Warning! Appetite Spoilers Ahead! If you have a weak stomach and you spew on your keyboard, don’t blame me!
Imagine you are a big, burly, smelly caveman. You just got done konking a prehistoric wildebeast or antelope type critter over the noggin with your club and dragged it back to the cave for wifey to roast over an open fire. As you hand each of your children a hoof (their favorite piece!), you make sure to save out the tail for your sweetie. As the man of the cave, you have a big ‘ole helping of steaming ribcage. You save the dangly bits for your brother in law, that useless loser who can’t even hunt for himself. You look over at your lovely neanderthal chick as she munches on the delicious tail. Her shaggy back, hairy legs and pungent body aroma really get you going!
We don’t live in caves anymore. Even so, ribcage is still on the menu. BBQed ribcage, sweet and sour spare ribcage, salted dry ribcage appetizers. And a lot of you are thinking, ribcage tastes delicious! Well, just because it tastes good doesn’t mean you have to (or should) eat it. If you somehow found out that living human brain tasted like an orgasm in your mouth, would you tie up the neighbors and have some brain?
I have an over-active imagination. While most of the time I enjoy using it, at other times it runs away on me like a cheetah running down an easily run down prey animal. I have a lot of trouble eating critters if I get a picture of what they used to look like, so I try not to imagine anything but how great the food tastes. This is why most of the time, I prefer meats that have been processed to the point of unrecognizability. I can only guess that people who eat fish with the head still attached have very little imagination, or can somehow shut it off.
A few foods I won’t touch:
- ribcage <shudder> unless it is cut up small, breaded and deep fried
- shrimp (like horrible little insects)
- anything that has legs, eyes, or hair still on it
- any creature whose buddies can watch me eat him from a nearby pen or tank
- anything with veins, tendons or sinew
Acceptably unrecognizable meat products:
- Hot dogs. I just pray I never find a beak (or a nipple!)
- Mysteriosis-free deli meats
- Steak – I just pretend this was sawed off of a steak tree
- Pork chops – another forestry product
- Bacon – I would rationalize this one however I had to
- Chicken balls – chickens are female, hence no balls, so I’m safe on these. Rooster balls, however…. and no swallow balls, either!
- Chicken fingers – here again, they don’t have fingers
Even with ground meat products, you can still get screwed over. A buddy and I were enjoying a couple burgers one day, and he found a big ‘ole hank of reddish brown Hereford cow hair. We don’t eat there any more…
Salad has it’s drawbacks too. Being a guy, I never used to wash our lettuce when I was in charge of supper. I inadvertently served my 7 year old daughter an imported US grasshopper. Boy, did she ever get excited! Now I triple check my produce for legs, eyes and bodies.
Anyways, I can only hope you read all this right before sitting down for a big helping of ribcage. Bon apetit!