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.
Observations and Misunderstandings 