It is common for cooks and butchers to tenderize steak and similar meats by pounding with a hammer or rolling pin or other hard implement, such as the ground perhaps. This is arduous work, probably resulting in some ailment analogous to tennis elbow.

How much better if the animals were tender before they were killed? And how much better still if we could make the animals tenderize themselves? If the ground was the hard implement used, all we would need to do was to ensure the beasts fell over repeatedly.

Now, most animals are able to put one leg in front of another fairly well, even cows. We need to make it harder for them. Stilts fitted to cows' hooves would have two delicious effects: firstly causing a great increase in the number of times they fell over, and secondly by increasing the cow-ground distance the would produce a harder impact for tenderer flesh.

Therefore, in the interests of gourmets everywhere, I say, get the cows on stilts. Or make them walk tightropes, or something!

Disclaimer: this is not immoral, because I am a vegetarian and would not eat them.
-- pottedstu, Oct 20 2001

are you a vegetarian because you hate animals?
-- po, Oct 20 2001


Surely the farmer would have to spend all day standing the cows back up on their stilts when they fall over?
-- pussygalore, Oct 20 2001


I'm imagining a ranch surrounded by an two-story-high barbed wire fence.
-- lahosken, Oct 21 2001


I'm imagining the frustrated look on the bull's face when he breaks into the cow paddock.
-- Helium, Oct 21 2001


Bruises / internal bleeding = tenderizing? I'm not so sure about that.
-- snarfyguy, Oct 22 2001


I wonder if Salvador Dali had the same idea.
-- stupop, Oct 22 2001


Hang on, cows are ungulates who need to graze. By putting them on stilts they can reach the grass and they would strave. My solution would be to landscape grassed terraces so passing elevated bovines could have a snack while tottering about.
-- Aristotle, Oct 22 2001


(psst...Aristotle: Gazing is like straving.)
-- beauxeault, Oct 22 2001


I first thought this idea was going to be like danceing on the grapes to get wine. Butchers wearing stilts with little hills and vallies fixed to the end and walking on meat, throwing a little MSG to tenderize it every once and a while. But a stilt wearing cow would be a pretty good sight.
-- barnzenen, Oct 22 2001


Not stilts, roller skates.
-- phoenix, Oct 22 2001


I prefer to hack the extremeties off of my vegetables with a sharp & heavy knife then plunge them into boiling water or oil. My, how they squeal!
-- DrBob, Oct 23 2001



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