Randomness

[Kotik]

Yeah Octopii and the likes are a big part of Vietnamese cuisine. They also seem to have a lot of dishes involving all kinds of insects. They come as close to chinese cuisine as I've ever seen. There is a saying about Chinese cuisine in Germany:

The Chinese eat everything that
- has two legs and isn't your neighbour,
- has four legs and isn't a table,
- swims and isn't a ship
- flies and isn't a plane

That pretty much sums it up

[putaro]

Well, you know, "De gustibus non est disputandum"

I've eaten a lot of Vietnamese food in the US and I've never seen any insects on the menu. I doubt the German version is much more outre than the US version. They were probably sea critters (though why bugs from the sea are more wholesome than bugs from the land I've never figured out).

There's something gross to be found in just about any cuisine, it's really just a matter of how you look at it. One day I was at lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant with a Vietnamese co-worker (who'd moved to the US at about age 10) and my co-worker from New Jersey. We got onto the topic of gross stuff, and my Vietnamese co-worker started going off on cheese, which she had thought was thoroughly disgusting when she first moved over. Our co-worker from New Jersey opined that Vietnamese food (at least what was on the menu) was pretty wholesome and then we explained to her that just about all Vietnamese food has a bit of nuoc nam, or fish sauce in it. Fish sauce is prepared by putting a bunch of fish in a barrel, allowing them to ferment and then bottling what comes out the bottom. We couldn't go for Vietnamese food for a few months .

Western/European cuisine has more than enough gross things in it - cheese, sausage, blood sausage, head cheese, pickled pigs feet, the list goes on.

There's a Japanese dish that I find disturbing not because of the ingredients but because of the name. "Oyako-don", basically means "mother and child together" and consists of rice with chicken on top and then egg over everything. It's just such a sad image I can't order it.

[Kotik]

Western/European cuisine has more than enough gross things in it

Indeed. German Eisbein seems to creep out most first-time visitors. And that's not even counting that "hefty" doesn't even start to descrive this particular dish

[Alelou]

Thanks for that image of fish sauce. I use it quite a lot. I can believe that's where it comes from, based on the smell. Sort of like the dock where I go to buy lobsters in Maine. Those traps are baited with the stinkiest fish they can get.

I have a friend from Rhode Island who did quite a lot of lobstering in his day who refuses to eat them because he considers them giant cockroaches of the sea. And I believe, technically, they kind of are.

Of course, this just leads me to say that if you could get cockroaches big enough to be worth boiling in a pot of water and then breaking apart, I'd probably happily eat them too. However, I've never understood people who eat the green goo a.k.a. lobster poo. The roe maybe -- I like other roe -- especially fried cod roe -- but that green stuff? Yowza.

I admired a friend from Africa who would happily eat shrimp (prawns) with their shells still on. It would save a lot of time and trouble, but I just can't do it.

I agree that cheese and yogurt are both kind of yucky if you think about it. Anything fermented. I used to eat a fair amount of soy bean tempeh but I really didn't appreciate learning how it was made. Hell, mushrooms are gross if you think about them too much. The ones you buy in the store are usually grown on piles of manure. My mother insists you should never wash them, just brush them off, but I can't eat them without washing them. I know what those brown specks are.

[Kotik]

Your mother has a really strange sense of humour. Of course(!) you do wash mushrooms. They (mainly Boletus Badius, Boletus reticulatus and Sparassis crispa) are my favourite food second to the slabs of dead animal, but we never buy them in the store for the reason you've given. I just can't get happy with food that was grown on a pile of cow-s**t. Having an office job, strolling through the forrests gathering mushrooms is actually part of my chill-out routine. Between July and October I spend a lot of times in the woods and my deep freezer is almost entirely filled with packets of mushrooms. But I still wash them, because, even if they were not grown on manure, you can't know if maybe a deer took a leak on them...

[putaro]

Japanese mushrooms are grown on nice, clean, decaying wood. That's my story and I'm sticking to it, thank you!

The Tama Zoo had an excellent insect exhibit but unfortunately I do not have any gross pictures to share with you. The box full of Madagascar hissing cockroaches was...unpleasant. However, the butterfly exhibit was damn cool.



I could easily imagine this being on a space station.

WG, you might be best off experiencing Tokyo vicariously. It's not a place for the claustrophobic. Also, while Japan has been on a kick for the last ten years or so of making things more handicapped accessible and we do see a lot more people out and about in wheelchairs, I think there are a lot of pitfalls. Fun things like elevators that open out onto a set of stairs. We had enough fun trying to maneuver a stroller through Tokyo.

