And Then She Ate An Eyeball
- 02
- 26
- 10
Okay, she didn’t eat a human eyeball. This wasn’t Survivor. Just a rip-roaring Saturday night out on the good town. But pictures of Branzino balls? Not so pretty.
And I would have and should have at least posted a picture of a discrete stand-alone eyeball because this might be sending the wrong message, but said pictures – even of cartoon eyeballs – made me want to gag a bit. Which is a sign of something unto itself. And so. We have here a very undisgusting sketch of the human eye. I quite like it.
But I digress. I have a story to tell. (And stories to coax from you.)
I already told you about my Saturday night. But I didn’t tell you about an important part of the night. The part when my very good and very proper friend reached over and plucked the black beady eyeball out of the birthday girl’s whole fish and then ate it. To be perfectly honest, I didn’t witness the entirety of this event. When my eyeball-eating-friend flashed a mischievous grin and reached her fork across the table and said I will eat that eye, I may or may not have excused myself to go to the bathroom.
But she ate it. The eye of a fish.
Apparently, in some cultures, this is good luck. Dad was known to eat an eye or two in his day to shock us. But for me, someone who ducks for cover when they bring me a whole fish instead of pretty white filet and shivers at the sight of skin, this was a big deal. A big enough deal that I have chosen to devote an entire blog post to one ill-fated Branzino eyeball and what this late eyeball means to me.
I am an unadventurous eater. Once upon a time, I was pretty much willing to eat everything. Sure, when left to my own devices, I favored mayonnaise and white bread sandwiches and Sour Patch Kids, but I distinctly remember eating mussels and venison and rhubarb. And today I will not go near these and so many other things. (I am allergic to rhubarb, but no one believes me.) Today I won’t even eat lobster which greatly offends some people I know. I am not the pickiest of eaters, but I like what I like. I am not good at tasting new things.
I am not an adventurous person. It occurs to me that how adventurous we are in our diet is connected to how adventurous we are in our lives. I don’t think it is a coincidence that someone who avoids foods based on what they look like (I do not like fish that look like fish, anything with bones, sardines give me the willies) is also a person who is afraid of flying and non-organic dairy and most everything else.
This is not just a silly post about an eyeball. Well, it is mostly a silly post about an eyeball. But it is also more. These things matter. What we eat, how adventurous we are, how open we are – these things inform who we are. And then add kids to the equation and things get even more complicated. Our kids watch us. They watch what we eat. They watch what we don’t eat. They notice when we run away from an innocuous fish on a plate. Or when we race the cart past the tank of lobsters at the grocery store. This is not just about us and our foibles.
This is about living life. The good life does not necessarily entail gobbling up eyeballs at swanky restaurants. But I think it probably does involve taking risks, trying new things, tasting new things. If we are so stuck in our (squeamish) ways, so appalled by novelty, are we truly living?
This is about eyes. Fish eyes, yes. But also our eyes. The way we see things and ourselves and the world. The way we absorb our moments. The way we process the hue of celebration and laughter. The way we perceive life. Emerson said, “To the attentive eye, each moment of the year has its own beauty, and in the same field, it beholds, every hour, a picture which was never seen before, and which shall never be seen again.” That moment when my good friend ate an eye? It was silly and beautiful. It was a unique picture I will not forget.
This is about stories. What is life without stories? Silly stories? Serious stories? We bloggers and writers and people? We are story-tellers, living our days, living our material, acting and reacting to the characters in our chapters. Our days are pages. Pages stuffed with words and questions and pictures. And each of us lives and loves and laughs toward an unknown conclusion.
So, yes, this is about one eyeball. But it is also about more. It is about the fraught and frivolous tapestry that is human existence. It is about adventure and aversion. It is about so many things. But instead of enumerating those things, I would like to sign off and go enjoy this serene snow day with my two tiny girls. They are still in their PJs and just on the other side of my office door. And before we play, before we dive into the books and boardgames that await us, I am going to tell them a silly story. A true tale. I am going to tell them that Mommy’s friend at a fish eye. I anticipate smiles and silly faces and amazement and some brilliant laughter. We’ll see what I get.
