Wretched Edibles

If you know me, you know that I love food.  All kinds of food.  Coming from a long line of inventive cooks makes you believe that any food can be redeemed.  Until moving to China there was only one food I couldn’t manage to swallow: raw zucchini.

(Notice the qualifier?  RAW zucchini.  Yes, I’m aware that zucchini bread rocks, zucchini relish is creative, and broiled zucchini is fall staple, but I cannot manage to swallow that crud raw.)

26 years, and there’s only one thing on the never-never list.

THEN I MOVED TO CHINA.

Preface:  I love the food here!  So creative and different, the best comfort food, ridiculous variety-- I’ve been blown away by how great the food is.  But some things….should just never be.

#1.  Sea Cucumber

I was aware that people eat sea cucumber in China, so when I saw a translucent tentacle-ish thing at an elegant banquet, I was eager to try it.  Imagine a dense jello that tastes like water and slides down with all the elegance of a rubber glove.  It was like eating a tense jelly-fish.  You’re not sure whether to chew, slurp, mush, or just swallow the thing whole and pretend like it never happened.

#2.  Things shaped like eyeballs

During my second week here I went out to hotpot with a group of experienced teachers.  Hotpot is a fantastic eating experience, delicious, social, interactive – all the fun of fondue without the peril of boiling oil.  In my individual bowl of broth there was a random assortment of veggies and spices to which I added meat, mushrooms, and more vegetables.  About halfway through the meal I found a mystery item – something round, slightly translucent, with a thin skin about the size of a quail’s egg.  It struck me as looking vaguely like an eyeball, but I chose to think of it as a marinated quail egg and just eat it.  Then it popped in my mouth.  Grittiness.  End of story.  Add to the never-never list: check.

#3.  Stinky Tofu

People have compared stinky tofu to a cheese before, a fermented food product that smells, but still tastes delicious.  The first time you smell stinky tofu, you expect to stumble over a corpse somewhere, and that’s saying something once you realize it smells worse than the garbage lying mounded in the summer sun.  As I child, I hated dog-duty.  (Yup, the doody-duty.)  Summer was the worst because of the combination of dirt, dried grass, and doody.  Imagine that smell combined with fetid diapers and corpse-ish-ness.  And then imagine putting it in your mouth.  WHY WOULD ANY SANE PERSON DO THAT????  I got some by accident on my last day in Xi’an.  It was disguised by soup and some benign-looking chicken.  The taste?  A whole lot like the smell.  I tried a few bites for politeness’s sake, but I have to say again, WHY WOULD A PERSON EVER PUT THAT IN THEIR MOUTH?? And on PURPOSE?!

If you feel like I’m being judgmental, then you are absolutely correct.  I have adventured, experienced, tasted, and judged that these vile things will never pass my lips again.

(Jesus, you hold the one trump card, but PLEASE, let this plate pass.)