Pictures and Words

Hello! My name is Peter C. Hayward, and watching meat rot in my back yard is my idea of a good time.

Peter C. Hayward, scientist: hard at work.

Testing the Meat

Every scientist who has ever read the original StinkyMeat project has asked the same question: Is rotted-meat-stinkiness proportional to pre-rotted-meat-yumminess?

It’s an important question, and one that I hope to address. In order to do this, however, I had to taste the three meats:

Meat 1: Pork Steaks

I opened the packet of pork steaks, to discover that what I thought was one big pork steak was actually three smaller ones. I’ve cooked my fair share of steak in my time, but never before have I cooked a pork steak, so I cooked each of the pieces for a different amount of time. I’m not a fancy chef in a fancy restaurant, so instead of those fancy colour-coordinated plastic sticks they use to denote how cooked each piece of meat is, I had to make do with what I had on-hand.

From left to right, "Peg Steak", "d4 Steak" and "Button Steak".

All three had both sides briefly cooked on “high” (to seal the juices in.) The heat was changed to “low”, and Button Steak got an additional 10 minutes on each side, d4 Steak got an additional 14 minutes, and Peg Steak an additional 19 minutes. I let them sit for a minute or two, then critically tasted them.

Peg Steak was a bit too dry – it would have gone down well with some kind of jam, or perhaps some mushroom gravy. Conversely, Button Steak was far too juicy. In a lesson that I could have learned just as easily from reading “Goldilocks and the Three Bears”, I discovered that the middle steak was not too tender, not too dry, but just right. If you ever find yourself cooking Barkers Creek Pork Porterhouse Steak, I recommend sealing the juices in, and then cooking each side for 14 minutes.

Meat 2: Kangaroo Steak

My first thought, upon plopping the kangaroo steak into the frying pan, was “Bloody meat.” Because it was – kangaroos seem to be packed full of blood, six, ten times the amount of blood belonging to a cow or a pig. I didn’t know this about kangaroos until now. I’ve heard of people accidentally hitting kangaroos while driving; based on the piece of steak I cooked, they probably just burst, spraying blood everywhere.

I cooked the steak for about 20 minutes on either side, because the middle wouldn’t brown. Even after all that cooking, it was still pretty bloody:

I was eating the kangaroo steak on a plate with a picture of a horse.

I have since been informed that kangaroo steak is not meant to brown, it’s quite a tender meat. Which would explain why when I ate it, it was incredibly tough. Each bite took several minutes to get down. As a steak, it wasn’t pleasant, but all the time I was eating it, I was thinking “This would be so great in a stir-fry.”

Generally the blood is one of my favourite parts of a meat – the blood that comes out of steak (“steak-juice”) is actually quite delicious. The blood from the kangaroo meat was not delicious. It was rather unpleasant. If I ever have another piece of kangaroo steak, I’ll cook it for a lot less time, and see if that improves the taste.

Meat 3: Bolognaise Sauce

This was my favourite, but I’m probably a bit biased, because this is pretty much all I eat. If I could, I would live on nothing but cups of tea, and bowls of spaghetti bolognaise.

I defrosted the bolognaise sauce by leaving it out for a few hours, then I put it in the microwave to heat. I cooked some spaghetti, lovingly poured the bolognaise sauce over the top, and finished it off by putting a few flakes of cheap, pre-grated cheese on top. A meal fit for a king!

As you can see, this is the first photo on the site with both my hands in it. That is because my sister Elizabeth was here to take the photo. She shall henceforth be referred to as "MeatGirl". Ironically, she is a vegetarian.

The meal was divine, as it always is. In all my time eating spaghetti bolognaise, the only one I’ve tasted to rival my fathers was made by a friend of mine called Andrew. He was boasting about the quality of his bolognaise, and I told him that it was unlikely to stand up to my father’s. To my surprise (but not his) – it did!

Final scores:

For this experiment to truly be scientific, I’m going to have to draw up a number of graphs. Graphs work best when you have numbers to plug into them, so I have given each of the meats a score out of ten, based on specific criteria:

1. “Meal”, which is how well the cooked meat compared to an average meal. 0/10 indicates that it was as good as “eating the vomit of a particularly ugly man”, 5/10 indicates that it is as good as “a slice of fresh bread, with some butter thickly spread on it”, and 10/10 indicates that the meat was as good as “my Dad’s Spaghetti Bolognaise™”, which tends to be what I compare every meal to.
2. “Steak”, which is well the cooked meat compared to a steak. 0/10 would be steak as tough as tires, or a lovely salad or something. 10/10 would be the world’s greatest steak, delicious and juicy and just the right level of chewy.

The Pork:

• Peg Steak- 4/10 for meal, 5/10 for steak. It was a less than average meal, and an average steak.
• d4 Steak – 7/10 for meal, 9/10 for steak. It needed something else to go with it to really be a meal, but as a steak, it was pretty damned good.
• Button Steak – 8/10 for meal, 5/10 for steak. This one was juicy enough that it didn’t really need anything else added to it to be a complete meal, but didn’t really work as a steak.

