Foods And Flavors Not Mentioned
Posted: Thursday, January 19, 2012
by Octavia Hansen
Octavia Hansen
Eating is a favorite pastime of mine. The rest of the world also favors this both solo and social sport but cannot always find its fill. Food, being the perishable commodity that it is, must be consumed or it becomes useless. Much as people hunger for gold, it will not satisfy an empty stomach. Gold can get you to food, but gold in itself is pretty useless for the individual. It does have it's uses only because someone else values it and will do things for it. Good thing, otherwise we'd all stay home a lot more.
Sharing food can be friendly, romantic, silly, adventurous and even educational. Some people go to food schools to learn more about preparation and presentation. Love that! Food that not only nourishes the body but the soul.
There are foods sorely overlooked that I love, and have passed on exotic tastes to friends and family at different times. To name a few:
Cold Pizza Breakfast. A very good friend of mine who loves pizza buffets, carry out pizza and keeping pizza from the night before, has the idea that every pizza place should not put away their buffet, merely close shop and open early for breakfast, featuring a cold pizza selection. I LOVE this thought! I love cold pizza! It travels well. It's congealed. It's still fresh (relatively) and it tastes great. On a hot summer morning, with a tall iced tea, nothing beats a cold pizza!
Cold Chinese Food Breakfast. Hey, don't knock it 'til you tried it! A cold egg roll is better than a hot greasy breakfast sandwich any day. Chinese noodles are good hot or cold, and they stick together better when cold. I prefer to use chop sticks but even I can be defeated by a slippery noodle. Chinese food, either left over and you want to take it with you or specifically ordered to go, comes in paper containers just made for the microwave . . . but why wait? Open and eat! All you need is a mouth.
At one time, as referenced in literature during the Victorian era, toasting forks were a staple of indoor life. Toast was traditional but it has also been documented that some people (in particular an eccentric scientist who shall go nameless) also toasted mice. I can't imagine what they taste like nor did I follow up to see if said chosen sacrificial mice were disemboweled or cooked and eaten whole. Eeeew! It also meant the toasting fork had bits of mouse on it when it was used again. Again . . . Eeeew!
Pigeons used to be on the menu a little more than one hundred years ago. I can understand this -- abundant bird, local pest, freshly caught. I kinda wonder why they fell out of favor. Maybe it's because they were free and that didn't play well in a competitive economic society. Can't go giving things away, you know!
I have often wondered about animal foods. My cats get chicken, beef, pork, seafood, and dairy varieties of sustenance. Knowing what cat diets consist of outside the home, there should be other flavors -- mouse flavor, bird flavor, something-dead-in-the-road flavor, small-bug-and-flying-insect flavor. I'm sure there could be more but these are from recent personal observation. As for dogs (of which I don't get close and neither of us has ever been fond of the other enough to dine together), the possibilities range from small-child flavor, rodent flavor, butt flavor, vomit flavor and whatever-anyone-drops-from-a-dining-table flavor. Seems dogs are not picky, evidently enough so to cause their own demise eating chocolate and/or antifreeze. Geez, getting sick wasn't a clue?
For all the foods available, there is always someone trying to make me eat something I hate. I'm a grown person now. I don't have to taste, eat or finish anything put in front of me if I don't want to. Still, I don't consider myself a picky eater, I'm not thin and will never be my high school weight ever again. That doesn't bother me when I see old photos of that Auschwitz-look going on and I wasn't even anorexic.
As for hateable food:
Squash. Who decided to put this in their mouth? No matter how it's cooked, what's done to it or what it's added to, it will NEVER be food in my book. Yes, yes, yes, if I were starving I'd probably eat it. But I'm not! So I don't! It makes me look like I have a delicate appetite for all the squash I leave on my plate. (My, she hardly ate a bite!)
Okra. Are you kidding? This is a dare, a torture, a nasty veg that takes up room on a plate where real food is supposed to be. Doesn't matter if you put it in a martini, raw, pickle or fry it . . . it's still okra, will always be okra and will NEVER be anything that anyone actually orders anywhere. It's only because it's the law in the South that it comes as a permanent side dish with just about everything. Otherwise, it would just lay around doing nothing.
Beans. This is a wide open arena of non-food selection. I don't mind refried beans, they can be blended and covered up by just about everything. But most beans are filler until you get to real food. I'm all for gluing them to a paper plate to make kid art, don't mind throwing them at people or animals when I need their attention, but on a plate, surrounded by actual food, this is a mistake against nature. This is what you feed animals to produce other food.
Grits. Okay, though I vaguely consider myself a Southern Gal, both my parents came from New York City and grits were from another planet. Sometimes, inadvertantly they are delivered to my dining table when I am below the Mason-Dixon Line, and I do try them, and then I rediscover why I do not eat grits. Sometimes a waitress will suggest decorating them with honey, fruit, cream, anything . . . no, bring all the other stuff but take the grits. Much like escargot -- if you have to use that much butter and garlic, there's not an escargot taste available. What are you eating?
A footnote to dining and social occasions must include The Last Supper. This final meeting and meal story is bantered around by people, in books -- it was significant being their last, but they had a good time up until then. Walking around, talking to people, not having a desk job, not commuting to work -- JC went to a lot of parties and from all accounts, brought the best wine. A rendering of this meal is carved upon a wooden panel in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, Jesus is unmistakably seated in the middle with his hand raised. To me, it always looked like he was signaling . . . "Check, please!"
Most people order too much food. Most portions are oversized for an individual. Be prepared to share. Don't be stingy -- offer a sample or a taste to those around you. Even if you hate something, give it a try. Tastes have been known to change and you can still reject it if you don't like something. Ooooh, are you gonna finish that?
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)I was in agreement, until you got to the squash...being a true southerner I like fried squash and fried okra, in small amounts. Now cornbread, beans and taters are what most people in my area were raised on; with grits, eggs, and bisquits their breakfast meal for centuries.
Great article, and I agree with the napkin and keeping one's mouth closed.Ah, you Southern Belle! I know of which you speak, I just don't eat it. Though I have never passed by crawdads or deviled eggs, I'll never be a fan of squash or okra. But biscuits and gravy? I can LIVE on that! You make me remember! Oooh, I can smell it now!
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