If not, however, perhaps you'll enjoy hearing the saga of writer Johanna Stein's placenta-centric revenge-served cold. Here's a, ahem, taste:

I have a friend, a good friend (who I'll call K) who is sweet and funny and adorable and once took a shit in a box, tied it up with a bow, and gave it to me as a joke. Unlike her, I shit you not.

It was K's birthday, so when she handed me the beautifully wrapped gift the only thing I could think of to say was, "but it's your birthday".

I was shocked. Disgusted. But mostly I was impressed. And ever since that day I have been plotting my revenge. My poo revenge.

And here it is, in Delivery Room 6b, staring me in the face, about to be tossed out like so many pounds of glop.

I imagine how the deed will go down: I will hand K a hefty box tied with ribbon. She will look at it and say, "but you're the new mother…"

It will be sublime.

We won't spoil the outcome, save to say that it's not nearly as gross as placenta smoothie.

"Sweet (Gloppy) Revenge" [Johanna Stein via Strollerderby]

Unlike the earth-mother types who cook their own afterbirth, hoping to combat postpartum depression and increase milk flow, Stein's wife hires a pro. "To my surprise, Sara did not look unkempt, frumpy, heavy or in any way like a Wiccan," writes Stein with typical charm. For $275, the full-time placenta cook will prepare and dry it and turn it into pills - much more palatable, as she explains to the aghast new dad, than the "placenta smoothies" some new moms slurp.

Here's how Stein describes the placenta, which he carries home in a cooler:

Though I am exceedingly squeamish, when my son was born, I was shocked that I saw only the beauty of childbirth. Until the placenta came out. There are many normal human reactions to seeing a placenta, ranging from screaming to vomiting to warding it off with a cross. For those of you who have never seen one, the placenta is to the baby what Stephen Baldwin is to Alec Baldwin. It's what your liver would look like if it got into an accident on the autobahn with one of those aliens from Mars Attacks! and their bloody carcasses threw jellyfish at each other.

Sara, required by law to cook the placenta in the home, steams it with herbs, dehydrates it, and delivers the pills "in a pretty glass jar, [with] a card, a CD of lullabies and a satin pouch. In which was part of my son's umbilical cord, fashioned into a heart." Now, as I told Anna, Joel Stein and placenta-cookery are a combination fairly guaranteed to make my stomach roil. And I was not "disappointed," if that's the word for having one's worst fears confirmed. Nudge-nudge old-school wife-indulging with a dollop of VH1-level snark is hard to take in the best of circumstances. And when it's combined with placentophagy - "the kitchen got that ironlike smell of cooked organ meat, with vague undertones of a consciousness-raising group and a Betty Friedan rally" - the results call for, in my case, a piece of dry toast and some Canada Dry.

Afterbirth For Dinner [Time]

Earlier: Is Sharing Placenta The Recipe For Sisterly Bonding?

Save Some Womb For Dessert

Previously, we learned that some people believe placentophagy, the practice of eating the the placenta, is a great way to cure post-partum depression. In a post on Mom Logic today, the Shilling sisters give a detailed account of how they prepared the placenta and critique the dish. They even posted pictures to their Facebook account.

Chrissy explains that she wanted to eat the organ because:

The placenta is such an amazing organ in all its done for my baby that it didn't seem right to simply throw it away. My thought was "being the only organ that the human body makes that naturally exits the body, why not take advantage of it?"

By taking it in again, it was symbolic for me as a way to truly say "good-bye" to my 9-month pregnancy and "hello" to an exciting (albeit challenging) new chapter in my life.

Sister Kathy describes the meal as, "Just a simple dish with fresh tomatoes, sauce and spices." She says the 6 pound placenta retains vitamins and hormones while it cooks. Just to be sure she saved all those nutrients, she put any blood that seeped out of the organ back into the sauce. Here's how she prepared it:

The "recipe" was pretty simple, but preparation was very fun! First, I washed off any clots and snipped/tore away the membrane. Websites suggested this, and I imagine it's because it'd be chewy. The umbilical cord required a pair of scissors to cut through and I had to marvel at how incredible tough that piece was! After it was pretty clean, I sliced it into bite-size chunks, and cooked it.

Apparently it tastes as good as it sounds! Kathy says:

The taste of the meat itself was surprisingly tasteful (I thought it'd be bland, but it absorbed the flavors of the ingredients very well). It wasn't TOUGH, but not sloppy either. Just the right kind of texture that I like.

And adds:

The meat cooked similar to liver, but came out with the consistency of Filet
Mignon! Perhaps a little stringy.

The sisters both said they felt great after chowing down on placenta, but most commenters on Mom Logic didn't find their afterbirth cookery very appetizing (Conan O'Brien knows how they feel). There were some who said people should be open-minded and even a few who said they'd eaten their own placenta, however, the majority said the photos made them nauseous... and compared placentophagy to cannibalism.

I Ate My Baby's Placenta [Mom Logic]

Earlier: Save Womb For Dessert
Conan The Barbarian