Average score: 6.666/10. Clearly pork is the Devil’s meat.

The Kangaroo Steak:

• Bloody hell – 2/10 for meal, 4/10 for steak. It wasn’t a very nice steak, and a pretty terrible meal to boot.

Average score: 3/10. Cooked correctly, Kangaroo Steak is probably quite lovely. Cooked the way I made it, it is tough and fairly unpleasant.

Dad’s Spaghetti Bolognaise™:

• Meal of Saints – 10/10 for meal, 4/10 for steak. Dad’s spag bol is divine, but I’ll be the first to admit that it doesn’t really make a very good steak. 4 points for effort though!

Average score: 7/10. Not a very good steak at all, but so delicious that it makes up for it.

Dad’s Bolognaise sauce was the clear winner, although one could argue that I’m a little bit biased. Let’s see how these numbers correlate to stinkiness!

Tomorrow: The experiment begins!

Hello! My name’s Peter C. Hayward, and starting tomorrow, I am going to carefully watch three pieces of meat as they slowly decompose in my back yard. There will be photos!

Picking the meat was tricky. I stood at the “meat” section of the supermarket for a full 10 minutes, trying to decide on exactly what pieces of meat I wanted to have occupy a large chunk of my time for the next month. As I was standing there, one piece of meat literally fell off the shelf, and I (with my lightning-fast reflexes) caught it.

Meat One: “Barkers Creek Pork Porterhouse Steak”

The eagle is actually part of the pizza box it was sitting on when I took the photo.

Clearly the pork was so keen to be involved that when it saw me looking, it leapt off the shelf, and into my hand. That’s as good a criteria for inclusion as any, so onto the plate it shall go!

Cost: AU$7.72

For the second piece of meat, I decided to go with something a little more interesting, something unique, something different, something…Australian.

Meat Two: Kangaroo Steak

I forgot to take a photo of it in its packaging.

Kangaroo steak! I had never actually seen kangaroo steak before, despite living in Australia for my whole life. I’ll be curious to see if it deteriorates faster than the pork steak.

Cost: AU$5.58

For the third type of meat, I stretched the definition a little…but I didn’t actually have to leave the house.

Meat three: Mince bolognaise.

Here is an example plate, in it's "cooked and served" form.

My favourite food is spaghetti bolognaise. It’s the only food I’ve ever had that tastes completely and totally different depending on who made it. Every time I visit a restaurant, I order spaghetti bolognaise; I must have had about 50 different types in my day.

And I can unequivocally say that the spaghetti bolognaise that my father makes is the greatest one on the face of the planet. He knows how much I love his spaghetti bolognaise, and specially cooks up the sauce, putting it in individual serving freezer packages. Whenever I’m hungry, I can just cook up some spaghetti, defrost the sauce, and have a delicious meal.

He doesn’t yet know that I’m planning on taking some of his special bolognaise sauce and watching it rot in the back yard.

Cost: Priceless.

So, the three meats have been chosen. Pork Steak, Kangaroo Steak, and some of Dad’s Bolognaise Sauce™.

Up next: Testing the meat!

Hello! My name’s Peter C. Hayward, and this is my website. In the month of January, in the year 2009, I plan on putting three types of meat on a plate in my back yard, and chronicling their decomposition.

Those are not the pieces of meat that shall be on the plate.

“Wow, Peter,” you may well be thinking, “what an original idea! I bet that you didn’t steal that from anywhere!”

Well, I’m sorry to disappoint, but no; I got the idea from a Mr Mahlon Smith – in 2001, he took a plate of meat, and left it in his neighbour’s back yard, documenting the results.  Over the course of 18 days, he watched as a piece of ground beef and a steak slowly decomposed, but more alarmingly, as a packet of hot dogs didn’t.

The most common question I’ve been asked about this is

Why do what someone has already done?

The short answer: It’s something I’ve wanted to do for almost 8 years now.

The original stinkymeat experiment was one of the first pieces of writing that I ever read on the internet, and I’ve yearned to run a similar experiment ever since then. For the first time in my life, I’m actually in a position where I can. I’m responsible for my current housing situation, I have a half-decent camera, and I have a large back yard in which to perform the experiment.

View this, if you will, as a young man at long last accomplishing his dream, following his heart, at long last being able to replicate the actions of someone he has long since admired…

That’s not the only reason; I’ve actually lived in my current, large back-yarded house for a bit over two years now. I could reasonably have done this experiment any time in the past two years. So why now?

To begin with, I’m launching this site, my shiny new blog, and I want to start it with a bang. Anyone who decides that they want to read through my archives from the start, they’ll get to read the (hopefully) interesting tale of a plate of rotting meat.

Secondly, the original stinkymeat site recently went down, and so the original results are no longer available for viewing. (if you desperately want to see what he did, you can go through the google cache, which doesn’t have pictures, or archive.org’s mirror of the site, which does.)

