Wednesday, 29 July 2009

Different strokes for different folks

So yesterday my colleague and I were driving back from a meeting, and were shooting the shit as usual. Somehow we get onto the topic of weird things we missed doing as kids. I should point out here that my colleague's childhood was spent in the Solomon Islands.
So I'm telling him about how we used to go docking up at various farms around Hawkes Bay. He doesn't know what docking is. So I explain how all the cute little lambies have to go down a chute, meeting a hot pair of scissors at the end to lop off their tails, and if they're a boy, have their nuts squeezed off too. I tell him how us kids would be running around collecting all the tails and chasing lambs and contributing to the general mayhem.
Part of this yearly ritual was to then build a small fire and roast the lambs tails on it. The smell was disgusting....burnt hair and melting fat. For those of you who don't know, a lambs tails is basically a strip of cartilage surrounded by fat and wool. The taste, after a long day stomping around in gumboots in the cold spring air? Nectar of the Gods.
After I finish happily recounting this story, I realise my colleague is looking at me with horror. It turns out that to him, this is really gross and weird.
So he comes out with a story of his own.
When a melon tree is ripening, it attracts fruit bats, who will roost in their hundreds on the tree. Hurl a stone at the tree somewhere, he says, and you're guaranteed one dead bat. Roast it over the fire - manna from heaven.
It's my turn to be horrified. What about the rabies? These bats don't carry rabies. What about the awful leathery wings? Oooh, that's the best part. Like eating a chicken wing!
Barf. What culinary delights do you remember from childhood that you can share?

1 comment:

Jen on the Edge said...

Okay, both of those are foul beyond belief. Then again, I live in the U.S., which has introduced far too many culinary disasters to the world.