[panyasan]

WG: I think Putaro has a point, but if you ever have the chance to visit Japan: go for it! Public transport is great and Tokiyo is one of my favorite cities in the world.
BTW, I also got stuck a couple of times with my baby trolley when I was in Japan. Finally we carried our baby around, to the joy of old Japanese ladies in the subway.

(BTW - a bit unrelated - I check my first posts on this forum the other day and in one of them Dis is asking how the "little munchkin" is doing. It took me second to realize she was refering to my son who at that time - he is five now - was a baby. He is still doing great, Dis! )

[Alelou]

My mother does have a strange sense of humor (couldn't you guess that?) but that bit about mushrooms is a common belief. Kitchen stores even sell "mushroom brushes." Mushrooms do tend to absorb some of the water they are washed in, but I'll put up with it to feel I'm eating food that's relatively shit-free. Especially today, when cow manure might have nasty super-bugs in it.

I've flirted with the idea of drilling holes in some of the downed trees in our yard and incubating mushrooms spores in them ... but it seems easier and cheaper just to go to the Asian grocery and stock up on dried 'shrooms. (So many garden initiatives don't make sense if you do the math.) I also don't have any great objection to manure once washed off. When you eat food you grow yourself, you know it comes from dirt, and may even have little caterpillars or slugs on it.

I don't have the training to collect mushrooms from the woods here. People get sick or die from eating the wrong 'shroom fairly regularly. I'm not a huge fan of foraging in general, though some folks around here are. For example, they look forward to the fiddle heads each spring. I've eaten those and I even have the right kind of ferns on the property, but I wouldn't look forward to that each year unless I was starving. I keep meaning to develop more of a taste for dandelion, since God knows I have plenty of them, but so far it hasn't struck me.

I wouldn't mind being able to find a truffle now and again... that could pay the mortgage.

[WarpGirl]

WG, you might be best off experiencing Tokyo vicariously. It's not a place for the claustrophobic. Also, while Japan has been on a kick for the last ten years or so of making things more handicapped accessible and we do see a lot more people out and about in wheelchairs, I think there are a lot of pitfalls. Fun things like elevators that open out onto a set of stairs. We had enough fun trying to maneuver a stroller through Tokyo.

Darn! Well okay, Tokyo is not on my bucket list. Are there other places in Japan that wouldn't be so ummm horrifying for me. I don't want to knock the country completely off my bucket list. I've always liked the country, we studied quite a bit about it in school. And on a purely shallow note, I've always wanted a real Kimono. And since the Sith ex-boyfriend is gone, why shouldn't I see it?

[Kotik]

I'm not much of a forager myself, other than mushrooms. In fact the mushrooms are more like an added bonus rather than the primary purpose of the exercise. I'm mainly interested in getting away from the loud city for a few hours. I don't know much about the flora of Americaland, but over here you don't need much training unless you know the 3 or 4 types you're looking for. The woods around here do also have large areas of wild Raspberry and Blackberry bushes. As with mushrooms, it would be easier just to buy them in the store, but I'm in the woods anyways and in contrast to that greehouse stuff in the store, I can be fairly sure that they haven't been sprayed with fertilizer, weedkillers or any other sort of chemistry. The worst that can happen that they once in a while were subjected to fertilizers like deer or wolf pee, but that's why you wash them

[Cogito]

The worst that can happen that they once in a while were subjected to fertilizers like deer or wolf pee,

... or 'mushroom forager' pee ...

[Alelou]

[Kotik]

That was a good one

[Weeble]

Up here in NWLMich the Morels will be out soon. Some are out already. Now those are awesome tasting and you get a walk in the woods

IMG_1793.JPG

i don't know if this jpeg will come through or not

[WarpGirl]

Okay sorry to hijack but after watching To Kill A Mockingbird last thursday, and digging out my old copy to read, I just have to say... If you haven't seen the movie, SEE IT! If you haven't read the book, READ IT! Both are just as close to perfect as an imperfect human can get to creating perfection.

I admit, as far as first person narratives go F. Scott Fitzgerald get's the top prize for linguistic metaphore and imagery. But Harper Lee nails simplicity and tearing her characters wide open with a few words. Fitzgerald loved his characters to be secretive. You never quite know exactly who they are, while Lee has no secrets.

Since I was 3 years old The Sound Of Music has been my favorite movie. Now Mockingbird has replaced it. Gatsby still holds the top spot on my book list, but Mockingbird has joined it as a tie.