19 February 2016

"Dear Food Thoughtz:" Freezer-burnt placenta

Dear Food Thoughtz, 
Since you are clearly the expert on food related issues, I have a problem and could really use your help... 
I'm sure I'm not unique in the fact that my freezer is often crowded with foodstuffs that have overstayed their welcome. Normally it's no problem to make more room by simply chucking things out, but I have an item that is taking up a fair amount of space and creating a sizeable dilemma. What should I do with my placenta? There is just no simple solution as I see it. It is just so valuable and I can't in good conscience throw it away, but I'm a bit concerned about cooking it at this point. It's been in there for about 6 months now and is sure to be freezer burned. Do you think this will diminish the nutritional value? Should I just pluck up the $150 and have it made into pills, or can I still get away with making it into a stew or something? Any thoughts you might have on the subject would be greatly appreciated. 
Signed,Placenta Ideas Sincerely Sought

Dear PISS,

First of all, my sincerest apologies for not getting back to you sooner – even I’m surprised that your freezer-burnt placenta wasn’t enough to arouse my food thoughtz. And to be honest, I probably wouldn’t have bothered to get around to this if I hadn’t talked to my mum last night on the phone. She recently sent me a Valentine’s care package (which also had Midge Deak’s belated birthday present inside: two Microplanes), which included some homemade chocolate chip cookies. I had initially request sugar cookies because they’re my favourite and I can’t get enough of that icing, but she sent chocolate chip cookies instead because you don’t have to roll out the dough. Anyway, I called her last night to thank her for the package and she told me that she actually did try to make sugar cookies because she just happened to have some dough in the freezer “from about a year ago” when her and my niece made sugar cookies together. So she took the dough out, and I’m not sure how far she got beyond that. Maybe she rolled, cut, and baked the cookies, or maybe she didn’t get beyond thawing the dough. We’ll never know. But what we do know is that she had to throw all of it out because during its one year tenure in the freezer, the dough had absorbed some foul taste from something else, rendering it unedible.

This story was just the push I needed to respond to your query of over a month ago. My advice to you is to eat it asap. First of all, you might be lucky and maybe that placenta has absorbed the tastes of actual foods that surround it. But secondly, the longer you let that frozen mass of cells sit in your freezer, the more likely it is that all of your other foods are absorbing what I can only imagine to be the totally revolting taste of a human placenta.

I don’t know how you should eat it. Midge Deak suggests frying it up with onions and paprika. Although she has never eaten a placenta, she regularly eats substances that physically and gustatorily (no idea if that’s a word) resemble placentas. Your biggest mistake was probably that you didn’t initially portion it up, because I think that the best way to consume this would be in a smoothie, but it’s going to be a really big pain to thaw out the whole thing just to make one smoothie. Unless your planning to have a pure placenta smoothie, which I wouldn’t personally recommend. Under no circumstances should you spend $150 to have your placenta made into pills. If you have a placenta in your freezer, I’m guessing it’s because you have a child somewhere in your house, and wouldn’t you rather put that $150 towards that child’s education or some frivolous article of clothing for her?

Anyway, that’s about all I have to say. Thanks for your request. Please do let me know how it all turns out.