Monday, August 27, 2007

tell me what you eat and I'll tell you what you are


Yesterday in the newspaper there was an article mentioning the amount of snails being eaten in Portugal every year. And I don't mean being eaten by birds or others, but being eaten by people. It is a traditional dish, available in every tavern in the center and south of the country. Snails are cooked and served in some kind of sauce. Or so they say, I wouldn't know because I never tried any. For some mysterious reason people don't eat snails in the north. Perhaps its a cultural thing, a regional thing even. They find them disgusting.
I couldn't eat snails, no matter how hard I tried. Just looking at their little houses all together in a plate makes my stomach turn. What I remember most about snails is how I used to mass-murder them in my grandfather's garden. He used to give everyone a tin and we had to go around the garden and pick them up, so that he would burry them in the ground, in the end. I wouldn't do that now, let them eat everything, the poor creatures.
Why would people eat that? It doesn't strike me as being very different from eating any other garden insect. But then people eat strange things. For instance, people in Porto are generally called by a name that means they eat tripe. And they do, it's one of the regional dishes (yuck, I can't even remember the strong smell of tripe being cooked). But the name comes from around 1415, before the portuguese conquered Ceuta. It seems that the people in Porto gave away all the meat they had for the navigators to take with them and were only left with the tripe, which they had to learn how to cook. Somehow, I don't think I'd fit in that society...

12 comments:

holy chaos said...

I do not think that i could eat snails or tripe,either.

do you eat sushi?

diyadear said...

yeah it feel yucks.. but then i mean in japan ppl eat snakes.. so guess its nothin to be yucks abt..

Roam2Rome said...

Ugh, I couldn't eat snail either!

Sushi is fine, but not tripe!

dharmabum said...

somebody eats them, its food :)

i wouldn't wanna eat them either, or any animals. i just feel sad about them.

the pic is cute. so is the post. reflects your sensitive self.

Anonymous said...

I like to eat alot of things, but gutz and shell fish nope noda NO!

DayByDay

x said...

people eat lots of snails in Greece too. I don't know how they do it, i think it's like eating worms.
Ugh!
plus, i like them in their little houses as you say, so let them be people!

Unknown said...

We remain kindred spirits, but I used to mass murder worms in my grandmother's backyard...

I am not sure, snails remind me of slugs and they SCARE me!!!

BTW you read my post so you were tagged--you're it!

Novel

Crafty Green Poet said...

In Malawi (where I lived for a coulpe of years) people eat all kinds of insects and in the bus stations people used to sell mice on sticks. I can't eat anything like that, I'm a vegetarian!

fb said...

It's probably because of pictures like the one that you have up that snails seem less appealing.

I have no problem eating things from the sea that live in shells but something but snails just doesn't seem appealing.

Niall young said...

Yes..Tripe was a dish mostly eaten here during the war years in the 30's and 40's..I still remember my Grandparents eating it...Years later when I worked in Psychiatric hospitals we'd run 'Reminiscence Therapy'groups for elderly people..one of the things we'd do is cook Tripe and Onions...they loved it!

Preeti Shenoy said...

I didnt even know people ate snails.Funnily my last painting had a snail featured prominently.

Devil Mood said...

Holychaos: I've never eaten sushi but I'm not too excited about trying that either.

Diyadear: Well, it's probably just a cultural thing, isn't it?

Farfallina: I think that depends on the cultural background one's in.

Dharmabum: I just stole the picture from another blog. I'm bad! ;)

Day: Just the word guts leaves me a little uneasy...

Chloe: They have that drool all over them, it's so disgusting.

Novel: We should be arrested for our childhood crimes haha

Crafty: Oh my God, mice in sticks really takes the cake on the most awful thing. How can people eat that? :(

FB: Well, I actually chose this picture because the pictures of a number of snails on a plate ready to eat were too disgusting to figure in my blog! So I don't think that's it...

Niall: hehe I guess necessity is the mother of all experiences. I used to love liver and onions when I ate meat, back in the days. Now I can't think about it.

PS: Hmm, really? What does that stand for?