”Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are.”
Last night it poured, and the clouds are still hanging around though the sun did break through a couple of times. It will be warm, in the low 70’s. I will be cleaning. Later I will also go to the dump, and I need a few groceries.
My muse seems to have taken a vacation. I keep writing then I delete what I wrote. Coffee has been around for close to twenty years. It started on Blogger, got kicked off then moved here to WordPress. Some of my videos do get taken down, but there no threats of WordPress kicking me to the curb. I’m going to get more coffee, the liquid sort, and hope for inspiration.
When I was a kid, my father had a savage index finger. When he reprimanded any of us, he’d use it for emphasis by pointing at us and sometimes jabbing us in the chest. Walking backwards didn’t help. He just followed. We learned the response was just to nod and agree. My sister tells the story of one summer night. Both my sisters and our cousin, who stayed with us over the summer, sneaked out to swim in the pond near our house. They got caught. My sisters went up the stairs to their bedroom first with my cousin last. My father walked behind her and jabbed her on the back with that lethal finger all the way up the stairs while reprimanding them the whole while. My sisters laughed quietly. They had planned perfectly. They knew what my father would do.
When I was a kid, I’d eat what was served because my mother never cooked foods she knew we wouldn’t eat. Beans were on the cusp. The first weird food I ate was spaghetti with clam sauce. That was at my aunt’s house. She lived in East Boston right across from the tunnel entrance. Her apartment was over my uncle’s fish market. I remember thinking the spaghetti smelled weird, and it had no red sauce or gravy as my aunt called it. Her husband was Italian, my Uncle Lorrie, and that’s what his family called it. She urged me so I tried it. It was, to my surprise, tasty. From then on, I was willing to give strange foods a taste.
Let’s see. I have eaten eel, not so strange, octopus, also not so strange, goat, a bit bony, bush meat, a rodent I learned latter was grass cutter, snake, just weird, Guinea pig, good but I couldn’t shake the feeling I was eating someone’s pet, chocolate covered grasshoppers, eaten on a dare, and a variety of odd foods in Ghana. When I travel, I eat the food of the countries I am visiting. Many times I don’t ask questions. I just eat.
keepthecoffeecoming.blog 
September 27, 2024 at 3:26 pm
Shrimp was a huge treat on the east side of town. The famous Driskill Hotel was only two miles from our house on 5th street. On Saturday nights during the winter my buddy, Eduardo, and I would sneak down there and wait for the kitchen to dump the leftover boiled shrimp and cocktail sauce, still packed in a box full of ice. We’d take the box back to his house and make pigs of ourselves. When he finally got a car we drove the two miles. One Saturday night things went wonky and after we got the shrimp we got pulled over by the police. Turns out he never titled the car and they arrested him. The shrimp was locked in the trunk. The next day, as Austin often does, a warm front came in and it was 95 in the afternoons that week. We didn’t get Eddie out of jail until Friday. Did you know you can’t get rotten shrimp smell out of a car? Even with Pine Sol.
September 27, 2024 at 9:05 pm
Beto,
I have had the rotten fish smell experience so I know how that smell permeates the air. The difference was my fish was in the trash, not a car, and a trip to the dump solved my problem. I can’t imagine how horrible that car must have smelled. Did that smell ever disappear?
September 28, 2024 at 6:50 pm
That car smelled like rotten crustaceans until it went to the car crusher. It was a rusty hulk $75 car anyway. We were only 14
September 28, 2024 at 8:16 pm
Your poor friend getting arrested at 14. It is no wonder you all forgot the shrimp in the trunk. I’m glad the car had seen its better days.
September 27, 2024 at 3:58 pm
Hi Kat,
Today is clear again with a predicted high temperature of only 86°.
My wife is probably the only human being on earth that hates shrimp. I discovered her dislike of the sea food when I brought her along on a bussiness trip to Tampa Florida. I was giving one of my previous students his annual proficiency check in his company airplane. We were invited to his house for dinner the first night. His wife had prepared shrimp with pea pods in garlic sauce for the main course. My wife dutifully swallowed the large shrimp whole because she didn’t like the flavor. Later that night she admitted to me her dislike for shrimp.
Last night we were discussing what we think that alligator meat would taste. Neither of us had ever tried it. We did agree that we wouldn’t knowingly eat any insects nor any rodents. I have eaten Cabrito, barbecued baby goat. It’s a northern Mexican dish.
September 27, 2024 at 9:23 pm
Hi Bob,
It was warm today, in the low 70’s. Tomorrow should be about the same which is good as I have an outdoor concert.
I’m with you. I know no one who hates shrimp. My mother liked it so much she usually ordered it when we went out for dinner. We used to tease her and wonder what she might order.
Kid is quite tasty, goat not so much. I have learned not to ask too many questions about an unknown food. I know people who like something but hate it when they find out what they ate. Illogical.
September 27, 2024 at 6:44 pm
Land snail stew in Ghana, bear paw stew and boiled pig intestines in Japan.
September 27, 2024 at 9:28 pm
Bill,
I have seen those land snails being sold along the road when I traveled down south. There being none in Bolga, I never tasted them. I have eaten regular snails.