If you've always had dreams of being a butcher and curing your own meats like a badass hipster, but you didn't quite know where to start, Salume Beddu has got you covered.

Artisan meat curer and deli Salume Beddu (3467 Hampton Avenue; 314-353-3100) is offering a class they're calling PorkShop on May 19 and 20 (not to be confused with Schlafly Pork Shop on May 25). The two-day class is a hands-on instruction in hog butchery which will cover how to break down a pig, how to make sausage at home and how to use every bit of that animal to create delicious meals. The course will conclude with a nose-to-tail dinner with wine pairings at Parker's Table.

Gut Check spoke with Ashley Schuster Kemps of Salume Beddu to get more details about the course.

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If you've ever eaten baby food, first of all, we sincerely hope you've had a baby, and second, you know it usually doesn't taste very good.

Chef Brian Miller of Onesto Pizza & Trattoria (5401 Finkman Street; 314-802-8883) wants to change that perception by teaching people how to make their own baby food. Spring brings bushels of fresh veggies to out local farmers' markets, and Onesto wants to take advantage of that fresh produce to show people that baby food doesn't have to be tasteless goop.

Four of Onesto's staff members are currently pregnant, and the general manager, Sally Sciaroni just had a baby in December, so the timing seems perfect for a baby food class. Gut Check caught up with Sciaroni to get all the details.

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Clint Sloan pouring champagne | image via

Think you know champagne? Do you understand the importance of an assemblage? Or how to make a fine cuvée?

On Monday, May 13, The Wine Merchant, Ltd. (20 S. Hanley Road, Clayton; 314-863-6282) is hosting a special champagne class where guests can learn all about the beloved bubbly brew. The class will be lead by guest instructor Clint Sloan, who was recently named one of the top sommeliers in the country by Food & Wine.

In preparation for the class, The Wine Merchant will be pouring L. Aubry Brut Premier Cru Tradition this evening, so stop by for a sneak preview!

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Update: We still have gift certificates to participating restaurants to give away! Find out how to win them after the jump!
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In 1991, ActionAIDS, a Philadelphia-based agency to help those suffering from AIDS, organized the first Dining Out For Life event. ActionAIDS encouraged local restaurants to donate a portion of their proceeds from one day to the organization, which would use the funds to fight AIDS in the community.Since then, Dining Out For Life has expanded to more than 60 cities across the U.S.

On Thursday, April 25, more than 150 St. Louis area restaurants will donate at least 25% of your check to Saint Louis Effort For AIDS. A full list of participating restaurants and the amount they are donating is available at the St. Louis Dining Out For Life webpage.

But wait! We have gift certificates for five of the participating restaurants, and we want you to have them. Find out how to get one after the jump.

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Mark Andresen

Here at Gut Check, we love St. Louis history. A large part of it revolves around beer.

The Missouri History Museum (Lindell Boulevard & DeBaliviere Avenue; 314-746-4599) is taking advantage of this city's love of beer with its History on Tap tours that examine early St. Louis neighborhoods and the way beer shaped this city.

The first neighborhood tour takes place Wednesday, April 17 (that's tomorrow!), and delves into Soulard's history as seen through beer goggles. The cool, figurative kind of beer goggles. Not the kind they make you wear in alcohol-awareness classes. Not that we would know. Anyway...

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Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, NY. Roth Hall (left) and Colavita Center for Italian Food and Wine.

Are you waiting for the right excuse to ditch town and leave it all behind to pursue a lucrative career in a mile-high chef's hat? Tired of getting taunted by daytime infomercials? Well, look no further.

The Culinary Institute of America forgoes that other CIA's incognito M.O. by hosting its first prospective student reception in St. Louis on Tuesday, April 2, at 7 p.m. Get to know the world's premier not-for-profit culinary college at Herbie's Vintage 72 (405 North Euclid Avenue; 314-769-9595), where owner and former executive chef Aaron Teitelbaum proudly hosts and boasts about his experiences in CIA's culinary arts management program.

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First it was cadavers. Then it was ghosts and then sex. Now, unwitting science journalist and author Mary Roach is tackling food and all the weird stuff our bodies do when we eat it.

Roach's new book, Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal, comes out April 1, and she'll be stopping by St. Louis later in the month on her book tour.

Roach started out as a magazine journalist, but eventually parlayed her column for Salon.com into her first book, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. Next, she investigated the afterlife in Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, then came Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex.

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The winning team of student chefs in St. Louis' Healthy Schools Campaign Cooking up Change contest pose with their first-place meal.

Yesterday Beaumont Career and Technical Education High School (801 North Eleventh Street; 314-231-3720) in downtown St. Louis hosted Cooking up Change, a national health-focused student cooking competition presented by Chicago-based nonprofit Healthy Schools Campaign. In order to participate in the contest, student chefs create a menu including one main dish and two side dishes only using ingredients from their school's cafeteria, and the meal must exceed the USDA's current standard for nutrition for their federal school lunch program.

High-school culinary students from Beaumont competed against student chefs from Clyde C. Miller Career Academy (1000 North Grand Boulevard; 314-371-0394), with the winning team moving on to the national competition in Washington, D.C., on Monday, June 10, at the U.S. Department of Education. Four teams of students from Clive C. Miller competed against one another and against two teams from Beaumont.

Welp, the local results are in.

See also:
-St. Louis High Schools Compete Tomorrow in Healthy Schools Campaign Cooking Contest

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Mayor Francis Slay with 2012 Cooking up Change St. Louis winners at last year's competition.

On Tuesday, March 12, Beaumont Career and Technical Education High School (801 North Eleventh Street; 314-231-3720) in downtown St. Louis plays host to Cooking up Change, a national health-focused student cooking competition managed by Chicago-based nonprofit Healthy Schools Campaign. High-school culinary students from Beaumont will compete with student chefs from Clyde C. Miller Career Academy (1000 North Grand Boulevard; 314-371-0394) beginning at 9 a.m. tomorrow in a local round. From there the winning team advances to a national competition pitting teams of high school culinary students from nine cities against one another in Washington, D.C., on Monday, June 10, at the U.S. Department of Education.

Gut Check caught up with Lindsay Eanet, communications and public relations manager for Healthy Schools Campaign and Sara Porter, director of external affairs for Healthy Schools Campaign, who manages Cooking up Change, to learn more about the program, what exactly goes into the healthy-lunch cooking competition and where St. Louis' winning team will go from here.

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Kaitlin Steinberg

Well, the giant, inflatable pig covered in sores and dirt was cuter than we imagined.

Local animal-rights activists joined members of the national animal rights organization Mercy for Animals today in front of the Maplewood Commons Walmart just off South Hanley Road in protest of Walmart's practice of confining pregnant pigs in small crates on its factory farms.

Gut Check heard there'd be a ten-foot-tall inflatable pig covered in bloody sores and people holding up signs in protest, so we were there. Again, the pig was way cuter and more pathetic than we'd anticipated, which was great for the cause. But it also made us feel bad about that pulled pork we ate yesterday.

See also:
- The Missouri People of Walmart (Photos)

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