| MatC
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| 287151. Fri Feb 29, 2008 6:12 am |
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Thenjiwe Mtinsto, a guerrilla and subsequently SACP politician in South Africa, remembers meeting Joe Slovo, legendary leader of the South African revolution, in a guerrilla camp:
| Quote: | | We often had egg powder as a main food and also ‘Mugabe’, some tinned stuff sent from Zimbabwe - horrible stuff that smelt, that seemed to be tinned tripe and innards. Joe was one of the few people I saw eating this stuff - with relish. I know he liked good food, but he could also enjoy egg powder and Mugabe. |
S: Slovo: the unfinished autobiography by Joe Slovo (Hodder, 1996). |
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| Flash
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| 287266. Fri Feb 29, 2008 7:20 am |
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| Snoek is a South African fish which was imported to the UK in large quantities after the 2nd World War, in cans. Even in the context of rationing the Ministry of Food were unable to convince people to eat it, despite various promotional stunts. Two years later it had to be re-labelled and sold off as cat food. |
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| dr.bob
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| 287447. Fri Feb 29, 2008 8:58 am |
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For horrible food, you can't beat the Norwegian delicacy of Lutefisk (see post 55951).
Dried cod soaked in caustic soda. Mmmmmm! |
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| WB
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| 287546. Fri Feb 29, 2008 10:22 am |
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When I was in Iceland recently, at around New Year, they had a food festival or some such (I could phone a friend for its name - Icelandic language quite hard) where a tray of small delicacies was produced. The dried cod crisps made you wretch, but were probably the most palatable of the items on offer. Another was Hakarl - shark meat that's been buried for six months. They like to tell you that they urinate on it first, but that is a myth. It just smells like pee because of a high uric acid content. I think that the Sheeps Testicles are actually pickled in urine though.
It was a great night out the first time - being made fun of and all. Less so on the second and third nights when you had to pretend for politeness that you had no idea what you were eating! |
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| suze
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| 287555. Fri Feb 29, 2008 10:33 am |
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| dr.bob wrote: | | For horrible food, you can't beat the Norwegian delicacy of Lutefisk (see post 55951). |
In that same thread, I see that I mentioned flaki (Polish tripe soup) as a thing I'd be very happy never to encounter again. Andouillette too - it's a sausage made from pigs' intestines and not to put too fine a point on it, it smells of fecal matter. |
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| Flash
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| 287568. Fri Feb 29, 2008 10:41 am |
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I heard once that the business about Arabs eating sheep's eyeballs arose from a misunderstanding involving Burton or one of those guys. He was at a feast, and they brought him, as the guest, the eyeballs. The purpose of this was to show the guest that the eyeballs were fresh, to reassure them that the meat was likewise, but he thought "Oh yuck, these Arabs want me to eat this thing" so he did, and all the Arabs thought "Ewww gross, these Europeans eat eyeballs" and the misunderstanding persisted for years afterwards.
Does that ring any bells for anyone? |
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| WB
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| 287576. Fri Feb 29, 2008 10:49 am |
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Link:
Horrible food to Buckland's Houseflies & Moles. |
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| MatC
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| 287592. Fri Feb 29, 2008 11:05 am |
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| Flash wrote: | I heard once that the business about Arabs eating sheep's eyeballs arose from a misunderstanding involving Burton or one of those guys. He was at a feast, and they brought him, as the guest, the eyeballs. The purpose of this was to show the guest that the eyeballs were fresh, to reassure them that the meat was likewise, but he thought "Oh yuck, these Arabs want me to eat this thing" so he did, and all the Arabs thought "Ewww gross, these Europeans eat eyeballs" and the misunderstanding persisted for years afterwards.
Does that ring any bells for anyone? |
JumpingJack asked me about that story a couple of years ago, and I ran it as a Mythchaser in FT; didn’t get any very useful responses. The nearest to helpful was one reader who pointed out that sheep’s heads (eyes included) are/were eaten in just about every European country. Admittedly, that's eating sheep’s eyes inter alia, rather than singling them out for special attention, but it’s certainly hard to think of any reason why the eyes wouldn’t be eaten, in any culture, in the days when the whole of an animal was used. |
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