____________________________
Okay, it’s your turn. Tell me your craziest food story. It can be about you or someone you know or someone you saw on TV! What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever eaten or seen someone eat? Are you an adventurous eater? Do you think there is a connection between bravery in diet and bravery in life? Are your kids good eaters or do they subsist on a diet of, say, chocolate milk and Veggie Booty? Just asking.
Whoa. I totally do NOT eat eyes. Maybe because I grew up on a farm and we raised, nurtured and slaughtered all of our own meat. I got all the crazy out of my system before I was six years old, when it came to playing with food-that-used-to-be-alive.
I am not a vegetarian, but I definitely have a lot of respect for the animal protein I ingest. Someone, somewhere, took a life so I can eat. That matters to me. Not a creepy way, but in an honest way.
Oh, and I don’t do catch-and-release fishing. But that’s a whole ‘nother story.
Adventurous eating, to me, is sampling cuisine from all over the world. I have an American stomach, so it comes back to bite me- often- but I never met a curry I didn’t like or a Thai-spicy dish I wouldn’t try. I love to speak directly to the cook, to thank her/him for their labor and even if we don’t share a common language- there is adventure in sharing a love of excellent food.
(now this getting lonnnnnngggg)
Consequently, my daughter loves to try new things- food, adventure, travel and other fine curiosities satisfied. Now that is success in the adventure cuisine department.
Hmmm. My craziest food story? It concerns food but not actually eating it. I had just bought my standard chocolate milk (I too am not an overly adventurous eater) and placed it rather haphazardly on the table. I turned around, chatting to a friend, and sat down in my chair to realize, too late, that the carton had fallen squarely onto my seat. You can only imagine the shock and then laughter that erupted at the meeting around me. A pant change later and I was less acutely embarrassed, but since then I have tended to buy drinks in more hardy containers, usually opting for a can. Great story you posted, I must admit I too would lack the courage to watch such a meal, let alone crunch down happily on a fish eyeball.
I absolutely agree with you about adventurous eating equating to adventurous in life. I wrote a post a while back about how a man eats a truffle is how he is in bed. Hee hee!
I am VERY adventurous with food. Nuff said, huh?
My mom, who grew up 2nd to the youngest of 9 kids, was raised poor on a farm. She said the delicacy in that household was when her dad would kill a squirrel for dinner and someone special would *get* to eat the brains! Ew!!! But yeah, I’d probably try it.
You know, in a lot of cultures, getting to eat the fishes’ eyes is a real treat. I hear they’re kind of like large caviar. Another thing I’m not terribly interested in trying.
I find that I don’t like to eat meat that still looks like the animal it came from. I don’t want to see scales, I don’t want to have to tear apart crawdads (maybe I should hope that Louisiana falls through:-)), and you couldn’t pay me enough to eat a grasshopper or other assorted insect.
But otherwise, my husband and I are major foodies. I’m the most adventurous eater in my family of origin (my 14-year-old sister has only in the past few years managed to get away from a diet of mac’n'cheese, doritos, and pepperoni pizza–she’ll now eat spaghetti as well), and I enjoy any number of cuisines from around the world, though I do tend to be a little timid when first trying a new dish. I’ll try just about anything you put in front of me, though I have no problem saying that I don’t like it after I’ve given it a taste or two.
I’m nothing compared to my garbage-disposal of a husband. The foods he doesn’t like consist of the ones that slow him down–particularly, he doesn’t like meats on the bone or in the shell because it takes too much work to get to the good stuff. It’s not aversion to the food itself, it’s aversion to the addtional work to get to the food. And even the foods he’s less fond of flavor- or texture-wise he still eats when they are placed in front of him.
