You Are What You Eat

We live in one of the rare parts of South Asia where beef is readily available. In fact, the man at the beef stalls told Glen that they sometimes slaughter 10 cows a day in our fair city. As all of you beef eaters out there know, a cow is a large, hairy animal full of red meat, right? Well, that's what I thought, too, back in the days of Kroger. Boy, was I wrong. Cows are chock full of all kinds of things, all right, but you have to really hunt if you want beef. There are red parts, green parts, white parts, brown parts, meat the color of steaks, meat the color of chicken breasts, stripey parts, and even polk-a-dot parts. You think I'm kidding? Open up a cow! Today I kept finding these little white globs in the meat that looked like fat lobes, but were filled with yellow-brown stuff inside. There are parts that look like honeycombs. And lots of bone chips, because we don't believe in "cuts" of meat here. We chop. And chop. On tree stumps, with big sharp knives. What comes home is anybody's guess. Last time I thought I might have gotten a piece of the fillet. I am always afraid I'm cutting up the nether regions without knowing it. Once we found a part that, from the look and smell, could only be some a remnant of the large intestine with its contents still inside. Still, at the end of the day, we wash it, chop it, sort it, throw it in the pressure cooker (or to the dogs), and out comes beef. So fear not, beef eaters of the world, there IS beef to be found inside those cows, if you're willing to look for it.

(No cows were harmed in the writing of this post, and the cows above are happy village cows, unlikely to make their way to the Kalimpong beef stalls anytime soon.)