Can you please pass the placenta?

So this weekend, Jester and I went to our friend Amanda's family's lake house in Michigan. Joining us were Amanda (as you might guess) and her husband Adam (of 30 in 8 fame), Alex, and Alex's anonymous wife. Originally, there were several others who were supposed to come, but had to back out for various (and surprisingly legitimate) reasons at the last minute. Thus, the food and drink that Alex and his anonymous wife had purchased was enough for 9 to 10 people. Needless to say, it was a weekend of gluttony. The motto for the weekend was "You're Never Not Hungry."

We each likely gained several pounds over the course of 48 hours, but that's beside the point. Friday night, we were sitting around the fire pit, telling scary stories and the like. Predictably, the conversation turned to placenta. As I'm sure we're all aware, placenta is the organic mass that supplies fetuses (or is it feti?) with oxygen and food while in the womb. I will spare you a picture of the placenta, but if you're curious, click on the Wikipedia page and scroll to the bottom. Remember that image as I tell you the rest of this tale.

Alex's anonymous wife mentioned one of her acquaintances is pregnant. This other woman -- we'll call her Crazy -- is, from what Alex's anonymous wife describes her, kind of, well, crazy. For example, Crazy cut out an article -- presumably from Crazy Ass Pregnant Voodoo Chick Magazine -- for her husband to read. The article was about keeping and, gulp, eating the placenta. And just to calm you down, Crazy's husband is not Crazy nor crazy, so he dismissed this as an option, although in her defense, Crazy supposedly claimed she never actually intended to eat her placenta. Nonetheless, this is something some apparently people do. I'm sure every single one of us would be lying if we said we haven't been at least somewhat interested in what pan-seared human flesh might taste like, but this seemed a little savage to me.

As a True Blood fanatic, I immediately imagined something along the lines of the Hunter's Soufflé that Maryann recently prepared with a human heart, resulting in an unknowing Tara and Eggs going crazy and punching each other in the face. Curious, I asked how one might eat placenta. Is it sautéed? Baked? Deep fried? Cubed and skewered, kebob style? No, no, hell no, and no. Get this: it is pureed into an afterbirth smoothie and then drunk. Holy. Fucking. Shit. This, of course, begged the question: does eating your child's placenta give you superhuman powers, sight beyond sight, or everlasting life? The answer might astound you: No. This means that there is literally no good reason to eat your (or anyone else's) child's placenta.

The rest of the weekend involved a lot of food consumption, a small bit of rain-soaked golf, some horseshoes, a lot of fire watching, some Swisher Sweets, not enough beer consumption for how much was purchased (apparently 132 beers is too much for three guys and one drinking gal to consume in a two-day period), mosquito bites, sleep watching, and zero discussion of how to prepare human placenta.