Picky eating I hope to overcome with “if you don’t want what the rest of us are eating, you can skip the meal” because eventually they’ll get hungry enough to eat (there is no way I’m putting up with someone as picky as my sister), but I’m really afraid of ending up with children with crazy allergies. Wouldn’t know what to do about that.
Well, now that I’m no longer gagging….:)
I am not a picky eater, but I have food issues – namely I don’t like my food to touch. I really think fine china should come with dividers like Chinet or children’s plates. (Like I’d ever own fine china, but that’s another story.) And you can imagine my squeamishness at situations like potlucks, Thanksgiving dinners, picnics. What can I say, I’ve got serious boundaries and I like my food to accommodate me.
For example, food needs to be consumed in its original and proper “serving suggestion” – as in, pizza has to be reheated and there is no way I could ever eat anything straight from the can unless it is a fruit. I’m not a strict vegetarian, but I prefer my protein sources to not resemble it’s original form – especially crab because I am terrified of spiders….
I get easily nauseated by the thought of eating things that I just pray I am never so hungry as to consider eating…cockroaches come to mind. I have, however, eaten haggis and shot raw oysters. Of course, there was lots of alcohol involved first.
I can sum myself up with this: I love food, I love to eat food, and I love tasty food. But what makes something tasty in my book may seem capricious.
So, my eating habits most assuredly match how I live my life on a regular basis. Send sympathy cards to husband and kids.
Thanks for another awesome post!
My top recent entrees: Guinea Pig (in Queens… link attached), Cockroach (crunch included), and a Grasshopper (hops excluded).
I’m always looking for more disgusting critters to chomp on.
Yes, I agree: your dining style = your lifestyle. Both consist of numerous choices. …Do I peel? Cut? Take a huge bite?
Luckily, we can alter our dish desires at any point… might be harder for some but very much possible for all.
Great topic!
I cannot believe you ate guinea pig! Great article though. You are 1000% more adventurous than I am. I will have to live with that
Eyeballs and knee caps give me the willies. Yuck!
I would say that I’m moderately adventuresome with my food choices. I would be less inhibited if I didn’t have odd food allergies (fish, soy, cardamom, chamomile).
However, I was traumatized by French food as a child. My daring parents took their three children to a swanky French restaurant. I ordered my old stand-by, fried shrimp (the 1970′s version of chicken fingers). After we finished dinner, my older siblings told me that they changed my order to frog’s legs when I was in the ladies’ room. I started bawling! You have to understand that I LOVED Kermit the frog. To this day, they still won’t tell me the truth.
I love you Aidan but it’s a bit of a shame when people aren’t open-minded to trying new things and giving their palettes a whirlwind experience…
i’m not saying we *must* eat pigs blood, eyeballs, cow testicles, but don’t stick to hamburgers and fries. But trying out another country’s food if it’s not “too weird” is respectful, delightful, and just opens up your eyes to a lot of other things.
Example – if I took you home to my parents’ and you refused to eat some of my mom’s dishes (at least try few bites or take a small serving of everything), it would almost be offensive/disrespectful. Maybe it’s b/c I’m asian and we generally love food, eat ALL kinds/types of cuisine from around the world, and we never refuse food when given b/c the host is being gracious.
This is all very true. My husband is Asian and it is a very good thing that I am not a picky eater or I may have never been excepted by his mother
By nature, I am not a very adventurous person. But due to my father’s influence I am an adventurous eater. When we were young, whenever we ate out – we ate the restaurant specialty. We could not order off the kid’s menu. When we traveled, we ate what the locals ate. I remember a trip to Europe my father gave us each a small notebook and we had to keep track of every new food we tried – competing against each other to try the most. (We were a pretty competitive bunch!) So now, I gross my own family out with what I’ll try. I don’t really enjoy many of the new foods – I think I just enjoy the reaction of my husband and kids. Especially when we go to the Korean restaurants – they have some pretty interesting morsels on their menus.
