Come to Dinner! And Bring Your Own Stomach Pump!

If food looks like a brain, should you be eating it? I had some pretty narsty cauliflower the other night. Tasted like curry-flavored brain.  And while we’re at it, what about okra? The stuff leaves a trail of slime. Just like snails do. Hmmm. And we know what eating snails is all about, right? Starvation with a good attitude. Think about French cooking. It is filled with food that grows on the underside of logs, attaches itself to tree roots buried in the mud, can hop out of your frying pan when you try to cook it, or leaves a trail of slime in its wake. It is cuisine born of starvation, disguised by haute attitude and a great sauce.  I think much the food of the world is an example of great marketing. Otherwise, why do people eat this stuff?

There are olives, which have to be cured in lye before you can ingest them. LYE. Same as the lovely Norwegian treat, Lutefisk – whose name literally means “Lye Fish.” Oh yeah. I’m all over that for my kids’ lunches. Lye is the same stuff that is used to kill plants, power batteries, and make soap. Mmmm.

Then there’s cheese. Oh. My. Holy. Cow. The stuff is mold. Incubated mold. And if you’re really highbrow you can ratchet it up a notch to the lovely Bleu Cheese – a delicacy studded with velvety blue crevasses of penicillin. And don’t even get me started on the illegal Spanish cheese that comes infested with fly larvae. An indulgence. Of stomach-pumping proportions. And yeah. Illegal.

You’ve got your chitlin’s, pork rinds, pigs feet, and ash cakes from the American South. Oatmeal-stuffed sheep stomach from Scotland. Sausages made from curdled animal blood in England. And in the Middle East you can sit yourself down to a lovely bowl of sheep’s head soup. It can hold a conversation with you while you eat. So it serves two purposes, really.

I don’t even think so. I’m sticking to my good ole’ basic hot-dogs, thank you very much. With a whole lot of chili and a slap of sauerkraut on the side. Don’t bother me until I’ve washed it down with my cola. And keep all that other stuff far away from me.

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About Janiel 417 Articles
My greatest pleasure in life has been raising my four excellent children--some of whom liked me so much that they keep coming back. My second greatest pleasure has been doing whatever I can to make people laugh and create bright moments. I hope to do a bit more good in the world before I go the way of it. And if not, I'd better at least get to spend some serious time writing and singing in a castle somewhere in the UK.

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