Here's an interesting item for the next time all you hepcats and kittens host a dinner party: retro plastic dinnerware emblazoned with carcass maps. For the noncarnivores out there, a carcass map is one of those endlessy fascinating diagrams that hangs in butcher shops.My meat and fire-loving alter ego Joey Deckle tipped me off to Food for Thought plates, which are the brainchild of designer Charles S. Anderson. You probably can't read the text, but the piggy plate shown here is labeled swine.
If you have an inkling that the word "swine" implies some sort of tongue-in-cheek value judgment about meat eaters you're not far off the mark. The other three plates in the set are steer, lamb and mutt, which in this case is not short for mutton, but simply denotes dog. Sure they're a far cry from Williams-Sonoma's elegant Je demande du boeuf carcass map platter, but I still wouldn't mine having a set in my cupboard.
