I read item of Scrasamax, something with "Axtrami" in it and thought "Hey, that sounds like Pastrami". Then I thought "what the heck does Pastrami mean anyways? How is it made?", so I looked it up. And from an item of Scras' through this train of thought, I came upon this link:
http://home.howstuffworks.com/question298.htm which explains in vivid detail all you ever wanted to know about Pastrami, and then some more about meat preservation.
As a GM your players are going to run out of food. They are going to want to hunt, to survive on their own, perhaps even build a settlement of their own.
That is why you need to know stuff like this.