Hmmm, I’m moderately adventurous. I might try an eye ball, if I were in the right mood. I have some food allergies that make me cautious, but don’t stand in the way.
Now I’m all depressed. I haven’t had a good food adventure in a while. The two kids situation hampers our ability to eat adventurously (more time than $$ or desire). Sigh.
I will say, though. LG will put almost anything into his mouth and try it. He has no problems spitting things out that don’t taste good to him, though. A very honest and open critic.
so your friend… ummm she has a phone number
haha!
cute story -
Aidan – Your post today intrigues me for a couple of reasons. First, I posted something similar not too long ago (http://tendollarthoughts.com/?p=355). Secondly, I have a story for you.
When I was 25 years old I was traveling in China to visit my company’s Shanghai office and meet with regional distributors. Our host was from Beijing and wanted to take us out for Beijing Duck, wherein the entire duck is served. When I say the entire duck is served I don’t mean one whole duck. I mean one dish of each part of the duck. An entire dish of duck skin. An entire dish of duck feet. An entire dish of duck tongues. Etc. I couldn’t bring myself to eat the feet, but in order to avoid offending the host I couldn’t politely decline too many components of the meal. I did eat the tongues. They are small, a bit larger than one of your beloved Sour Patch Kids (hope that doesn’t ruin SPKs for you…). They were seasoned heavily with garlic, which was about the only thing that got me through. And the texture was exactly what you would expect: slippery and a little chewy. Completely disgusting, actually.
I hated eating duck tongue. But I’ve told the story (the live version isn’t so abridged…) countless times which has redeemed the experience on the back end. On the same trip I also stopped in Japan for a few days where I ate jellyfish and cuttlefish for the first time, both to my complete delight and pleasure. So not all such adventures have blooper-reel endings.
To your larger point, as my link above explains, I completely agree with you. There is a correlation between adventures in eating and adventures in life. It’s one of the many reasons I try to embrace whatever ends up on a plate in front of me. I don’t always succeed, but I always try.
Food! I am of the camp that will try anything once. Except I’m not a huge fan of tripe. I can’t get past the smell. Um ick. I probably couldn’t eat Dorian fruit for that reason, but I’d plug my nose and try. It’s interesting though, I don’t consider myself all that adventurous. I do not like doing things spur of the moment, I am not particularly sexually adventurous (sorry for the TMI), etc. I am just intrigued by food.
I am not an adventurous eater and not particularly adventurous in real life, either. For me it is usually the texture, not the taste I can’t take.
Anyway, when my husband lived in Norway he had to eat cow tongue. He ate it, but said it was like chewing on your own tongue- nasty.
Food story number 1: I sat in a ryokan in Kyoto, Japan. I was there by myself filming for the Travel Channel. This was quite a posh ryokan. For dinner one evening I had the treat of sitting on my tatami mat and beautiful Japanese women wearing their even more beautiful Kimonos brought in course after course of their famous kaiseki dinner. It was all so extraordinary. But I had no idea what they were serving and I was chicken. When they left the room, I ran to the toilet and flushed the food. Each course found its way into the lew. After each course, I praised their cooking. Then I flushed. I hope they never knew.
Food story number 2: Also in Japan, 20 years later. Two years ago we took our boys to Japan. One of the dinner I planned was at a traditional Japanese tepura house. The four of us sat a counter, the only Americans in the place, and watched the chef prepare our meal. Again, we had little idea what we were eating. But all eyes were on the Americans. First we started with a the spine of an eel, twisted in the most beautiful knot, covered in tempura batter. My sons looked at me with trepidation. I had no choice, I ate the spine. It was quite good too. Then came the head of a shrimp with the eyeball in tact, again lightly covered with tempura batter. Again I had to eat it. My boys followed suit. I was so proud of them. I realized as I sat in the small restaraunt that Karma really is a bitch!
