When I was a kid I used to get my ass beat for not eating the gristle. Something something about starving children in Djibouti or whatever.
Anyway, one day I sneak out to my classmate’s house, and totally watched him throw out the gristle in front of his parents with no repercussions whatsoever. That was when I discovered that maybe American values concerning gristle morality were heterogeneous and didn’t reconcile.
But don’t let me get started about when my parents found out I had gone to his house without their permission, what a bad influence, that gristle-discarding lowlife…rage intensifies…kapow!
To this day I struggle to figure out what to do with the gristle. Just eat it? Or maybe I should just stop eating meat. It’s just not so easy when your community is all righteous and stuff, supposedly surrounded by heathens.
Anyway what do you people do with the gristle and how am I supposed to know that you aren’t evil if you throw it out?
I took a trip to Thailand and ate from street vendors a few times, often without knowing exactly what I was getting. Once I ordered what I was pretty sure were chicken meatballs on a skewer with a sauce on them. I was right, but I’d say the meatballs were approximately 1/3 gristle. My wife tried one bite and wouldn’t have another. I ate them anyway, but just spit out the gristle. I don’t know if any locals were offended by my horrible waste of gristle.
The most delicious street food we had there I still have no idea what it was. We saw vendors everywhere frying up some sort of gelatinous green stuff. It was so ubiquitous I decided I had to try it and it was great. It had a custard like consistency.
When I was a kid and balked at eating gristle, my dad said eating it would put hair on my chest. I spit out what I could sneak into my napkin. Now I cut around fat and gristle and feed it to the dog.
I mostly eat fillet mignon when I have steak due to having to choke down tough meat with fat and gristle when I was a kid. If I’m eating steak I want good steak.
I don’t mind marbling in a good steak, but I will cut off the thick ribbon of fat and gristle around the outside. It goes into the compost bin next to the rai-SINS!!!
