Food? Vermin? – It’s All About Marketing

As we all know, French cuisine is renowned throughout the world. They say that the French live to eat; that food, its ingredients, preparation and consumption, is a national obsession. I take this on faith as I can’t claim any insight into their passion for food. I will say, however, that I am impressed by how indiscriminant the French are in their concept of what actually constitutes food. These are not a squeamish people.

Okay, we all know they eat snails. That fact alone is quite fascinating if one thinks about it. (I know a few of you would prefer to not think about it.) Who was the first person to decide to pluck a snail out of the garden, bake it with a little oil and garlic, perhaps sprinkle on some cheese and pop it in their mouth? Did the garlic come later or did they immediately see that garlic is inevitable if one is going to eat a snail?

What about slugs? Seems that slugs would be even easier than snails given that there is no shell to deal with. Why don’t the French eat slugs? One can imagine that slugs would be quite tender. You know someone must have tried one at some point in time, and perhaps they just couldn’t make it work. I am willing to bet the slug slime simply made the whole venture impractical. I have held a lot of slugs in my time, and, believe me, those slime trails are really hard to wash off. Of course there is always the remote possibility that slugs simply don’t taste good, even with garlic and oil. If any of you are inspired to forge ahead with some experimentation, please report in.

Then there’s the frog leg thing the French have got going on. Maybe they wanted another tourist attraction to enhance the experience of the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre? Christian, our landlady’s son, reports that there are giant frogs on the property next to us. Regretfully, this isn’t the right time of year for frogs and the neighbors reportedly aren’t that friendly, so the idea of popping over for a leg or two is out of the question.

Perhaps frog legs are just the French way of showing off? Are amphibians consumed in any other culture’s cuisine? I can’t think of any. I lived and traveled in Africa for two years and never saw anyone eat an amphibian. I did, however, meet a Peace Corps Volunteer from Cameroon who said he learned to pluck termites out of the air and eat them raw. They allegedly taste like ham. (You were dying to know that weren’t you?) But I digress, termites are obviously not amphibians. Do Asians eat amphibians? Asians also like to challenge Western notions of what constitutes chow. I’ve never been to Asia, so perhaps someone else could offer insight into the urgent question of whether there are any Asian cuisines that include amphibians. In any case, bravo to the French for breaking the amphibian taboo.

I’m not sure I can even touch the foie gras issue. You just know a bunch of adolescent boys were sitting around bored in the French countryside and one day decided to stuff a goose with feed. Surprise, surprise - that little bit of sadism made for some pretty yummy liver paste. Who says that evil doesn’t pay?

Now the frog, snail and goose liver stuff you already knew about. You may not know, however, that the French seem OK with eyeballs. They are not alone in the world to be OK with eyeballs. Gambians are definitely OK with eyeballs too. If I was to generalize, which I obviously am doing, I would have to say that Americans are not OK with eyeballs when it comes to their food. It is not immediately apparent why this is the case, but I have always assumed that this is because Americans don’t like to have their food look back at them. Perhaps it activates some Puritan-inspired guilt issues. I don’t know. But you should know that the French meat market includes chickens with their heads (and eyes) still on and rabbit carcasses complete with fresh, shiny eyeballs. The French are clearly a people who are not afraid to look their food in the eye.

It may surprise you that a discussion of the meat market brings us back to the topic of pigeons. You thought you had already heard all you needed to know about pigeons from previous postings didn’t you? No, you need to know that the French eat them. Yes, the meat market includes petite bird carcasses labeled “pigeons.”

In my limited investigations into pigeon consumption, I have received contradictory information, perhaps as a consequence of my inadequate communication skills. The woman at the market abruptly answered “Non” when I asked her if the pigeons she was selling were the same as house pigeons. She didn’t elaborate, and I didn’t probe further because I was preoccupied by my profound disappointment that there wasn’t an easy market for our patio pests.

Christian and I had a discussion about pigeons the other day when I found him on our patio shooting at our resident pigeons. (I have to confess that, although I have had several vivid fantasies about shooting the little buggers myself, I was a little uncomfortable when Christian actually took down three with one shot.) According to Christian, the house and market pigeons are basically the same bird, but the ones in the market are young. As you can probably guess, the meat of young pigeons is more tender than that of the tough, old birds that hang out on the streets (and above our patio).

Marty and I haven’t tried the pigeons yet, but we did eat some three-year old cheese. Now that doesn’t seem so bad in itself, but the rind of the cheese was riddled with a maze of tunnels that could rival the Big Dig. This particular civil engineering project was obviously undertaken by insects that had been chewing away at the cheese during its three years of existence. Unlike the unfortunate Bostonians, these little insects need not be concerned that their tunnels would collapse because three year old cheese is really, really, really hard stuff. In fact, when I inquired about this particular cheese at the fromagerie (translation: cheese-erie), the woman serving me dropped the cheese from a significant height to demonstrate its hardness. She had to ask her stronger male colleague to cut off a piece for us because cutting this stuff is like sawing through rock. Romney may want to consider importing some to reinforce those tunnels.

