Curious shoppers cast quizzical glances towards me as I raced through the grocery store–but this time their odd looks were not because of my rapid pace.
This time, it was the contents of my shopping cart that drew their gaze and furrowed their brows.
After all, how often do you see a young woman in the grocery store buying 25 lbs of meat and little else?
It’s the lab my meat-squeamish students hate–and the lab I absolutely love.
They gingerly use a fork to pick up a steak, handling it as if it were a live rattlesnake. They’re terrified that they might actually touch raw meat.
I show them how it’s done, as I grasp a steak and slap it on the board, as I squish my hands into hamburger for meatloaf.
I love working with meat–especially with raw meat. It’s cold, visceral, and bloody. It demands hands-on action for best results. I can’t really explain why I like working with raw meat–but I do, almost like how I enjoy squishing my toes in freshly turned earth. It’s a reminder of life and death, of reality, of where our food actually comes from.
So I apologize to my gagging students as I encourage them also to plunge their hands into the meat.