ll tell you! Still, she was the best wife I ever had. The very best. Like I said, she will always be part of me.
Anyway, back to basic food safety: the meat thermometer is your best friend. The average hamburger has to reach a temperature of 160 degrees Fahrenheit to be considered safe, but since the agent of this particular plague wasn’t quite nailed down before the medical institutions fell to the ravenous hordes, I’ll go on up to 185 on a thick-cut chop.
Now a word about the “slow plague”:
We used to just boil it to bits, all worried about the virus, but these days, it looks like some of us get a touch of the virus from rarer treatment every now and again and just roll right through it. Right after we quit boiling it off the bone and started enjoying our meals a bit better, we had some medium-rare steaks, and Jasper Stephens was sitting his post at the tree line for about six hours, not moving a muscle. He wasn’t answering his radio, and one young ‘un was going to drop him where he sat, but cooler heads prevailed. He came on in when the dinner bell rang, and he seems more-or-less okay. He doesn’t talk as much as he used to, and every once and a while, you’ll catch him eye-balling a cranium with something like love, but he’s got a pulse, and he hasn’t bitten anybody yet. We all get a touch of it now and then, but part of that is the climate anyway, you see. It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.
Where do we go from here? Well, the sky’s the limit, as far as I’m concerned. The herd at the perimeter is thinning out a little, but that doesn’t mean we have to take this show back on the road. We have undesirables in our own midst whose continued presence is an affront to God himself, and I figure I can manage to “accidentally” get them infected, and then we’ll be able to not only control their curing and aging but actually pump some herb-and-garlic-infused oils into their veins and let their frenzied, spastic twitching pump it into the meat itself. We could get us a little cottage industry going here, and maybe even get some little ones ready for shipping, when shipping is possible again, trussed up like groaning, angry veal, delivered oven-ready at your door!
We are a forward-thinking bunch down here, always looking to a brighter tomorrow, no matter what your stereotypes say.
Now the “demographics” of the undesirables who would provide the raw materials for this nouvelle-nouvelle cuisine will vary from region to region, but I think you can guess who it is down here! That’s right! Red state or blue, there will be enough weak-minded, middle-of-the-road Democrats to keep this feast running for decades. All you have to do is cut their hair and strip off their black turtleneck sweaters, and they’re good to go!
I know that this isn’t going to be popular in all parts of this great country, but we have to look to the future and decide what really matters here. Down where I come from, we have a long history of living off a certain class of people, and there are ways of keeping them in control that aren’t so obvious. We never forgot the old ways, not really, and now our skills are in need again, so you just give old Zagnut a holler if you’re not sure how to handle some situation with them uppity zombies, y’hear?
With love and respect,
Zagnut
P.S., recipes to follow
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SENT 2:33 AM Oct. 28, 2017
Reliable food sources
Hullo, all, and thanks awfully for last week’s transportation tips, many of which will appear in this week’s digest. There are some true lifesavers this week, especially tips about quickly and easily securing vehicles from undead intruders.
Again, PLEASE do not send email to the entire list. Simply hit ‘reply’ to the bloody email, not ‘reply all.’ Our webmaster has become infected, and I have not as yet managed to engage flood control, so I’m afraid everyone received the ‘undead mule train’ reply to the transportation query (and I feel compelled to ask again that you PLEASE not attempt this method of transportation as it requires a living ‘volunteer’ to act as the ‘carrot’). Luckily, I did manage to get the censorbot working, so you no longer will receive material like the ‘undead brothel and sex farm’ proposal from the same party the week previous.
On another note, if anyone in the Florida panhandle or south Alabama regions of the former United States has access to aircraft and incendiary devices, do please contact me privately.
Now, this week’s topic: has anyone been successful in getting reliable food sources going in infested areas? Share your success stories! Remember, we are all in this together.
Most of us…
Thanks much,
Liam
J.O. Boyles
is the pseudonym of an Albanian ex-patriot who runs “a very private and exclusive consulting firm within reasonable driving distance of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.” His main interests are history, political science, astrology, numerology, chemistry, RC toys, security systems for home and business, and the Trilateral Commission. If you are willing to assist in the transcription of his journals, contact him via Danse Macabre. Serious only, please.
