If you're new to the blog HERE is a link to the first part of this series of posts.
A couple of weeks ago the Honorable Judge was kind enough to request that listeners mail us the more difficult to source food items he assigned last year. So far one dear person took him up and mailed a package of Duck Dynasty brand beef jerky. The closest I've come to seeing the actual show is when my 88 year old neighbor stops by sporting a spotless Duck Dynasty hat with a little plastic Duck Dynasty tag affixed to it. A few months ago I asked him if he knew where to get the jerky, but he only enjoyed the paraphernalia, not the other spin-offs of the Dynasty.
I think jerky is great stuff. Two years ago I jerked an entire deer so that I could give away bags of it come Christmas time. The salty-umame-tough chew nature of it is almost addictive. I wish I had more to say about the Duck Dynasty incarnation, but it tastes about like one would expect from an industrial food product with a TV show label. That is to say, it had salt. It had "beef". It had "spices", one of which lingered on the tongue with just a faint wiff of peppery spice. It was less chewy than the homemade kind of jerky and had a much redder tone, both of which I attribute to the preservatives it's packed in. I hoped for really terrible jerky so that I could make some clever pun on duck dyNASTY, but alas, it was just boring.
My favorite part of the whole thing - the flip side of the bag - there were two sentences of verbal fluff and then right in the center of the pack -
HAPPY
HAPPY
HAPPY
I wish it lived up to its labeling. I did not find myself elevated to a higher plane as I ate it, though I did get a chuckle out of the triumverate. And to be completely honest, I wondered aloud whether I could grow as good a beard as the any of the show's stars.
-Edmund