First Published in the Bastrop (Louisiana) Daily Enterprise, August 25, 1997.
My Mamma Taught Me To Clean My Plate, Even If It Is…
A couple of days ago, I was reminiscing about the day on which the Bartholomew Society was founded. That was the day on which I, in an effort to shock and disgust Tim Franklin, ate a raw mussel from the bayou. That episode set me to thinking about different people, and their different approaches to eating, to food, and to what is (and isn’t) acceptably ingested.
While Jenny was home from college this summer, one of her friends from northern Arkansas came down to spend a week with us. The first night or so, we drove down to West Monroe to a little seafood/sandwich restaurant for dinner. The kids all ordered some bland pap, while I contented myself with a bowl of gumbo and a dozen raw oysters.
Our 19-year-old guest claimed to have never eaten gumbo, so I let her sample mine, to polite, albeit unenthusiastic, reviews. She drew the line, however, when it came to the shellfish. “No way!!”, she exclaimed, even as Jenny and eleven-year-old Maggie were busy helping themselves to my meal.
“I can’t believe you’d eat that disgusting thing,” Christy wailed to my kids, who were slurping merrily away. Little did she know that I, flexing my unlimited and awesome parental powers, always forced my infant and toddling children to try new and unusual foods at least once before passing final judgment. Sometimes it works, and I’ve raised a crop of oyster-eaters. Sometimes it doesn’t, as none of us can stand tofu.
When I travel to a new, foreign, or exotic place, I try to stay as far away from standardized, Americanized food as possible. When I go to Mexico each year, as part of a church-sponsored building project in poor, border areas, I always enjoy wandering the streets of the colonia, buying and eating food from street vendors or small storefront markets. I figure, “I’m surrounded by a bazillion Messicans, who eat this stuff everyday, and they seem okay.” My colleagues are shocked, but I’ve suffered no ill effects. Yet.
I was stationed on the island of Okinawa in the early 1970s, and often patronized a cafe/bar, called the “Green Rope”. It was operated by an Okinawan friend who worked on our base, and I often kidded her about the strange dietary habits of the Japanese people. One evening, I was sitting in the Rope, drinking a beer, when my friend came out of the kitchen, carrying her dinner, and sat at a nearby table.
“Georgie-san,” she called, “come and sit with me.” I walked over to the table and noticed that she had brought out two plates. “Try some of this,” she said, using her chopsticks to place a small, pinkish mass onto my plate. “OK, Masako, but you’ve got to tell me what it is first.” “It’s called sashimi.” “Well and good, I suppose, but what does “sashimi” mean?” “Fish. Tuna fish.”
No problemo. I’ve been eating tuna forever. I took a bite. “Doesn’t taste like the tuna I’m used to.” “I forgot. Sashimi is raw tuna fish. Try some of this tako“. She portioned out several cylindrical sections, about the size of cucumber slices, with pure white centers and a dark brownish-black rind. “I don’t think I want to know what this is until I’ve finished,” I said, pouring soy sauce over the treats, as per her instructions. After the sashimi, the tako tasted pretty good. I ate five or six of them, before she told me, “In English, tako is octopus.”
In South America about ten years later, I ate more octopusses–smaller, whole ones that I found floating in my gumbo in a little coastal town alongside the Atlantic. Although I grew rather fond of the tentacles, I never could bring myself to eat the cowl–the “head” part, and I usually just chopped off the legs for food and left the remainder of the corpse hidden under a piece of bread.
One day, I was the guest of honor in the home of an Argentine family, none of whom spoke any English. The family had invited me over for a special noontime meal, and the father had asked his friend, a Dutch-born Canadian Baptist missionary, to join us as an interpreter. Through the interpreter, I learned that the meal was to be an asado, which he roughly translated as “barbecue” or “cookout”, so I was reassured.
The father disappeared into the small backyard, while I stayed in the dining room, chatting with his family and with Jack, the missionary. Argentine meals always include huge amounts of bread and equally copious quantities of wine, so I (gracious guest that I am) sat around munching bread and sipping wine. After an hour, the gentleman of the house returned, beaming. Jack translated.