But the main reason that I’m redoing an old, old idea is simple: I think I can add something to it. The original site was made back in the day when photos on the web were low-quality, and storing them was expensive. Not only can I take some higher-resolution shots (higher-resolution photos of rotting meat! That’s exactly what I’ve always wanted! Oh Peter, how did you know?) but I can shoot some video as well. We live in exciting times!

I’m doing the experiment in my own backyard, meaning that I’ll have access to a whole pile of data that the original experiment never covered. “Does it get you evicted” is probably the most pressing question, but equally interesting are “will the smell get onto your clothes”, and “will your housemates despise you.” These are all important questions that science has to answer!

And (as you may have noticed) I’m quite a loquacious writer. I’m going to cover the deterioration of the meat in a lot more detail than the original experiments did. This, of course, raises the question “How much detail do people really want about rotting meat?”, but the answer should be quite obvious: lots. And detail you shall have.

Other than the original StinkyMeat Project, has anyone else done this experiment?

Yes indeed! To begin with, the original StinkyMeat project was done twice; once with beef, steak and hot dogs in a neighbour’s back yard, the second time with a baby chicken, a cheeseburger, and some salmon.

I expected a veritable hoarde of imitators, but the only other one I could find was Glorious Stench, who went in a slightly different direction, leaving the meat not in a back yard somewhere, but in the ceiling of a college bathroom. To take photos, they have to sneak in at 4am, armed with a flashlight – it’s well worth a read.

I know a few people who have had to do similar experiments for school science projects: this one is particularly interesting, as the intent was to compare the rotting of a leg of lamb to the decomposition of a dead human body. If you know of any similar websites, leave a comment or email me, I’ll post the links up.

Predictions

I asked around, and these are the predictions that people came up with:

• You’ll attract rats, birds, cockroaches, maggots, ants, European wasps, and huge clouds of flies.
• You’ll put the shop you live next to out of business.
• The stench will make your clothes smell like rotting meat.
• Bacteria will make you and everyone in the area sick.
• A wild animal will come and remove the meat.
• You’ll get a visit from the police/city council.
• Unless it’s particularly windy, the neighbours won’t even notice.
• You will attract two beetles that feed on fly larvae: a ‘Hister’ beetle and a ‘Rove’ beetle.
• The meat will decrease in mass. (I’m considering buying scales, and weighing the plate every day.)
• You’ll get evicted
• Your housemates will hate you

And my favourite prediction of all:

• Your neighbourhood will be menaced by packs of wild dingos attracted by the smell of meat.

About the Project:

I live in the suburb of Medford, in Brisbane Australia. It’s a fairly suburban area. There’s a small patch of bushland a few hundred metres away from my house, but nothing large enough to house any indigenous Australian animals. The only animal of any kind I’ve seen in my back yard is a snake, wrapped around the fence I’ll be placing the meat next to.

I’ve never seen anyone walking their dog anywhere near my back yard.

The yard is roughly 25m by 30m. The meat will be placed against my back fence, which separates us from a privately-owned park. In the two years that I’ve lived here, I’ve only seen this park used about 10-20 times, primarily by a man who gets drunk and sleeps there. I’ve never had a conversation with any of our neighbours, or anyone who works in the shop next door.

The plate will be approximately 15m away from the fence adjoining us to the store next door, which is another 10-20m away from anywhere that they actually conduct business. On the other side, there is a block of units, with a large wooden fence – the meat will be around 10m away from the fence, which is another 5-10m away from anywhere that actually has people.

It’s not particularly windy around here, though we have hit the stormy season, so it’ll be interesting to see how a plate of meat holds up against a big Queensland storm.

The meat will be approximately 15m away from our Hills Hoist clothes line, which is itself about 10m away from our house. All of these measurements are

In the event of the neighbours, police, city council or our rental agency complaining to me, the plan is to feign innocence, and get rid of the meat. Interesting as the experiment will be, it’s not worth eviction/jail-time.

We have a fairly relaxed relationship with our landlords; we’re here mainly to keep the front lawn mowed and to keep squatters out. We don’t bother them with anything, and they keep our rent ridiculously low in return. (I live in an old, run-down Queenslander, which is slowly falling to bits. It’s going to be knocked down in the next few years, but until then, they’re happy to lease it out to someone who needs somewhere to live.)

My housemates are fairly easy-going. They’re not enthused about the project, but as long as it doesn’t affect them, they’re happy for me to go ahead.

I think I’ll definitely get maggots and ants, but I’d be surprised if I get anything larger than that. Only time will tell!

If you want to add any predictions, please do so in the comments! I’ll be keeping close tabs on all of the predictions, and I’ll do an updated list.

Why ‘StinkyPete’?

It’s simultaneously a homage to the original “StinkyMeat”, a crack at me, Peter, for putting my housemates through this, and an in-joke based around the fact that I hate, hate, hate being called “Pete”.

Tomorrow: Meet the Meat!

I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness.

No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure.

To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?