Someone Get Me a Band-Aid!
First off, apologies to vegetarian readers, this post talks about cooking meat. Sorry, but I crave it and like it and therefore I eat it.
Whenever I think about cutting up a chicken for soup (I make the pieces really small, like 2 inches, so that all the flavor comes out quickly), I get all paranoid that I'm going to also cut my hand or my fingers off. Yesterday I was walking to the post office and thinking about dinner, and actually clenched my hands into fists in my pockets as I thought about using the cleaver on the meat. What would I do if I cut off four fingertips with the cleaver? I get chills and my heart races just thinking about it. Sometimes I also think about making a mistake and cutting up the cats by accident. Like if I just grabbed Paxwell by the foot and....That's even scarier.*
I also get paranoid that the meat is bad, even though its not. Like last night, when I was making the soup, I started smelling the chicken really carefully, in case it was rotten. Because my friend The Car Seat Lady had told me a story about how she'd bought rotten chicken at a certain local, well respected 'organic' grocery store, and she figured out it was rotten because it smelled bad. What if my meat was bad too? Even though I'd bought it at a different store, and it was packed on the same day, it could still be spoiled. Why did those people at the meat section with me decide to buy beef instead? Could they smell something I couldn't? I decided to cook the chicken instead and find out the hard way if it was spoiled (sorry Javert). Turns out it was fine. Big surprise there!
You vegetarians (if you are still reading this) probably think these fears are just my body's way of trying to avoid eating meat. Maybe you're right. But until I lose a body part or fall prey to food poisioning, I'll probably keep doing it. Because it tastes GOOD.
*I get this way about knives a lot. I cut myself recently with the 10 inch chef's knife, while I was cleaning it, and now I get a little nervous every time I use it, which is every day. Especially when I'm cleaning it. The place where I cut myself tingles, even though its totally healed, and I get a little jittery.
Whenever I think about cutting up a chicken for soup (I make the pieces really small, like 2 inches, so that all the flavor comes out quickly), I get all paranoid that I'm going to also cut my hand or my fingers off. Yesterday I was walking to the post office and thinking about dinner, and actually clenched my hands into fists in my pockets as I thought about using the cleaver on the meat. What would I do if I cut off four fingertips with the cleaver? I get chills and my heart races just thinking about it. Sometimes I also think about making a mistake and cutting up the cats by accident. Like if I just grabbed Paxwell by the foot and....That's even scarier.*
I also get paranoid that the meat is bad, even though its not. Like last night, when I was making the soup, I started smelling the chicken really carefully, in case it was rotten. Because my friend The Car Seat Lady had told me a story about how she'd bought rotten chicken at a certain local, well respected 'organic' grocery store, and she figured out it was rotten because it smelled bad. What if my meat was bad too? Even though I'd bought it at a different store, and it was packed on the same day, it could still be spoiled. Why did those people at the meat section with me decide to buy beef instead? Could they smell something I couldn't? I decided to cook the chicken instead and find out the hard way if it was spoiled (sorry Javert). Turns out it was fine. Big surprise there!
You vegetarians (if you are still reading this) probably think these fears are just my body's way of trying to avoid eating meat. Maybe you're right. But until I lose a body part or fall prey to food poisioning, I'll probably keep doing it. Because it tastes GOOD.
*I get this way about knives a lot. I cut myself recently with the 10 inch chef's knife, while I was cleaning it, and now I get a little nervous every time I use it, which is every day. Especially when I'm cleaning it. The place where I cut myself tingles, even though its totally healed, and I get a little jittery.
posted by Emil at 4:42 PM
2 Comments:
Even as a vegetarian, I can tell you that the smell of rotting chicken is diffucult to confuse with the smell of raw, not-rotten chicken. Also, I have inhereted a phobia of eyeball cuts from Stephanie, who as I recall always worried that flyer-wavers on the sidewalk would slice her eyeball open accidentally. I now think about this every time I walk by this razor-wire-topped fence near my apartment. The sharp stuff is just above my eye-level, and what if I just walked a few inches too far to the right...
that's funny that you mention that, phil, because i was just hiking through the tall grass, looking for the calf (more on that later), and kept closing my eyes as the wind was blowing, thinking that it was going to whip into my eye and cut me. and then it escalates into how i have no health insurance, etc...
this also reminds me of a friend in high school who was terrified to go to sleep with her arms or legs sticking out of the covers because she was afraid someone might come by in the middle of the night and cut them off.
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