Tag: heart

Beef Strogayesplease

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

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.

Being Intolerant To Intolerances

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

I was hoping to think of something deep, intellectual, philosophical and meaningful to write about but I ate a pizza tonight and my stomach hurts. I can’t stop farting. It’s insane. Thankfully I enjoy and am a fan of a good fart so there is at least this pleasure to go with the pain in my stomach. The same thing happened last weekend after I had been eating pizza for a couple of day so I can only imagine it is the pizza. Saying that I had no problem the previous two weekends when I ate pizza the whole time. Maybe it has built up. It could be the onions and I will try one without them and without the sauce. If not I may have to face up to the horror that would be some kind of intolerance to the base. That would be an absolute nightmare. To make pizzas and not be able to eat them. It would nearly be as bad as having to tell people I’m gluten intolerant and watch as their faces change to disdain. A total nightmare all round.

I’m reading a book at the moment on the gut. I read this bit a few days ago and may have forgotten details but an intolerance is where the body can’t break down something in the food, it reaches the lymph glands or something like that and the body goes into overdrive trying to expel it because it thinks it is being attacked. Basically this is my body fighting back because it can’t deal with something I’ve ingested. It’s like when you get a fever this is the body increasing in temperature so as to kill any bacteria or virus within in, making itself inhospitable to survive in. Of course this feels rather unpleasant to us but it is worth remembering that this is actually a good sign. My body has decided to make itself inhospitable to something then. Fuck. I love food and I can’t think of anything worse than not being able to eat anything and everything I want. Maybe that’s the problem. A life without edible pleasures, a life less lived.

I don’t think it would be great to take what I said as fact in the last paragraph because I may have got it slightly confused with lactose intolerance which is about being unable to breakdown the lactose in dairy but the purge and inhospitable bodies isn’t far wrong. I’ve just drunk a cup of warm boiled water which seems to have helped somewhat. If in doubt just drink boiled water. I’m quite thirsty too and I’ve puffed up ever so slightly, not much but I’m a little pink. And just like that my dreams of a pizza empire have fallen flat. Could be for the best though because three days of eating pizzas each weekend is hardly going to do me any favours in the belly stakes, or heart either. Did you know when the body absorbs fats and oil they don’t go through the liver and kidneys like everything else to be filtered but instead bypass everything and go straight to the heart. That is a little worrying. Thirty four years old now. Already lost one friend my age to a heart attack. These things are serious. Maybe it’s time for the wholegrain pizza instead.

Election 2019

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Today is the big day then as we decide upon the fate of the world. Hyperbole aside with today being voting day in what has become a highly polarised country there is a sense of enormity in the air. Of course walking down the street in my little town it is just another day but it may be worth it just for twenty four hours to shut out the voices whispering the fearful possibility that nobody actually cares and it’s all in the little microcosm bubble of my facebook feed.

The problem is I’m still undecided who I’m going to vote for bizarrely enough. To vote with my heart and support Labour or with my head and vote for the centrist Scottish National Party who are most likely the only ones capable of defeating the current Conservative incumbent in my constituency. However while Scottish nationalism may be a friendly cuddly version of nationalism, it is still nationalism and that is something I try to steer clear of. Labour say all the things I want to hear at least but in my countryside area they don’t stand much of a chance. The Liberal Democrats who are also centrists, but slightly more to right than the SNP, are the more traditional rivals to the Conservatives but fell to the wayside after their disastrous coalition with the Conservatives at the beginning of the decade. A coalition that was disastrous for the Lib Dems and a raving success for the other side tells you all you need to know about supporters of each. Their votes either went Conservative or more commonly to the SNP however it will be interesting to see how the share is now. Certainly that SNP vote has dropped in the Borders, where I’m still registered, as few want independence and so I suspect tactical voting which recommends SNP may actually be inaccurate in the end. In that case can we expect the traditional Lib Dems to make a revival here? I just don’t know as they’ve failed so miserably in the campaign nationally and seem to appeal to nobody.

It pains me to say it but I doubt there is much other that a Tory victory here, nationally though I think predictions are folly. Despite the news channels pretence of balance they seem to be pushing an agenda, but then both sides say that. In any case why not vote for who I really want, my vote will probably be a waste anyway. Either way this election goes, the best part of it is that it has politicised a whole new generation of voters. They complained the young don’t care about anything, the media pushed the same debasing narrative while ignoring the queue’s and printing pictures of pets at empty poll booths. The world is changing, communication is changing and maybe one day narratives and those fighting instinctive change will also change too. What a ride it promises to be.