A few years ago, I travelled to Morocco. Tourism. One day, Romanian and French friends invited me to a traditional lunch. I had then the opportunity to eat mutton (later I found out it was a ram…) and see the whole preparation process: from cutting the pieces out of the carcase (about 40-50 kg) in plain sight to assembling it onto the plates with vegetables and intensely coloured sauces. What surprised me was the complete lack of the characteristic smell of sheep, after which – I admit, in my country – I did not really look for. I asked them a short time after:
– How come it doesn’t smell like sheep, this meat?
Instead of reply, they called the chef and questioned him on the subject. To which the man asks us where we come from?!
– From France and Romania – we say.
– Oh, right! You know, these animals come right from Romania! (What a coincidence!) We buy lambs from your country. The difference comes from animal feed: here they have to eat the dry vegetation on our arid soils, while in your country they eat succulent grass from the rich pastures of there.
I was surprised by the explanation: not sophisticated spices or marinades, not slow-cooking and other processes, but only the food consumed by the animal in its adulthood was the explanation their mutton did not smell like our mutton. And the man really seemed to know what he was saying!
Then, in that little Moroccan restaurant on the edge of the desert, I had the revelation of the saying “You are what you eat!” Well, I’m not… what I eat; maybe my body is what I eat/it eats…
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By summer, over a relaxed wineglass of talk, a friend confesses to me “philosophically”:
– Do you realize… I arrived from 3-3.5 kg – or whatever weight I had at birth, to 85 kg now, just because I fed my body with food and liquids for a lifetime!
I confessed to him that I had never looked at my body from that perspective! And anyway, I’m not… well, the food and liquids I was feeding with…
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A few days ago, I came across the following video:
It’s crystal clear now: I’m going to pay a lot more attention to what I eat and drink! But anyway, I’m not… I’m not this stomach-controlled mind either…