I’m not talking about Twinkies or Reece’s Pieces and such, I’m talking about the foul practice of eating so-called “exotic” animal meat.
I never understood the fad of eating meat from monkeys, or rodents, or any of that kind of treif (to use the Yiddish term for unclean meat). Sure, if you’re starving to death and there’s nothing else, then be my guest. But to consider rattlesnake, for example, as a delicacy is bullshit. (FYI: I’ve eaten rattlesnake before, and don’t let anyone fool you with that “tastes like chicken” line — it tastes exactly like snake, and if you can’t imagine that taste then let me tell you, it’s nasty).
Of course, a lot of this eating foolishness comes from the Far East, e.g. China because they’re fucking morons who are often reduced to extending their protein diet because they live under Communism and Communism, as any fule kno, creates food shortages and any foodstuff is better than the alternative.
Now we find out that the latest little present we’re getting from China, the highly-contagious and deadly corona virus, stems from eating bats, or snakes (which eat bats).
Bats, lest we forget, are winged rats and snakes are, well, snakes. Both should be strenuously avoided, in terms of both physical contact and ingestion, no matter how “appealing” they might look:
Don’t let anyone talk shit into your ear about how they’re “exotic” or “delicacies” — stick with regular foods because while all meat is potentially dangerous — trichonosis from being undercooked, mercury concentration etc. — at least our food supply is more or less monitored properly when it comes to beef, pork, chicken, fish and so on. Exotic meats? Nobody has a clue, least of all the fucking Asians, who never wash their hands and probably worship roadkill as a delicacy too.
By the way: I don’t care how wonderful fugu tastes, or how closely the Japanese regulate its preparation, or how fugu chefs are supposed to kill themselves if they screw up, or any of that stuff. The fact remains that it’s highly toxic, and if you want to flirt with death, rather drive a rear-wheel drive pickup truck on a Dallas freeway during an ice storm. No, I don’t know what fugu tastes like, will never find out for myself, and I’m perfectly okay with that.
And stay away from bats and snakes. I can’t believe I should have to tell anyone this. Have some decent White Person food instead.
Wayback when – 1950s or 60s – my father was out in the far East and – as one did – bought a cooked steak wrapped in something off some street vendor. It was very tasty so he went back for another. The vendor reached up and brought down the dead python and chopped off another steak.
Wasn’t Ebola also related to eating monkeys or something?
Never understood the fascination with eating bugs either. Sure, if you’re starving, pass the grasshoppers (and it’s interesting to note that some varieties of grasshopper, i.e. locust, are Kosher, reference John the Baptist’s diet of locusts and wild honey).
I had rattlesnake chili once and enjoyed it.
Although as a Devil’s Advocate, how much of a stretch is it from shrimp or crayfish to grasshoppers, spiders and cockroaches?
On a related note, a woman at my former church and her daughter visited India for a vacation (they weren’t Indian themselves, so they weren’t visiting family or anything, they were strictly tourists). They came back with tales of how wonderful and exotic it was. Sorry, anyplace where you need to make sure your shots are up-to-date and where you can’t safely drink what comes out of the pipe in the bathroom is not a place I want to visit. I’ve been all over the US, and while in some places the water tasted like the entire North Korean army splashed thru it barefoot, if there’s a pipe coming out of a wall connected to a municipal water supply it’s safe to drink. (Interestingly, the one place I’ve had problems was Washington DC, the water there always gives me the runs for a few days.)
Excellent post, Kim! I like it when you embrace your mouth-foaming indignation at idjits. IMO if the 3rd World wants to engage in parlous behavior such as eating bushmeat and roadkill and SNAKES, that’s fine, but IFF they forego rapid transportation to the West.