“He says that he is blessed to have you as a guest, and that he has taken a day of vacation from his work to prepare this special asado in your honor.” My host was brandishing a steaming serving platter which was filled to the brim with parts of some unspecified, medium-sized mammal–a calf, sheep, or goat, I suppose. He plopped the trencher down in front of me, while I peered at the steaming plate all the way through Jack’s lengthy prayer of thanks.
After the blessing, from the corner of my mouth, and without moving my lips, I asked Jack, “Just what is this?” “I’m not going to tell you. Eat it first, and I’ll tell you later, if you still want to know.”
Unfortunately, I could recognize far too many of the delicacies. That large, reddish sausage-like thing was definitely formed from something’s large intestine, and that little whitish coil was almost assuredly its smaller counterpart. My host was grinning proudly as he served me generous portions of grilled spleens, livers, duodena, pancreases, and whatever.
My mamma always taught me to clean my plate, even if the meal is goat guts. I, however, probably would have disappointed Mamma that day, had it not been for the fact, mentioned earlier, that Argentine meals involve wine. Smiling glassily, I’d take a bite of a gallbladder-like thing, then a huge bite of bread, then a humongous swallow of wine. Thought I was gonna die. Ate every bite. The host was grinning from ear to ear as he leaped to his feet, grabbed the platter, and began refilling my plate.
Jack was smirking. “In Argentina, if you eat every bite on your plate, it signifies that you are still hungry.” I panicked. Through pantomime, including distended eyes, patting my bulging stomach, and licking my lips madly, I indicated that: 1) this was the most delicious stuff I’d ever eaten, and 2) I could not possibly hold another bite. The host looked shocked, stood up, and silently went back out into the yard. He immediately came back in, with yet another platter, full to overflowing with the rest of the grilled animal–the edible parts, which looked delicious.
I held up well, and left the house about 2:00. I then found that the afternoon’s activities involved a trip around the choppy harbor on a rickety fishing boat, followed by an in-depth tour of the town’s fish-processing plant. By the time I got back to our little pensione that night, the gastronomic, nautical, and educational experiences of the day caught up with me, and I spent much of the night on my knees, examining South American plumbing fixtures, up close and personal. But what an adventure!
In my lifetime, I’ve tried snails, seaweed (both from the ocean and from the Bonne Idee–don’t try this at home), squid, and other unusual foods. I read Lonesome Dove a few years ago, and was fascinated by the cook, Po Campo, who made edible meals from insects he found along the cattle trail. In many countries, insects are excellent sources of nutrition, so I decided to give them a try. If Asians and Africans eat them, why not me?
Now, I am not quite ready to begin eating any cockroaches or wasps, so I figured that grasshoppers would be a good starting point. While mowing the yard, I scared up a bunch of the little beggars–not those great big, armored types, but little, green, tender, succulent-looking ones. (You really have to psych yourself to do this!). I quickly killed the arthropod, removed the legs, which have little sharp barbs all along their length, and popped the rest of him-or-her into my mouth, chewed, and swallowed.
In the next few days, I told a few, carefully-selected, people about the experience, and was surprised to find that the reaction was universal. “Yeech!! That’s disgusting. You ate a raw grasshopper?” Not one single person asked what I thought was the most obvious question of all. Just “That’s sickening!” and “You’re not quite ‘right’, are you?”. Not one person was curious enough to ask, “How did it taste?”
My kids know that they must eat a bit of everything that is served at a meal. Choke it down somehow. No gagging, no grimacing, no theatrics. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to take seconds. “Try it, you may like it.” Even if you don’t like it, you’re gonna eat some of it. When the youngsters were younger, they had a little friend who wouldn’t eat anything “wet”. Nothing that was even remotely moist, just stuff that was totally dry–bread, chips, maybe dry cereal or stale french fries. That sure sounds like a limited diet to me, and it can’t be too good for you. I can’t abide fussy-eating younguns.
My kids are getting older now, and they still aren’t as culinarily adventurous as their old man, but at least they ain’t fussy. They don’t even bother to ask “Do I have to eat this stuff?” anymore. Just wolf it down and move on to other things.
By the way, raw grasshoppers taste just like grass. Crunchy, somewhat moist grass.