A friend and I were just discussing this the other morning. We have a mutual friend who feeds her kids pop tarts for breakfast. (scary) We were thinking of ways she could introduce them to heartier foods such as the joys of slow cooked Oatmeal, plain yogurt with some jam mixed in (way less sugar, still, than the flavored yogurts), etc.
I ate escargo @ a fancy French restaurant as a child. Your post reminded me of it. Yes, I think we tried quite a few adventurous foods as kids, including barbequed rattlesnake and more recently, buffalo burgers.
I am not adventurous in eating. I try to be more adventurous but my attempts are often foiled by my gag reflex.
Visiting from SITS..
Loved this post! Loved all the different parts of it. And my MIL once reached across the table at a restaurant and ate not just the eye but the ENTIRE FISH HEAD. She’s Korean. They do that stuff. Apparently.
I have a SERIOUS fruit aversion. I try to hide this from my kids because they love fruit, but I rarely eat it. It’s sad. Luckily my husband eats it.
The weirdest thing I ever tried was frog legs at a restaurant in St. Louis of all places. They really tasted like, well, chicken. But I couldn’t get over that I was gnawing on the legs of a reptile, you know?
For some reason this made me think of Last of the Mohicans, when the guy kills the girls’ father and takes a bite out of his heart. I know, just the type of comment you were looking for…
On our first date The Ex took me to a nice place and wanted to order the raw fish appetizer. I smiled and ate raw octopus, squid, and other grody things. Probably didn’t bode well for the marriage, huh?
ANYway, I was very adventurous today and went against everyone’s advice and drove to your fine city. I too, am not an adventurous eater (usually), but I like to think I may be somewhat adventurous in life.
Thoughtful post, as always!
We are pretty adventurous in my house as far as Asian and sushi and all types of mediteranean. When I was a kid, since my parents were both Eastern European immigrants, they ate every part of a cow but they referred to everything in Yiddish so I had no idea what I was eating. Tongue was pretty easy to figure out since it was a huge, disgusting COW’S TONGUE laying on a serving plate! But there was a delicacy we used to fight over, that my mother called a “poopik,” and I loved it. And one day I realized that my belly button in Yiddish was a poopik and so was the food and then (being a genius, obviously) I realized it was the cow’s poopik. Ugh.
NOM NOM NOM and a big ol’ high five to your friend who will probably win the lottery next week.
Just stopping by to let you know I have a little something for you at my blog!
I’m not very adventurous in other areas of my life, but I’m an adventurous eater. Probably because I love to cook. But I would NOT eat the fish eye.
And I, too, don’t enjoy my meat in the form that’s close to the animal it came from. No skin. No bones. I’m a hypocrite that way.
Most adventurous thing eaten: rattlesnake.
I was in a supermarket here today (a normal one, not like a special oddity shop…) and they had lamb brains in one of those normal packages, right there with the chicken filets and steaks. I had to do a triple take because I couldn’t believe it, and then I really really regretted looking at all. It was awful.
When I first began my career I worked with some children who had been abandoned by their mother. They were living by themselves for a few days because their father had been arrested for organizing rooster fights. I made a home visits and found chickens and roosters walking all over their Brooklyn apartment. After reporting the situation, and convincing the neighbors to bail the father out of jail, the family was somewhat restored. The father was so grateful that he killed one of his prized birds and cooked it in my honor. Then he brought the feast to my job. My supervisor an sat down with father to eat this special lunch. The only problem was that I’d been raised a vegetarian. The texture of chicken in my mouth was almost too much for me. All I could think of was that these roosters were like pets to this man’s kids. I took three bites before going into such a chocking fit that someone tried to give me the Heimlich maneuver and the three unchewed pieces landed back on my plate.
Fun story, but glad I was not doing the eating.
I am not very adventurous–frog legs is the oddest thing we have tried recently.
I ate oysters, in the form of oyster shooters at a sushi restaurant, a few weeks ago. Ugh. I had to sip sake before and after–before to “psych myself up” and after to get the taste out of my mouth.
