Having grown up in a multi-cultural (well, bi-cultural, I suppose) environment, I believe it safe to say that I have had my own fair share of epicurean delights. My sister and I perpetually describe foods as 'having the consistency of pig ear', 'smells like stinky tofu', 'reminds me of squid', etc. Just yesterday, my sister reported eating a "turkey pesto pinwheel" for breakfast, and when I exclaimed "what's THAT?" she replied "it's, like, turkey and stuff rolled up in a tortilla, and then cut up like a ginormous sushi roll!"
The best weird food experience of all time happened when I was 13 on a trip to Taiwan. When long-lost relatives come to visit, multiple course banquets are laid out by the tableful to show respect, good fortune, wealth, health, etc etc to the visiting and the visited. All delicacies are put on display and I assume everyone else eats because the foods are so delicious, but being a foreign American child, we usually had to force it down because "it's expensive, so EAT IT!"
Being that it was the second day we were there, the 12 hour time difference was wreaking havoc on our systems and the 5 o'clock banquet we were currently attending put us smack dab in the middle of the night, physiologically speaking. It was hosted by some far-distant cousins I didn't know my father had (well, that pretty much encompasses my entire extended family.)
The banquet had already proffered us such selections as parrotfish, (the head of which the waitress hacked off and served to me, apparently because I had exclaimed "oh, a parrotfish! I've never even seen one in real life, much less... ah...now decapitated and on my plate staring at me..."), lobster, giant trout with maraschino cherry eyes (my 8-year old sister had fallen asleep facefirst onto her plate, and my 17-year old brother was now using the cherries to decorate her head...), and so on and so forth.
The next course was seemingly innocuous. Brought out in individual plain wooden bowls, it looked like some sort of dark liquid soup. However, when the chopsticks were poked in experimentally, the contents therein revealed themselves to be a medley of sea cucumber and duck feet.
Let me repeat that last statement: sea cucumber and duck feet.
It's not that I've never seen or been offered either one before, but the dichotomy of the two together was a bit too much for my 5 am still-asleep digestive system. Plus, I must admit that I had thus far in my 13 years of life managed to avoid actually consuming either food by eating everything else around it. However, seeing as the current bowl truly did contain only sea cucumber and duck feet, I now had to make the agonizing decision of which one to forcibly masticate.
Duck feet, as everyone knows, are webbed. In the words of my brother when the course was served, "I don't eat webbed food." What was there to chew? Could one possibly choke and die from a duck-foot-bone lodged in their throat? I didn't want to take the chance overseas. Sea cucumbers, as is commonly known, expel their innards when provoked. However, seeing as they are soft and squishy (and were cut up into sizeable pieces) I thought I could get one in and perhaps swallow it down quickly with minimal effort.
With resignation, I once again plunged my chopsticks into the quagmire to prove my role as Dutiful Daughter in hopes of snagging a sea-cucumber-hunk and ending my suffering quickly. But. The chopsticks were bone, the sea cucmber was slimy (not to mention swimming in soy sauce), and I simply could not get a firm grip on any of the pieces. Spoons were nowhere to be found. My father's distant-cousin-whom-I-didn't-know noticed my plight, and with glee that only a native Taiwanese can express, exclaimed for the whole room to hear, "Look! Yours is still alive!!"
I dropped all appearances, shoved the bowl towards my father, declared myself full for the night, and ran for the bathroom. I still to this day have not consumed duck feet (but, sadly, was forced to eat sea cucumber six years later on a dare.)
Those maraschino cherries sure were good, though.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Lucky for me, I have managed to avoid a lot of sick-o things Navajos eat. But--man, I think your story just about tops any that I've ever heard. Yikes!
did michael really decorate my head with cherries? didn't he dump the lobster head in front of my passed out face? i dont' remember half of your story....but then again, i was probably unconscious for most of it. yay, that was a fun time :) we must eat good chinese food again sometime.
You don't remember because you were asleep! Michael dangled the cherries in front of your face to see if you would smell them and wake up (and gobble them in midair, or whatever), and when you didn't, he relegated himself to putting them on the plate around your head. Then I took them and ate them. The end.
Post a Comment