In case some of you are concerned that the weak American dollar has made us so desperate that we had to buy the old, insect-riddled cheese, I want to assure you that you don’t need to start sending us care packages yet. We actually paid a handsome price for the privilege of eating hard-as-rock, insect-riddled cheese. Yes, these somewhat questionable qualities come at a premium in France. I must confess that I had some significant doubts about the wisdom of my decision to purchase this alleged cheese when I was cutting off the dusty remnants of what was obviously a great insect civilization that could have rivaled any of the great ancient civilizations - the Romans, Mayans, Egyptians, Incas, Greeks, etc. (you get the idea). In fact, I was starting to wonder if this particular piece of cheese may have actually been left behind by a few Romans when they were last in France. Despite these and other doubts, we nibbled forward and happily discovered that this was really, really good cheese.

As a result of our experience, I am re-thinking whether it was wise to throw away those old, dried out pieces of cheese that I have found in the back of my refrigerator over the years. If I had kept them around longer, I may have been able to make a fortune, or at the very least, enjoyed a tasty snack. This may be worth some experimentation.

Finally, I have to tell you about the worms. Some of you may look at Marty and me differently after this particular story. My family, however, will no doubt find that this story simply confirms their worst fears. But this is a tell-all, no-holds-barred blog, so here it is – the full Monty:

Marty and I, without any coercion, have voluntarily eaten worms since embarking on our French escapade. They were little, white, clean looking worms, but they were, in fact, worms. Well, biologically-speaking they may have belonged to some other invertebrate family, but, unless you are a biologist, most of you would have identified these legless, headless, wriggling creatures as worms.

Our intention wasn’t to eat worms. We actually just wanted to eat our cêpes. Cêpes are wild mushrooms harvested in the forests of France. When thinking about cêpes, you must dispel from your mind the image of those little white, cellophane-wrapped, sterile button mushrooms that you find in American grocery stores. Instead, try to picture the wild looking landscapes in the Lord of the Rings movies. Cêpes are products of the earth (Middle Earth?), not some mushroom factory. We are talking big, wild, savage-looking mushrooms, complete with evergreen needles and moss sticking to them. These are mushrooms that proudly feast on the remains of the dead.

When the cêpes first appeared in the market, I knew immediately I had to try them. I went to a friendly looking cêpes vendor who told me how to prepare them. She emphasized that one should not clean them with water. Even though they are the dirtiest looking mushrooms I have ever seen sold as food, one is limited to wiping them with a towel and cutting off the dirtiest parts with a knife. I actually confirmed this with her later because I found it hard to believe that I wasn’t cooking a fair amount of dirt, moss and needles along with the mushrooms. She assured me that water was unnecessary, and they were fine as is. I think the reality is that I was, in fact, cooking a fair amount of dirt, moss and needles along with the mushrooms, but one must take on faith that this simply enhances the cêpes flavor.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. When I took the cêpes out of the refrigerator, in addition to the aforementioned dirt, moss and needles, there were also little, white worms crawling out of little holes in the mushroom cap. Hmmn, this posed a dilemma. Did I mistakenly pick an infested cêpe or were these worms supposed to be part of the cêpe’s package? I wiped off the little worms and returned the cêpes to the fridge overnight thinking that, with some luck, these were just a few isolated worms, and I wouldn’t have any more trouble with them. The next day, however, I found more worms crawling out of the tiny holes in the cap. Clearly they weren’t going to go away. We needed to eat though, and, like the three year old insect-infested cheese, cêpes are not cheap. I was against the wall and had to make a decision. I had been in France for a few weeks and felt that I had learned enough to guess that no self-respecting Frenchman would be intimidated by a few invertebrates. I went for it. I cooked up those babies and didn’t look back. They were yummy. Why, once cooked, you wouldn’t even know they had worms.

There was an uneasy part of me, however, that wondered if I had gone too far in my acculturation. As we used to say in Peace Corps, perhaps I had “gone native.” Looking for reassurance, I went back to my friendly, normal-looking cêpes counselor and asked her about the worms. I was careful to do this when no one was around because I didn’t want to scandalize her should it turn out that worms in cêpes aren’t OK in France. She assured me that the worms were “pas grave” and quite normal. In retrospect, going to the person who sold me the worm-infested cêpes was a questionable strategy, but I stand by her assertion that the worms are OK. Perhaps we have gone native, but it’s not a bad way to go.

Now before anyone looks down their noses at the snails, frogs, pigeons, insect ridden cheese, and worm infested mushrooms, one should really take a look at some of the ingredients in the average American supermarket food (or French supermarket for that matter). The list of ingredients is far less natural than a little moss and some worms. At least the frogs and snails don’t come from a chemistry lab (yet). I can only conclude that our ideas about what constitutes food, are really just a result of marketing. If snails, frogs, pigeons, old cheese and worms only had better PR people, they’d find a larger market in the U.S.

Hey - maybe I won’t be unemployed when I return home! This could be my niche...marketing vermin. If the job includes free samples, sign me up.