To Fatten Up

Katrinka is such a good cook that sometimes I accuse her of trying to fatten me up for market and suggest that she might be in some secret cult of cannibalism. Then I think about the phrase "to fatten up." I've seen cattle at stock shows in hometown Fort Worth, also known as Cowtown, that are huge and they don't look huge with fat. They look huge with muscle. Giant shoulder and thigh and rump muscles come to mind. But then I talked to a cattle man about it. He said they fatten them up before they're going to market because if they start doing it early, they have to spend more on feed for their whole lives. And he said that they do have lots more muscle but they have more fat too and that's what makes their meat good to eat. And how do they build muscle when they're just standing around? Beef cattle have been bread, he said, to put on muscle and they're given feed that encourages that as well. So remembering back on that, since I have not been bred to gain more muscle, the more I eat, I wonder if I'd taste better bigger or not. I know where I could get an opinion. Cannibalism has about vanished in Papua here in Indonesia, but a woman who's been there for decades as a Christian missionary said that you can get stories from some of the seniors about the good old days. One told her and her husband how he'd prepare them, demonstrated with an air knife how he'd slice the meat off their arms and legs and so forth.