Tuesday, March 27, 2007

The Grossest Thing I Ever Ate

I haven't done much worth blogging about lately, so instead, I will tell you the story of The Grossest Thing I Ever Ate.

To preface, I am not a picky eater. In fact, I have trouble understanding picky eaters and they tend to get on my nerves. There are foods that I am allergic to, and foods that I eat. There are no foods that I can eat, but opt not to. Some foods I am not particularly fond of (I'm looking at you, lima beans!), but I will still eat them without complaint. When I was in the Peace Corps, I ate pretty much everything that was offered to me. Fried pig skin, sure, why not? Wild boar? Yum! Armadillo, iguana? Tastes like chicken! I lived with a family in close proximity to five or six other houses. Per local custom, whenever anyone made a special dish (i.e. not rice and beans), they would often send some over to the neighbors to try. Every few weeks, one of these special dishes was something called Chomfain. (I never saw the word written down, so I have no idea how to spell it, but that's how it sounded to me.) It had a pork flavor, but a creamy texture, sort of like pureed sausage. Upon inquiry, I learned that it did indeed come from a pig. I never thought much more about it, and happily gobbled it up whenever it was sent my way.

Until one fateful day, when I saw a neighbor girl walk by holding a severed pig's head.

Me (grossed out, but curious): Hey Adriana, what are you doing with that pig's head?
Adriana (excitedly): I'm going to make Chomfain!

After a brief moment of confusion, I was hit with a cold, ugly truth.

Chomfain.....

is......

BRAINS!

And that, my friends, is the Grossest Thing I Ever Ate. Although once I learned of its true origin, I never ate it again.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I had a similar experience with menudo. You know, the Spanish soup made of tripe (aka cow stomach). My only saving grace is that I didn't care for the texture of is and so I inquired as to what it really is. Eww...stomach, brains...of course, I have friends and loved ones who eat "Rocky Mountain Oysters" all the time. (In case you are unaware of what that is, it's testicles of an animal, usually a cow. THAT really grosses me out.

eileen said...

I've had a soup like that before- it's called mondongo in Central America. For some reason, stomach doesn't gross me out as much as BRAINS!

Anonymous said...

You can buy pig brain in a can the size of vienna sausages and mix it with scrambled eggs for breakfast. yum. And this article just after your father's MRE's that the soldiers can't stomach! Ha, which is worse???

Anonymous said...

My mom is very adventurous when it comes to eating. She was always coming home with bizarre food, especially from the farmers' market. Chicken feet, cow's tongue, a can of monkey's brain. I remember as a kid watching her drink freshly squeezed goats milk at a fair. She said it was still warm.

eileen said...

eeek, monkey brains! MREs aren't so bad- I actually worked at the Natick Army base one summer during high school and taste-tested them all the time. I think the soldiers just get sick of them, which is understandble, considering deployments are getting longer and longer.

That being said...something about eating brains makes me think of ZOMBIES.