beef – Observations and Misunderstandings

I ate a whole beef stroganoff yesterday. I know that doesn’t mean anything. What is a whole version of something that could be any size. But I did. I made it myself too. I enjoy cooking so making that wasn’t an ordeal and although it was my first ever attempt, with a quick skim over a recipe I smashed it. Genuinely it was incredibly tasty. My friend had given me a huge chunk of unsliced sandwich meat a few months ago and I had stored it, along with a few other vital lifesaving things, at the back of my freezer in case of the coronapocalypse. Well that doesn’t look like it’s happening so in my belly it went. I used a whole tub of sour cream which I just checked contained sixty grams of fat and apparently my daily allowance is only seventy. Not that that would stop me repeating it all over again. I also added mushrooms because it wouldn’t be right without them and asparagus because I always like to fuck with recipes. I have a habit of cooking enough for two people every time and usually just eat it all myself. How I’m not a big fatty is beyond me. I wish now I had taken a photo of my delicious creation but I neither planned on writing about it nor am one for taking photos of my dinner. I’ll see what Google has to offer.

Beef stroganoff is something I rarely eat, it is surely some kind of 1970s throwback that has survived to modern times. It does though have an emotional connection in my mind, or heart, or even soul. When I was a young child I used to go with my Grandma to a department store in Edinburgh called Jenners. It is, or at least was to my young mind, quite a respectable and reasonably fancy place. It is massive and appealed, perhaps still does, to a slightly wealthier clientele, especially old women of that generation twenty-five years ago. I suddenly feel old. Where has my life gone. Twenty-five bloody years ago. Gasps for air. Anyway, one of my favourite parts of the day was lunch and it was in the upstairs restaurant that I discovered beef stroganoff for the first time. Red meat, mushrooms and cream. What wasn’t to like. There has forever been a connection and while I have probably had the dish ten times in my life at most, last night was my first attempt at making it myself. I have no idea what my grandma ate all those years ago, but had it been the stroganoff, I’m sure she would have approved of mine.

I started reading a book on the stomach call Gut by Giulia Enders about six months ago. I mentioned it when I was writing about stomach cleanses back in December and recently again. It’s an incredibly interesting and easily accessible book which I will write about properly once I’m finished but considering I jump in and out of it when I feel that may just be a while away yet. The reason I mention it is because I am trying to build up my microbiome gut flora, or fauna, I can’t remember, and she discusses this is quite a lot of detail. In late February just as this virus kicked off I bought a pile of vitamin C and multivitamin tablets online, as well as some probiotic capsules. While it’s impossible to tell for sure, I instinctively feel that these tablets have been doing something, the vitamins I’m unsure but I have a gut feeling – sorry – that the probiotics have done something. I feel good in a whole way that that includes mood and all round energy. It is always risky linking that with one particular thing and is likely an accumulation of factors like diet, not sleeping too much and probably multiple other things. I am cautiously optimistic though.

There is something though that I’m not quite comfortable with. When I gave up eating meat for eighteen months many years ago, I gradually stopped craving lamb or beef when needing protein or iron and started craving lentils and spinach instead. I remember distinctly recognising the change. For me my mind had stopped associating the required and desired minerals with one type of food and now it recognised it in another. It makes perfect sense that we would crave particular foods that provide particular nutrients when we need them. This may be a leap and is merely an as yet unevolved idea, but if we’re taking multivitamins with each meal, they recommend three times a day and I take roughly twice sometimes less, then surely the mind will not be able to recognise what food provides what nutrition. If each pill provides a third of your daily intake of iron and you eat it with a jam sandwich, does the mind start to associate jam sandwiches with iron. Is there a danger that we’ll stop eating the necessary balanced and healthy diet as we lose our instinctive ability to choose which foods to eat as and when our body requires it. Although if we’re getting all our nutrition anyway does it really matter. This could be a half cooked idea and may in reality have an affect at the base level only. I am unsure though, it is only an idea. I shall meditate on it some more.

Tag: beef

Beef Strogayesplease

A Gut Feeling