It's the sort of thing that could happen to anyone...

[desperance]

I was drifting around the food market, feeling, y'know. Vulnerable. And there on my favourite fish stall was a conger eel. A whole conger eel.

Big things, conger eels. Who knew?

And then I drifted up to the bookstall, and there was this cookery book I was looking at - and whaddayaknow? A recipe for conger eel. I just couldn't let the coincidence pass me by; how often do you see conger eels on a slab?

And another book had an attractive-sounding recipe for rabbit, and a stall at the farmers' market was offering wild rabbit, so...

So, yup. I had a retail accident, concerning books and fudz. Details are redacted, not to spoil any surprise; people apparently read this blog, sometimes. If you're coming to dinner tomorrow, though, be aware: rabbit and conger eel, oh yes.

Comments

[madrobins]

Damn, I want to eat at your house. If I proposed to serve rabbit my beloveds would go green and start weeping in protest. As for conger eel...I can't get them to eat sole or tilapia; I'd never hear the last of it if I suggested eel.

[desperance]

Ouchie. It feels impertinent to sympathise with you in re your beloveds, but you know what I mean.

It hadn't actually struck me before, but most of my friends are food-adventurous, at least in terms of what they'll eat, if not necessarily cook themselves. Like turns to like, I guess; we sniff each other out. Aromas of saffron and cardamom attract. If I found myself living with a meat-and-two-veg man... But no. Not possible. My imagination balks, and just refuses to go there.

Oh, and do I need to say, you are very welcome to come and eat in my house, should the opportunity arise?

[madrobins]

Oh, sympathize away. I adore them, but they are Philistines. The girls show signs of slow improvement, but the Spouse...so totally locked in his "eats like a child" thing. I knew this before I married him, so I have nothing to complain about. And he's quite good about spices and ethnicity of food and the like. But: no fish. No "weird meat" such as rabbit or elk or alligator.

I can't totally complain: I won't eat boiled or fried eggs. No one is perfect. And if I want to dine in the company of adventurous souls...well, that's what I go to conventions for.

[desperance]

No one is perfect.

Indeed. Even I have not yet learned to enjoy very strong aniseed flavours. Though I am trying: I quite like fennel now, and the aniseedy basils. I figure, another fifty years and I might even learn to like pastis...

Is it the separation of white and yolk that you dislike in eggs? Me, I adore 'em in any form, and I really like that contrast of taste and texture - but then, I have almost a Chinese palate when it comes to textures.

[madrobins]

I am told I adored eggs--particularly soft boiled, with butter and sugar--until I was about four, at which point I started refusing eggs with any visible white, and then finally stopped eating them altogether. It's not an allergy; I can eat eggs (or things with eggs in) without a problem. Scrambled or in an omelet is fine--so perhaps it is the separation that bothers me. But the scent of a fried egg is off-putting, and the texture of the white offends me (in sort of the same way that the texture of liver puts me off). And once, memorably, I was forced to eat a hard boiled egg that had been served to me at school lunch (the rule was, if it was on your plate you had to eat it) and was sick all over the teacher who had insisted. I was famous for a week at school.

There are things I don't like--liver, fried or hard boiled eggs, lima beans (all, at least in part, a texture thing) but very few things I'll refuse outright, and many of those are because I'm allergic, or at least physically intolerant. I'd eat shrimp all day if my histamine receptors would let me.

[desperance]

Mmm, I figured something like that. I'm still surprised, how many adults squick over solid eggwhite (me, I also like it runny, but I do recognise that to be almost deliberately, almost perversely unusual). Clearly it's hardwired into you (and bravo, for vomiting all over Teacher!), and clearly the wiring went in at a specific point: aren't people interesting?

And I would join you in the all-day shrimp-eating, if my bank manager would let me. Seafood=love: my Best Meal Ever was a plate - a large plate - with a lobster on it, surrounded by crabs and prawns and shrimps, all cold and simply boiled, with bread and mayonnaise and a bucket for the shells.

[madrobins]

Sadly, shrimp and some shellfish (mollusks, basically) are no longer okay for me: fainting, hives, stomach cramps are not my idea of a good after-dinner trick. But lobster! Oh, lobster and crab, with a little melted butter, a nice tossed salad, and some good bread, is my idea of great bliss. Whatever things I might say about my upbringing, my parents believed that what they ate, my brother and I ate; I was introduced to lobster by the time I was six (so pleased to make your acquaintance! Let's eat!) and for my father's fiftieth birthday we gave him a 5 lb lobster (with smaller ones for the rest of us), which was led into the living room with a yellow ribbon round it's neck, introduced ("Dad, this is Sidney; Sidney, Dad) and then returned to the kitchen to meet his doom.

One mother's day a few years ago I bought myself a lobster and ate it while the rest of my silly family ate hamburgers and mocked me. Foolish ones.