My supremely talented cousin Craig recently came to town and (gasp) joined me in a Turkish feast. We dined at
Aya Sofia and it was delicious! Many many kudos go out to his better half Jessica for exponentially expanding his palate with her delicious and adventuresome cooking. (
Jessica's supremely talented too. Click here to read her blog!)
This family get together reminded me of an email exchange Craig and I had some time ago about the etymology of food. This topic absolutely fascinates me. Have you ever considered the unlikely path the first human took toward a cow's teet, or the happy accident of busting open a pomegranate?
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| Let's hear it for Vitamin C! |
Fruits and vegetables aren't a far stretch in this scenario:
"Hrmph me hungry, me want yum yum. Skything eat yum yum...
me eat yum yum. Me call it berry!"
This could, of course, have gone horribly wrong with worms and twigs, as I'm mostly convinced it probably did at one point or another.
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| Mmmm Iron! |
Then we jump to meat. Easy enough to imagine, as we have incisors for tearing apart meat, so it had to have been
somewhat instinctual. But how did the first carnivorous people know what to leave behind? I know offal meats were more than likely consumed. But how did anyone know to leave behind the entrails that could give you ecoli? Well I can pretty easily sort that out too, it's called survival of the fittest. Some poor sap actually died from ecoli, and the rest is, as they say, history.
I can take the leap from human teet to animal teet. I'd guess the first human to explore a cow's nether-regions probably took a few swift kicks to the teeth, but clearly the process has been streamlined and refined over the years.
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| Calci-yum! |
Now an egg...people, I'm gonna need a bit of help with this one...
What possessed cro-magnon man to go after an egg (I'm stretching here, I know chickens aren't prehistoric but birds in general pre-date man by a good long run)?
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| Naturally occurring Vitamin D? Yes please! |
"Me want thing from skything's butt!"
Seriously?!?! Eating just about anything out of anything's backside sounds less than appealing, but I'm unaware of any species that eats their own eggs to even encourage this behavior in the first place.
The balut, however, absolutely, no questions asked, hands down, takes the cake in the egg category of foods that make you go hmmm. Haven't heard of it? Allow me to enlighten you. I was blissfully unaware of anything so vile existing until a student appreciation day held at my alma mater. The chefs had put together a food relay ala fear factor that included a deconstructed caesar salad (just for fun try a glob of raw egg and then wash it down with vinegar) and ended in this gem;
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| The most vile thing I've ever seen anyone ingest! |
That's a fertilized egg! (How anything that even
resembles something so disgusting could ever be included in an event with "appreciation" on the invite, I will never know.) It's actually a delicacy in much of Southeast Asia and it makes
me want to hurl.
And now let's move onto cheese, 'tis a puzzlement (and one of my main food groups):
There are arguably thousands of reasons to eat cheese, fungus and foot funk are of course, being the caveats. Stilton and Pont l'Eveque come to mind respectively.
How exactly did either of those scenarios go down?
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| Fungus |
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| Foot Funk |
"Ooooh looks like this one heres been rotting a right long while chap."
"Clear off mate, I called dibs!"
"Zzhh oder is so intoxzzzzicating, no?"
"Ahh, oui, it zmells like mon pied. How can we rezizt?"
And this is perhaps the all time clincher of foods that make you go hmmm:
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| I'll take things that attract the un-dead for $1,000 Alex! |
It looks unsuspecting enough...cute even. Well, it smells like rotting flesh and has been outlawed on several forms of public transportation in Southeast Asia. Riddle me this Batman, what poor sap was the first to crack that puppy open in desperate search of food?
Have your own list of foods that make you go hmmmm? Share with the class in the comments!