I’ve gotten much more adventurous in recent years. As a kid, I was an incredibly picky eater–I think I went nearly 15 years without eating a single vegetable, except in the form of tomatoes in pizza sauce. Now I love trying new foods. Going to Europe helped a lot; trying random local cuisine and eating whatever was placed in front of me led to some wonderful epicurial (I think I just made up that word) experiences. (So, parents of picky eaters, have hope and be patient! I love fruits and veggies now and eat a reasonably balanced diet.)
And I love adventure, but I do get quite scared. I don’t dive headlong into new things; I have to sit awhile and convince myself that it’ll be fun and worth it.
I will try most foods once…if I DON’t know what it is. A fish eye? No way. Disguise and lie to me and I’ll give it a whirl. I’m just weird like that!
I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Chile. My first week at my site, they butchered a sheep. Behind the office. Then hung the meat in the stairway for two days. Don’t worry – it’s cold in Chile. It didn’t smell. Much. But it was a little gross and who wants to work in an abbatoir?
We had a barbecue with the mutton. They threw in some horsemeat as well. Silly me. I thought the shops downtown where they had the big signs hanging outside with a horse’s head on them were places for off-track betting. Nope. Those were the shops that sold horseflesh.
Anyhow. My co-workers made me try the horsemeat, even though I told them that in my country, we did not eat horse. As I was still new, I let them bully me into it. Had they tried this a year later, I would have thrown off the burden of “I might be the only American they ever meet so I must represent my country well” and said, “Forget it. I’m not eating it.”
Well since I have never been here odds are y’all ain’t seen me. Being a fat boy my diet generally consists of whatever the bride prepares. I mean I’ll eat damn near anything, sure there are thing I don’t enjoy eating but I’d never turn down the opportunity to try something new. I skimmed the comments and there were some references to venison and oysters. Those are staples to a deep south cracker. I absolutely eat both every chance I get, which is pretty regular since I’m surrounded on 3 sides by water and live in the woods.
Gator, Rattle snake, squirrel, rabbit, any kind of sea/lake/ocean critter, quail, dove, and on and on, I prefer it fried (gotta keep my weight up ya know, if I slip under two dollars a quarter, dime and nickle I feel like a fairy).
Cook it I’ll eat it, or serve it raw, dead is a plus though, lets kill it first.
Aidan, I love this – I love you for sharing this story with us! I do not have a strong stomach, but I do give my husband a lot of credit for expanding my palette exponentially. I was on a meat-and-potatoes, small-town diet before college, and it took me years to gather the courage to try a lot of new foods. Not even crazy foods like fish eyes – just different foods, like sushi and tofu and black beans. We all have our food idiosyncracies. (I’m with you: I really don’t like meat on the bone. Ribs? Ick!)
So gross! When I was little, my father handed me a cracker with stuff on it. It was white and black stuff, and it looked like it might be tasty, but it also looked like it might be, you know, grown up food.
He coaxed and coaxed, until I put the little cracker into my mouth. It was delicious. The white stuff was creamy and the black stuff popped when my teeth came down on it.
“Wow! What is it?”
“Caviar and sour cream.” He was smiling, looking proud of me.
“What’s caviar?” Oh, man, I just knew this had to be bad. How could I have taken the food advice of a man who’d once tried to convince me to eat a cow’s brain?
“Fish eggs. Do not spit that out.”
Frankly, that’s not even my worst food story.
I’ll from many different cultures and try many different dishes. That said, there are certain parts I’m not interested in: eyes, tongues, feet, and balls.
My eleven-year-old son, however, will eat anything. A couple of years ago, we went to dim sum and he ate duck feet. I hope he becomes a chef so I can eat in his restaurant for free.
I have had the good fortune of traveling to 22 countries, but Iceland by far offered the most bizarre cuisine. When I was there I sampled: putrefied shark meat (their national dish!), whale blubber, and pickled seal fin. Do I win a prize?