This garbage isn’t any more edible than certain white people’s food, such as haggis, blood sausage, or (shudder) lutefisk. They’re not “delicacies”, they’re the foods of last resort. They’re leftovers (chuckle, chuckle) from an age before mechanized agriculture, modern breeding techniques, fertilizers, pesticides, refrigeration, and modern preservation. Most civilized people embraced these and other technologies, and as such we eat the actual meat of the animals and leave the organs, which used to be eaten because starvation, to our pets. My ethnicity is half Swedish on dad’s side, and most of Western Europe on mom’s. “Lutefisk” is a Swedish dish consisting of boiled whitefish soaked in lye. I find it almost as repulsive as Greta Thunberg’s policy views, and I wouldn’t eat a morsel of it unless you put a gun to my own mother’s head. And even then I’d hesitate.
Normally and usually I avoid amphibians, reptiles and creepy looking rodents except of rabbits which are not creepy looking. When I was visiting my brother in Oklahoma a few years ago we went out to eat at a Cajun Resturant and he ordered alligator appetizer which we dipped in hot sauce. When asked what I thought my reply was that you can deep fry most anything covered with heavy sweet batter, including an art gum eraser and it will be kind of edible because the flavor of the meat is pretty much gone. That’s also the way I ate calf fries once at a gathering after a pheasant hunt and they required several martini’s to make them edible otherwise they tasted like some kind of congealed mucus with little stringy stuff mixed in.
So, words to live by, no bats, no rats, no cats nor reptiles or amphibians or any bugs except for those like lobster who live in the ocean.
Beef. Pork. Chicken. Trout. Beer. If you’re hungry and this list doesn’t fill your needs, you are probably beyond helping.
I’d leave off Pork.
For whatever reason, your choice. More for me!
Wasn’t lobster considered “garbage food” by the American colonists? And contracts of indenture included clauses that the servant couldn’t be fed lobster more than 3x a week? Prisoners complained that being served lobster was cruel and unusual punishment?
And yet now it’s a delicacy….
The world is weird. And yes, gimme a big ol’ beefsteak any time. I work on the 3rd floor of a building, which has a Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse on the 1st floor. The smells throughout the bldg in the afternoon are nummy!
In the immortal words of Samuel L. Jackson in “Pulp Fiction”:
“Sewer rat may taste like pumpkin pie, but I’ll never know because I’ll never eat the filthy motherfucker.”
My father in law, a amazing man and world traveler, had many adventures in foreign lands. He loved eating sushi, sashimi, and other oriental delicacies. Alas, he died of a rare pancreatic / liver cancer, thought to be caused by a parasite acquired from eating raw fish. No more sushi for me. Nope.
If they ever find patient zero in Wuhan, my money is on a mid level lab worker at the Wuhan virus study (weaponization) lab that is supposedly level 4 isolated.
Having worked in the PRC for half a dozen years in the mid 90’s (several factories were in the Wuhan area) I can assure you that anything they build will leak like a sieve, they are simply not up to the expertise required and they probably plumbed the lab effluents straight into the city sewers (if they have any and are not using open air ditches where the lab is located).
If I could afford it I’d eat a grilled 24 oz porterhouse every day of the week and never complain about boredom. Everything else can suck my dick.
I get it…you’re a peasant culture, limited resources, you take your protein where you can get it, but RAW? For the love of God, throw it in the stew pot and COOK the damn thing!
Even if they manage to dodge this virus, can you imagine the parasite load some of the Chinese are carrying? I’ll bet they cultivate tapeworms the length of a CVS cash register receipt.
In the town where I grew up there is a big religious university which has a large non-US student population. Many of them are from countries firmly on the “under-developed” side of the bell curve. Several years ago there was an item in the local paper of an incident at the college. School officials investigating complaints of a bad smell coming from one of the student dorm rooms found that the residents had opened an impromptu butcher shop catering to fellow students jonesing for a taste of home cooking: bush meat. The entrepreneuring young men had been scavenging up road killed possums, raccoons, & what have you and butchering them in the bathtub. They apparently had a thriving business going.