Got my B12 for the day.

Tonight, I cooked a heart. I've had a three-pound cow heart in my freezer for an embarrassingly large number of months, and kept promising myself I'd get a big enough pot for it eventually, at some point, and finally cooking. And tonight I finally knuckled down, made the arrangements, and cooked it at my parents' place for myself and my brother while they're out of town and we needed to entertain ourselves.

Three pounds of solid muscle, cooked in the fat I trimmed off of the organ itself, slowly simmered into a rich, filling Hungarian goulash. Texture-wise, cardiac tissue can't and won't match skeletal muscles, and I didn't expect it to. Taste-wise, it went beyond what I'd thought to hope for - a deep, fulfilling flavor, bright and intense beef. Like the best stew meat, only ever so much more so.

Organ meats aren't gross, icky, or any other similar adjective; they're just not always treated well to flatter their capabilities. And they can be hard to track down; I got my heart by showing up early enough at the market that day. It's a bit of a shame that they're not eaten more. It helps remind me meat really does come from animals, and should be treated with care and respect - it's a lot easier to dissociate from a steak than it is from the guts. Which is probably why more people don't eat them, really.

That, and when I diced it up, it smelled kind of like eighth-grade science class.