The first week of classes was very interesting, and some really intriguing questions came up. What is food? What makes food food? You see, everyone eats. They have to, or they will die. But not everyone eats the same food. So what makes food edible to one person and not another? Well apparently, a whole slew things like culture, taboos, familiarity, who it comes from, why it is coming from them (celebration, hospitality, etc.), if it looks like it is going to hurt you?clearly, I could go on for days. We basically give food its meaning, be it bad or good. For example, in some parts of Asia, they eat dog meat. In the U.S., we do not because dogs are pets, so it seems wrong to eat them. In Italy, they eat a specialty cheese called Casu Marzu. This is basically cheese with maggots. The story I heard in culinary school was they leave this cheese out until it starts to actually decompose and becomes infested with maggots, and it is eaten while the maggots are still alive and squirming. It?s a rare delicacy, but I promise you even if Emeril Lagasse himself tried to serve it at one of his restaurants or on his show, there?d be more than a few people blowing chunks, because we don?t consider things like bugs or larvae of flies as edible. That?s why we have economy sized cans of Raid. But this got me thinking about all the strange food I have ever eaten. I have had some pretty weird habits over the years?nothing even remotely similar to Anthony Bourdain, the shock chef who travels the world eating anything that doesn?t eat him first (snake heart sandwich, anyone?). But I do have my quirks, among them: *rocks. When I was three, my brother and I were hanging out on our neighbor?s porch, and it had a dent in it with a bunch of tiny pebbles and cement flakes. I put some in mouth, it tasted salty (I have always been a sucker for sodium), so I kept eating it. It wasn?t until a week later when my brother caught me sneaking over there just to eat the rocks that I stopped. But mind you, I was forced to stop. It was totally not my choice. *rock salt. This is the stuff that you throw on your driveway when it?s frozen to melt the ice. Big old chunks of salt?and probably some chemicals you don?t want to be messing with. Again, this habit started when I was a toddler and my parents weren?t looking, and ending when my father caught me doing it in the fourth grade. *shots of soy sauce. To get a salty kick in the mouth throughout the day, I would sneak into the kitchen (this probably started around age 7 or 8), and take a swing from the soy sauce bottle. My mom hated when I did this, and it grossed out plenty of friends, but man, did that shot taste good? *pickle juice. Started at age 8 and this is still a habit today. It?s the salt with the sour that I love so much! And to clarify, I do not chug pickle juice like a heathen (although they do sell a sports drink that has pickle juice in it www.goldenpicklejuice.com ,because the salt makes you hold on to more electrolytes or something). I prefer to take a little in a mug and sip it like a fine wine, savoring each salty, sour mouthful. So clearly, even though certain things determine what most people eat, that does not apply to me. I?m in a whole category of my own, and what I really want to know is?are you gonna eat those pebbles? ~LTG
Are you gonna eat that?
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http://www.myspace.com/vegemite_sandwich [expletive deleted] nugget
