What’s the meat this week? Do you eat the meat all week? I can’t believe you put a photo up with your shirt off!

A lot. That’s how many times I heard those sentences this week.

 

Let me clarify: I won’t be eating the meat all week, just once a week. Unless there’s some very keen and generous sponsors out there…

That could get interesting, trying to have lobster all week could get expensive.

I do eat a lot of meat. Clearly.

But why do I?

Well I touched on this briefly last week. Health and taste. Health is a pretty broad subject, but it doesn’t have to be vague and confusing. It’s quite simple really:

• Eat well.
• Exercise regularly.
• Get plenty of sleep and minimise as much unnecessary stress as possible.

I’ll attack this health and nutrition philosophy in two parts over this week and the following week, you know, to save you time for other important things like clocking the internet.

What food we eat directly affects what our body becomes. If you eat crap, no wonder you’re soft, struggle with any exercise you do and can’t seem to lose fat. If you eat well, you give yourself a decent chance of being healthy, and strong.

So what do we eat? Simple, just eat simply. Whole foods, non-processed, natural and as ‘organic’ (grown or fed naturally, without chemicals, hormones and antibiotics) as possible or affordable. Just like nature intended.

So:

• Eat meat, (clearly), eggs, raw nuts, vegetables (especially leafy greens), small amounts of fruit (berries and dark fruits mostly), limited amounts of low GI carbohydrates (mostly root vegetables: sweet potato, carrots, parsnips, radish, artichokes, yams, squash, pumpkin, small amounts of rice {brown/black}, cous cous), limited amounts of dairy products (yoghurt – natural and pot set, full fat, milk preferably only raw milk – unhomogenised and if possible unpasteurised, ie: from the cow without being messed around with by harsh processing. Want some more info? Check out: http://www.realmilk.com/)
• Drink plenty of water throughout the day, coffee up to twice a day with full fat milk (and limited amounts), plenty of green/white tea regularly. Limit alcohol and eliminate sweet/sugary drinks and packaged foods.
• Try to eat fresh fish at least once a week and take a high quality fish oil each day (essentially what we’re after here is Omega 3s).
• Listen to your body and how it reacts to certain meals/foods.
• Learn to plan your eating (don’t get caught unprepared) and know your amounts. If you’re unsure about something, ask those who do.

That’s pretty simple isn’t it? Stay away from processed foods, in particular sugars and processed carbohydrates. If you want to read some in-depth and ground breaking (to most people and in comparison with most government pushed shit) then set aside some (a lot of) time to read ‘Good Calories, Bad Calories’ by Gary Taubes. That will give you enough information to avoid that sugar in your coffee, forever! Otherwise make sure you get plenty of protein with every meal as well as veggies.

Hence where meat enters the realm of importance for me. Besides taste and enjoyment, I eat a tonne (not literally now) of meat each week in order to stay lean, maintain muscular size and generally give my body what it needs to do its thing.

So I put the shirtless photo up last week (and I copped some shit for it), but it proves a point doesn’t it? If I can stay pretty lean and have a reasonable amount of muscle bulk, then I must have some idea of what I’m talking about right?

Well…

Keep watching on that one I suppose. Trust me, I’m cringing as I write it. Phffft. Significantly, regardless of whether you have the genetics to eat crap and stay lean, as some of us do, eating sugary foods just isn’t good for you.

Right, that was a slight rant. I’ll endeavour to limit those, but it’s nice to start on a roll and and set the scene.

More health advice to come next week, Part 2 you might say.

Anyway, do you know what I did this week?

I cooked some meat (among other things, of course. Some sleeping, training, and running sometimes. Talking too, I did some of that).

On Thursday night I cooked two fillets of Crocodile tail. What about that, hey? Looks like we are the top of the food chain after all.

I had a little panic when I realised I’d missed an order at the butcher for something I had my mind on, but I went down there and bought 600g of tail fillet. At nearly $60/kg my initial thought was, this is going to be hard to justify on a regular basis. However, after demolishing the finished croc I can easily see me throwing some pocket money on the occasional bit of croc tail from time to time.

I began the prep by searching the internet for recipes and tips. I’ve cooked crocodile once before, on the fateful night that this idea came about. It tasted like shit (not actual shit). It was fresh from the butcher and a small piece of tail fillet, literally the pointy end from what must have been a small animal. I searched then for advice on how to cook the croc and most cooks said to limit any ingredients, perhaps a simple marinade using citrus. The general theme was to treat the crocodile like fish and pan fry gently. I’ve never really cooked fish much so that caused a few nerves.

I tried, but to be honest my elements are pretty rubbish and a consistent heat was hard to manage. Basically, it bombed. What I was left with was a reasonably tough piece of meat that tasted like a combination of pork and chicken, which confused me. How do they get together and make crocodile? Maybe it ate them both and somehow produced this hybrid croc-chook-pig thing. Hmm…

 

Not this time. As soon as I opened the pack and saw the meat I knew it was going to be a different ball game. Nice big fillets with the shape of a piece of beef rump, kind of.  This time I found some contradictions in the advice. Some argued “it’s a flavoursome meat so use few ingredients”. However, most recipes (and there are not that many really) had loads of ingredients, which reeked of effort and didn’t sit well with my stubbornness. So I decided to marinate the crocodile in some chilli infused olive oil, fresh lime juice, fresh garlic, rock salt and pepper. I also had the use of gas this time- big help. I let the meat soak up the flavour of the marinade for a couple of hours then fired up the gas, got the pan hot and cranked up Crocodile Rock by Elton John. There was an alternative- Crocodile Song by Janice Ian. It failed to inspire so was binned for something much more flamboyant and, at the very least, recognisable.

About 3 minutes each side and I had some good looking meat ready to go. A little garnish for the photo and it got buried deep within my stomach, in no time. This was some very tasty meat! It seemed slightly tough on cutting (may’ve been the knife, can’t remember actually) but not on eating. It was medium rare in red meat terms and the texture of swordfish.

It just tasted good, really good.

My recommendation to everyone is to recognise your position in the food chain (perched mightily on the top. Not sitting on the ground with fallen fruit looking all anaemic.) Eat some damn crocodile, before one eats you. Keep the cooking simple, a light marinade like I used, and enjoy eating the tail of something.

 

I’ve touched on food here, but I will come back to elements of this in future weeks (he says anxiously as he realises he has 50 more of these to do…)

I’d like to discuss my take on vitamins and supplements. Otherwise, next week I’ll look to cover exercise, sleep and unnecessary stress and how these impact on our health.

Oh, and some more meat of course! Yum…

Any questions about food or nutrition? Feel free to ask.

Mike