SC - 12th Night

[Michael F. Gunter]

ND Wederstrandt wrote:

>         I'm in the middle of reading an essay by Barbara Stanich (I think)
> who is talking abbout this unedited manuscript of a  German monastery
> cookbook from the 14th century which talks about adding in things to food
> we normally throw away.  She mentions that one recipe includes fish scales,
> another using cow udder (mmmmm).  She feels that they waste nothing and
> thereby ate things we don't.  I didn't bring it to work but I can bring it
> Monday... she has several recipes listed including antler soup.  She also
> talks about availablity of food and such.  The whole book is really
> interesting.  I can only remember it came out in 1995.
> 
> Clare St. John

Sounds interesting! Dangerously on the verge of making me give my
standard dissertation (#18, I believe) on buffalo-tongue eaters. All
right. What the heck...the short version goes like this:

I'm not saying that people should eat absolutely anything that they can
cram into themselves, but some of the more common food taboos practiced
in North America are, well, morally questionable. If one is going to
eat, for example, meat, then we should be using the animals we kill a
bit more effectively, rather than allowing our various pre-programmed
pejudices to dictate what we won't even TRY. To me this is the moral
equivalent of the people who shot the bison from the train windows, and
sent a guy around to collect the tongues, leaving the rest for the
vultures. (Buffalo Bill Cody, BTW, earned his nickname that way, and
describes this in his memoirs.)

Also, another thing we might realize is that in places that lack the
most modern farming technology, people tend to devote their arable land
to a much greater variety of produce and livestock, meaning that they
tend to have more variety in the local cuisine. My wife is fond of
pointing out that in ToySan, in the south of China, it's not possible
for them to grow enough grain to be able to sell it to Russia, but the
landscape being what it is, there is a much greater variety of foods
available, and very little of it is wasted.

Viewed in these terms, the concepts presented in the book you mention
aren't too strange at all.

Adamantius, who doesn't care, and STILL won't eat those Phillipino
fermented, fertilized duck eggs, with that cheesy little embryo inside
______________________________________
Phil & Susan Troy
troy at asan.com
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