Friday, January 06, 2006
Seven Courses of Death!
Food can be a fulfilling experience. Sometimes! The Last Meal! The Last Supper! Leftover Turkey and Dressing! The ill-begotten fruitcake! Spam which is the state food of Hawaii! For a long time people would not eat tomatoes from the New World because they were from the nightshade family and everyone knows what nightshade can do to a person. It leaves them with a pale and sickening color as if they are dead and they usually are. They were given the nickname ‘love apples.” No need to leave a suicide note when grieving over a lost love. Just leave a tomato beside the body. That spoke volumes especially for those who could not write. Some foods can leave you a bit queasy such as Harry Potter’s Every Flavor Jellybean. In Africa there are deep fried grasshoppers and in the South there are deep-fired Oreos or anything else that you can think of, or in this case perhaps you prefer not to think about it at all. Some sound downright lethal or at least people take the trouble to bury the food before they will eat it. In Korea Kim Chee is a fermented mixture of veggies and meat which supposedly is buried and allowed to age before it is eaten. In Burma there is ngapi-jaw which makes your house smell like dead fish. In West Virginia kids have been known to eat ramps, members of the onion family, which have such a disgusting odor that teachers have been known to send the kids home from school. When the French first came to Alaska they gave the name Eskimo (eaters of raw meet) to the natives. Now that is definitely a misnomer. The “Eskimos” it seems much prefer Muktuk, which is deep fried blubber. For dessert there is always Eskimo ice cream, which in reality is really “blubber ice cream.” Many people in Alaska, at least three or four, are fond of eulachon (pronounced “hooligan”) spread. This delicacy is made by burying eulachon fish for three weeks and then rendering the remains into a liquid. When it cools and congeals it can then be used like mayo. If three weeks underground is not enough to whet your appetite, try stinkheads. The Yup’ik people of Alaska bury fish, generally salmon, for the entire summer and later they are dug up and eaten. They are served to gussaks, foreigners, who are inquisitive about local culture. Anymore questions? Final chance! Anymore questions?
Food can be a fulfilling experience. Sometimes! The Last Meal! The Last Supper! Leftover Turkey and Dressing! The ill-begotten fruitcake! Spam which is the state food of Hawaii! For a long time people would not eat tomatoes from the New World because they were from the nightshade family and everyone knows what nightshade can do to a person. It leaves them with a pale and sickening color as if they are dead and they usually are. They were given the nickname ‘love apples.” No need to leave a suicide note when grieving over a lost love. Just leave a tomato beside the body. That spoke volumes especially for those who could not write. Some foods can leave you a bit queasy such as Harry Potter’s Every Flavor Jellybean. In Africa there are deep fried grasshoppers and in the South there are deep-fired Oreos or anything else that you can think of, or in this case perhaps you prefer not to think about it at all. Some sound downright lethal or at least people take the trouble to bury the food before they will eat it. In Korea Kim Chee is a fermented mixture of veggies and meat which supposedly is buried and allowed to age before it is eaten. In Burma there is ngapi-jaw which makes your house smell like dead fish. In West Virginia kids have been known to eat ramps, members of the onion family, which have such a disgusting odor that teachers have been known to send the kids home from school. When the French first came to Alaska they gave the name Eskimo (eaters of raw meet) to the natives. Now that is definitely a misnomer. The “Eskimos” it seems much prefer Muktuk, which is deep fried blubber. For dessert there is always Eskimo ice cream, which in reality is really “blubber ice cream.” Many people in Alaska, at least three or four, are fond of eulachon (pronounced “hooligan”) spread. This delicacy is made by burying eulachon fish for three weeks and then rendering the remains into a liquid. When it cools and congeals it can then be used like mayo. If three weeks underground is not enough to whet your appetite, try stinkheads. The Yup’ik people of Alaska bury fish, generally salmon, for the entire summer and later they are dug up and eaten. They are served to gussaks, foreigners, who are inquisitive about local culture. Anymore questions? Final chance! Anymore questions?
