This particular comic brings back some memories. We, in USA, do not tend to eat a large variety of meat animals, and even then we do not eat all parts of a meat animal. Well, yes, there are some subcultures in our country where a larger variety is eaten, but they are small segments.
But there are many areas of the world in which they do eat most of an animal. When we were missionaries, we were sent to countries in which this was true. And, yes, chicken soup was “organic.” In fact, it was considered a delicacy to serve you a leg and claw with the soup, or maybe even the head. Yes, there is nothing like being served chicken soup with the chicken’s foot sticking out of it. Or, the delight of being served a bowl that stares back at you from the floating head. What’s even better is when you are at a “roadhouse” type of restaurant when traveling and seeing the person the next table over pick the head out of his soup and eat it with evident relish. (No, I will certainly not describe how you cope with the beak and cranial bones, but you do not swallow them.)
But, while we did not ever learn to eat everything our host culture ate, nevertheless, we certainly had our eating capabilities expanded far beyond what we used to eat before we went to missions. And, like most missionaries, we had those little stories that we like to tell, simply to watch people shudder. For instance, I was once served a milky drink out in the sub-Amazonian basin, that tasted like a cross between kerosene and milk that had turned. I later found out that it was one of those drinks that gets into shows about extreme foods just to make the audience shudder. In passing, you take some roots, the women chew them up, spit them into a large earthern jar, cover it with water, bury it and let it “age” until it is ready for drinking.
So, have you ever eaten or drunk something that would be your version of “organic” chicken?
there are always your grasshoppers, ants and grubs–said ants and grasshoppers are nice and crunchy covered in chocolate–sort of like a those chocolate candies with the cookie inside…..
Growing up in Pennsylvania Dutch country, I routinely ate “hog maw”. (Stuffed pig stomach, and it’s very tasty.) And honestly I wonder if people who tout “natural casing” sausages know what that means! Another PA Dutch delicacy was beef heart — very good with mustard and horseradish.
I tried to eat a chicken head once. What are you supposed to bite?
I think I would draw the line at “inorganic” chicken soup, and some of the stuff you buy in packets tastes as though it might be.
And I liked the story of the US missionary who was gathered with compatriots discussing food in different cultures, and one of them turned to him and said: “What do your people eat?”
“Things,” came the reply.
“Things? What sort of things?”
“Just things.”
“What do they drink then?”
“Coca Cola.”
“How come they eat ‘things’ and drink Coca Cola?”
“Things go better with Coke.”
Sea cucumber, at a ‘banquet’ in China. Not terribly exotic, nor all that bad…if you like green rubber.