Some fair warning: This blog post may not be for you if you keep kosher or halal, or if you seek out those “V”s in parentheses on restaurant menus – or if you simply reject the whole Instagram-fueled craze of food porn – because this is a post about my favorite animal to have on my plate. This is a post about the humble pig.

“The pig is an amazing animal. You feed a pig an apple, it makes bacon.” —Jim Gaffigan.

I once had a completely flavorless slab of meat from some “Modern American” eatery just off F Street in Washington, D.C., that the menu called a pork chop. As soon as I bit into it I knew my mistake. Why would someone born and bred smack-dab in Middle America fly to the coast for a pork chop? It defied logic to leave the epicenter of the pork industry to sit down at a white tablecloth and expect to have great pork.

I think about that pork chop whenever someone tells me they prefer beef to pork. That’s a preference that also defies logic in my mind. But often those people will admit they are comparing a bland pork chop to a finely marbled ribeye when stating their preference. So I give them a pass. Then I remind them of the sheer wonder that is bacon, pulled pork, prosciutto, sopressata, pork belly, and on, and on, and on.

Here are some of my favorite pigs: