"Shawna, what does this meat look like to you?"

Yesterday Shawna and I sit down to lunch, and start to eat.
The meal looks like a typical stewed meat of some kind with a side of beans and rice. Just a normal lunch.
I go to slice off a piece of the "meat" and to my surprise, the side of my fork slides right through like butter... I didn't think much of this other than they must have been stewing this beef since last night. I put it in my mouth... it tastes good, and I think, wow... they really know how to stew meat here so that when it's done it has a totally different texture!
I keep eating, and the further in I get, the softer it is. Still, I am blissfully not thinking about what I'm consuming. I encountered a chunk of "fat" which I just ate, because to be honest, I'm dropping weight like nobody's business here, and I thought the fat might be good for me.

Finally, I get down to my last three or so bites of "meat", and I really give the thing a good look. And that's when I saw them, the taste-buds. And suddenly everything that was weird about the meat now made sense, IT WAS COW TONGUE!
That one random piece of "fat" was the what connected the tongue to the mouth! I had consumed the taste-bud lined skin of the tongue! That's why the middle was so soft... that's why there were no straiations! It wasn't just stewed for a long time...

After all of those realizations crashed down on me in the spanse of 30 seconds... I still tried to finish my food. After all, I had eaten in up till then with no problem... it actually tasted really good, and I had been fine before I spotted the taste-buds. I put the fork up to my mouth and my body pulled an access denied scenario. There was no way that bite was going down. I could feel my gag reflex going.

And I have learned my lesson... when I'm eating something new that tastes good... don't look at it closely.