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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Schalfly Pork Shop 2012 | Image via Schalfly

Saturday-morning garage-sale hunting is always great fun. Saturday-morning garage-sale hunting followed by a pig roast is awesome.

On Saturday, May 25, Schlafly Tap Room (2100 Locust Street; 314-241-2337) will host its annual Pork Shop: A Dowtown BBQ and Garage Sale. Also, there will be beer. A roast pig, beer and a multitude of obsolete VHS tapes and grandma's costume jewelry.

Get excited.

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Imagine this, but with Mom's chili | Jon Gitchoff

Just so we're clear, the Midwest Puppy Contest has nothing to do with dogs. And Mr. Midwest Leather is not a crafter of leather goods.

Gut Check feels rather naïve for thinking otherwise.

A human puppy is...um...a human pet who behaves like a dog but looks like a man wearing a leather jockstrap and collar and sitting on all fours. And Mr. Midwest Leather is a fella who looks good in all manner of leather attire and is a fine representative of the leather-wearing community.

OK, wait, we swear this had something to do with food...

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Jennifer Silverberg

Salume Beddu (3467 Hampton Avenue; 314-353-3100) needs your help!

The artisan cured meat company and deli has been nominated for Entrepreneur of the Year from Slow Money, an organization dedicated to providing education and funding to entrepreneurs involved with the slow-food movement.

The award is based on civilian votes, so Salume Beddu is encouraging its Facebook fans (and anyone else who wants to help a worthy cause) to go to its page on Slow Money and cast a vote. The voting ends April 16, and the winner will be announced at the 4th Annual Slow Money National Gathering in Boulder, Colorado, at the end of April.

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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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image via

How National Meatball Day became a holiday is a mystery, but Gut Check is happy to partake.

In honor of this strange but delicious holiday, Onesto Pizza and Trattoria (5401 Finkman Street; 314-802-8883) will host a "guess the weight of the giant meatball" contest.

Chef Brian Miller will prepare the behemoth meatball, which will include the same good stuff as the restaurant's normal-sized meatballs: grass-fed and hormone-free beef, local pork, Parmesan, eggs, breadcrumbs and, of course, spices.

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Deli Eliot

I. C. Wiener

Yesterday's snow flurries became an absolute nightmare as the day wore on and the powder piled higher and higher in the roadways.

Which is why Gut Check was startled to receive -- just as the Mayor of St. Louis was on live television imploring city residents to stay home and off the roads -- an announcement that the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile had just pulled into town.

We had to know -- just how does a 27-foot hot dog fare in 25-mile-an-hour winds on ice two-tenths of an inch thick?

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image via

Paleo purists may need to bolster the salad component of their diets: The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports soaring meat and poultry prices nationwide.

How do you feel about paying 7 percent more for Pride of the Farm center-cut pork steaks at Schnucks -- a price increase from $2.84 to $3.04 per pound from January to February?

Would you pay 34.4 percent more than last February's prices for boneless, skinless chicken breasts at Price Chopper?

Gut Check got Teri Gault, CEO and founder of grocery-chain price monitoring site TheGroceryGame.com, on the blower to pose the single question that should be on the mind of every St. Louis carnivore:

Teri, Where's the beef?

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Caillin Murray

A butcher at the Webster Groves Straub's location holding a cut of prime strip.

Get ready to stock your freezers like it's Y2K, everyone: This weekend Straub's (multiple locations) is hosting a massive meat sale.

The meat sale, which Straub's is promoting as "legendary," begins today, February 1, and runs through Saturday, February 2, at all Straub's locations. The local grocery chain is knocking off between $1.30 and $14 a pound for select cuts of meat.

"We realize that the economy is kind of iffy, and it's nice for the people who can't just throw away money on prime beef to be able to come in and stock up on it," says Samantha Schmid, marketing coordinator at Straub's.

Gut Check moseyed over to the Straub's (211 West Lockwood Avenue, Webster Groves; 314-962-0169) in Webster Groves to peek the discounts -- and compare 'em to other local grocery-store prices.

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Kaitlin Steinberg

Vernon's chicken breasts gettin' all nice and smoky.

Putting the smoker on a trailer out in front of the restaurant was totally a strategic move. Matt Stiffelman and Tim Zolman's new barbecue joint, Vernon's (6707 Vernon Avenue, University City; 314-726-1227), lures customers with the scent of slowly smoking pork, beef and chicken that encircles the building and wafts down the streets of the surrounding neighborhood.

"That was intentional," Stiffelman confirms. "This company makes a lot of trailers, but this is the showy one."

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