I’ve had a pound of ground beef in the fridge for a few days. I keep meaning to make krautburgers for CR because he loves them and my recipe is really, really excellent.
But I don’t seem to be able to cook the beef. I have more or less given it up over the past couple of years. I didn’t like it anymore and it bothered me that there were so many hormones and chemicals in most beef, so I chose to stop eating it. More or less.
Truth is, though, I like the way cows look. They have pretty eyes and they’re so calm and they never seem to have a mean bone in their bodies. There are a lot of cows in Colorado, okay? It started to bother me every time I cut into a piece of beef.
I didn’t make a production of it or anything. I just kind of stopped eating it 99% of the time. Then, weirdly, I became very sensitive to dairy and had to start eating all organic dairy, then almost no dairy at all. And no bacon, even though I do think it tastes very, very good, because it’s too fatty. And, well, if you’r e not going to eat bacon, there’s not much about pork I find appealing. Which leaves the white meats, and it’s silly, but I don’t mind eating birds for some reason, even though it really, really, really bothered me when my cat murdered a baby the other day. (Not only murdered him. Left him half dying just outside the office. My sister said, "Next time, just break his neck. It’s the kind thing do do." And she’s right…but break a baby bird’s neck? Reach out and turn its little head and let it snap? And you think I would ever sleep again?")
Which is so very hypocritical but all I started out to say was I think this beef is never going to get cooked because I’m really not going to be able to cook it. I might have to learn how to be a totally vegetarian foodie, of which there are many.
I do not mean in anyway to say anyone else should ever feel badly about chowing down a steak right in front of me. I think eating lobster is gross, too, and don’t even get me started on all those "delicacies" like livers and hearts and intestines. Not. In. This. Lifetime. But I don’t need to make everybody love the same foods I love or avoid the foods I avoid.
What is something you love to eat that others hate, or you hate and other adore?
There’s an Italian stewed cabbage dish that I love called Baniccia. Cabbage, garlic, bread, olive oil and romano cheese. Just love it, not so much the men in my life.
I have to say between you and Gabrielle I’m rethinking my whole red meat life. I’m eating it less and less as I get older, but you both have certainly provided food for thought.
You would think, now that they are happily ensconced in Paris with a small balcony and not the great outdoors they had in Australia, that my 2’s birdkilling days are over. But that didn’t stop 15 year-old butterball punpkin from dashing out onto the balcony and nabbing a sparrow. Still, much better than the birds/rats/possums they used to leave for me.
I do love lobster, but I’ve never been a fan of offel. And I can’t stand to watch someone eating steak tartare. Blech! But you know, whatever floats your boat.
Or is it “offal”? Perhaps “awful”? yes, that seems to fit.
Oooh, Rosie, that cabbage dish sounds fantastic. Zap me the recipe sometime.
Awful is right, Gabrielle. Not sure why I hate lobster so much. It just tastes seriously disgusting to me. CR made me try it again on my birthday (we had a luscious fondue meal out)… just shuddered.
Actually, I like crab a lot better than lobster. Fresh crab and cracked pepper on sourdough bread. My mouth is watering!
I love all kinds of shellfish, but my husband cannot abide any of it. He says when I eat crab legs, he needs to bring one of those riot shields the SWAT teams use along to protect him from the shrapnel, since I’m so enthusiastic about it.
I think it’s weird he won’t eat shellfish, given that he grew up right on the water, but to each his own. He likes cabbage, I can’t deal.
Does he have a particular reason for not liking shellfish, Barbara? I don’t like lobster because it’s so often still alive when I walk in. I can’t eat any just caught or killed food (again, that hypocrisy!) but it’s just that my imagination starts narrating….
But crab legs–oh, nirvana. And in self defense I’ve come to enjoy shrimp. Sort of.
I don’t pretend to have a unifying idea here. Just thinking aloud.
I think a lot of it has to do with the way shellfish smells as it’s cooking– me, I like that briny, powerful aroma, but I can understand that it’s sort of an acquired thing. Consequently, that smell also permeates his sense of taste, with respect to the shellfish.
Then there’s also the fact that when he was a kid, there was this one time his mother went to pick up raw shrimp for a party from a local seafood market– on the way home the styrofoam cooler overturned in the back of the car (1970s-era station wagon) and given that it was well over 90 degrees outside?
Well… let’s just say that no amount of carpet cleaning ever completely eradicated the smell. It pretty much cemented his dislike of shellfish.