Let's talk about meat.

While I’ve flirted with vegetarianism and have a penchant for vegan recipes, meat is so culturally important to my husband (and well, gastronomically important to him too, of course), that I don’t think we’ll ever abandon it. When I start getting too carried away with lentils, for example, he will predictably start complaining, “When was the last time I ate meat?” and “We need to eat more REAL food.”

After last week’s meatless meal plan elicited some of those comments, I decided to make him happy this week with one his mom’s classics: goulash. 

This was likely one of the meals she made for us in the first few days I went to their house in Italy for the first time. Some kind of meat would be the star of each family meal. There would always be white Italian bread, and usually a simple salad of romaine with oil and vinegar, and other sides such as rice, pasta, potatoes, or other proteins or vegetables. 

After the long journey to arrive there and the nerves of meeting a lot of my in-laws for the first time, the first lunch and dinner after this fashion tasted so incredibly good to me. And it would have been good even without any appetite inducements. I enjoy my MIL’s cooking just as much as my husband does. (I learned from observing her that to cook well, you don’t need recipes, you need method). But after being offered first and second and third helpings of things like goulash and cevapi and sujuko (types of sausage) for lunch and dinner, and again the next day, and the next, finally on the third day I found myself saying to my mother in law something like, “It’s so good, but I’m just not used to eating this much meat.” 

I’ve since learned that she doesn’t make meat for every meal, but that it’s appropriate when entertaining guests. Guests are extremely important in Roma culture. They can come any time and stay as long as they like, and they are offered the best of everything. So in terms of food, that would be meat. 

After the first week or two of staying at my in-laws, I must have developed a better appreciation for meat, because since then it has become a running joke with any of my Roma family that I can be depended on to be interested anytime someone talks about sujuko.