Yesterday I made reference to Helly’s Food Law #2 (“Sweet things shall not be mixed with salty things”) which begs the question, what is Helly’s Food Law #1? Food Law #1 is “Despite anything anyone might tell you, entrails are not food”. I’m against internal organ consumption of any kind, but I will make an exception - a BIG exception - for pate de foie gras, which comes from liver. Also, I will eat my mom’s pate, which is made from chicken liver. These are the only exceptions to Food Law #1. No matter the source beast, I will not eat a brain, a heart, a lung, a stomach (even if you call it tripe), an eyeball, a nad (Rocky Mountain Oyster, indeed!) or intestines. Especially intestines. Intestines are bad. I mean, that sort of thing made sense back in Ye Olde Oldynn Dayes, when it was a choice between cow stomach stew or starvation, but when Publix sells New York Strips? No. Just no.
Food Law #3 is “Do not eat anything which resembles a tumor”. Cauliflower spawned this rule, specifically my mom’s cauliflower in cheese sauce. Somehow she got the idea that someone in the family liked that noxious dish and made it all the time, including Thanksgiving, even though none of us liked to touch or smell it, let alone dine upon it. My memory is somewhat hazy on the subject, it being human nature to block the details of traumatic events, but I believe I finally convinced her by demonstrating that I was quite willing to sit at table until dawn, if necessary, after she issued one of those, “Well, you’ll sit there until you clean your plate, young lady!” challenges. A deeply ingrained butt-pattern from a cane-bottomed chair is NOTHING compared to the horror of actually ingesting cooked cauliflower. Rutabagas and most squash are also covered by this edict, as are sweet potatoes/yams. Yams are Satan’s tuber.
Although it’s not quite a Food Law, there is one other practice to which I adhere. If you are in a restaurant at which you’ve never eaten before, and the cuisine is either foreign or trendy - or gods forbid, BOTH - and therefore strange and unusual substances could appear in your food, what you do is: find out what Nancy’s husband orders when he eats there. Get that. It will be 100% free of nasty, unpleasant surprises like raw squid, water chestnuts, rhubarb, intestines and cauliflower. He doesn’t personally underwrite that guarantee, but trust me on this one. This is the Mark Corollary to Fine Dining.
MONTOYA DELENDA EST!
Food Law #3 is “Do not eat anything which resembles a tumor”. Cauliflower spawned this rule, specifically my mom’s cauliflower in cheese sauce. Somehow she got the idea that someone in the family liked that noxious dish and made it all the time, including Thanksgiving, even though none of us liked to touch or smell it, let alone dine upon it. My memory is somewhat hazy on the subject, it being human nature to block the details of traumatic events, but I believe I finally convinced her by demonstrating that I was quite willing to sit at table until dawn, if necessary, after she issued one of those, “Well, you’ll sit there until you clean your plate, young lady!” challenges. A deeply ingrained butt-pattern from a cane-bottomed chair is NOTHING compared to the horror of actually ingesting cooked cauliflower. Rutabagas and most squash are also covered by this edict, as are sweet potatoes/yams. Yams are Satan’s tuber.
Although it’s not quite a Food Law, there is one other practice to which I adhere. If you are in a restaurant at which you’ve never eaten before, and the cuisine is either foreign or trendy - or gods forbid, BOTH - and therefore strange and unusual substances could appear in your food, what you do is: find out what Nancy’s husband orders when he eats there. Get that. It will be 100% free of nasty, unpleasant surprises like raw squid, water chestnuts, rhubarb, intestines and cauliflower. He doesn’t personally underwrite that guarantee, but trust me on this one. This is the Mark Corollary to Fine Dining.
MONTOYA DELENDA EST!
1 Comments:
When I lived in Atlanta I loved going to restaurants w/Nancy because her students always keyed her in to all the good ethnic places. She used to say "I take the omni in omnivore very seriously". That's a keystone in my philosophy, as well.
You are right about yams being Satan's tubers, though.
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Topcat, at 8:26 AM
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