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A couple of previous posts examined the subject of greens, and their importance (see above), both literally and psychologically or metaphorically, in Gurdjieff's teaching. In this series I begin here, I look at the presence and role of meat and fish at Gurdjieff's table, and his attitude towards vegetarianism.
It appears that meat featured regularly in Gurdjieff's household, and meat and vegetable stews or soups seem to have been favoured for everyday consumption. In Essentuki, in 1918,1 when Gurdjieff founded his Institute,
The menu was as follows: a savoury borshch or some other thick soup with vegetables, followed by a large piece of meat for each of us, with potatoes and beans or another vegetable.2
When Gurdjieff and his entourage moved to Constantinople in July 1920,3 he introduced his pupils to "the poor man’s stew made from the celebrated fat-tailed sheep":
A large fireproof pot was filled with the cut-up meat, mixed with eggplant, cabbage, green beans and onions, with water to fill up the spaces, then carried to a baker’s shop, put in his oven for one or two piastres, and at noon the delicious dinner was ready for us all.4
And the day after Gurdjieff and some of his pupils moved in to the Prieuré, at Fontainebleau, on 15 July 1922,
At the end of the day Mr Gurdjieff ordered ‘combined food’ for us - meat, vegetables, potatoes and beans, all cooked together and served in their cooking juices so that none of their nutritious properties was lost.5
We see that Gurdjieff was very particular about meat. For example, Thomas de Hartmann tells us that Gurdjieff refused to eat meat that had been frozen, as he describes in their first American trip in 1924:
Orage brought an American journalist to meet Mr Gurdjieff and we all lunched together in the hotel restaurant, a very expensive one. The roast beef had an odd bluish shade. It was surely from frozen meat, which Mr Gurdjieff refused to eat. Afterwards we always bought chickens or meat from Jewish butchers, because they didn’t deal in frozen meat.6
In Gurdjieff's first series, he humorously remarks that the English language (perhaps indirectly referring to the "English mentation") is very good for discussing the topic of "Australian frozen meat."7
Hartmann, in a stint he had as cook at the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man at the Prieuré, said he had to add the "fruits of my fantasy" to the various meat dishes he concocted out of the same old ingredients, in order to persuade the English guests, mothers in particular, that things were tasty and good.8
And C.S. Nott relates, that at the Prieuré, around the same period, in the early 1920's,
Sometimes [Gurdjieff] would say to someone, 'Eat, eat! English people pick at their food. They never know what they are eating. Do you know why? They export all their good food and live only on margarine and Australian frozen mutton. Never have fresh food!'9
Hartmann describes Gurdjieff making skoblionka, which required skilful scraping of the meat, which he himself undertook one day, wanting to make something "tasty" for himself. Hartmann, again when he had for a time the role of cook, tried to imitate this, but with various compromises in ingredients and technique, yet also called it skoblionka. He did not fail to receive Gurdjieff's wrath for calling his imitation by the same name.10
However, things may not always be as they seem, for Hartmann's ersatz production was "well received and well eaten."11