"Dear Food Thoughtz:" Why Are Kiwis Hairy Fruits?

This installment of Dear Food Thoughtz comes from a four year-old. She is also my niece.

Dear Food Thoughtz/Auntie Sally,

Why are kiwis hairy fruits?

Eleanor.

Dear Eleanor,

Kiwis are hairy in order to test our resolve and commitment to the fruit. Nothing in this world is free. You have to work if you want to gain access to that sweet, sweet kiwi flesh. Also, you have to actually pay for the kiwis first. And also, you should know that kiwis are not really that good.

But at least kiwis are hairy on the outside. So are we. Why should fruits be any different than us? And like us, a kiwi’s skin can be removed—if you so choose—before you eat the fruit. A better question to ask would have been: “why are mangoes hairy?” Because those fruits are hairy on the inside, and that really doesn’t make any sense at all.

Please write in again. Your question is better than most others. 

Mould

Yesterday I drank a smoothie knowing full well that a fair portion of it was mould. I had so many berries in my fridge, and they’re so hard to keep—especially blackberries—but I didn’t want to throw them out, so I just blended them up in a smoothie. This isn’t the first time I’ve done it. I figure that mould can’t really be that bad for you, right? But after I had it I felt kind of sick, and I wasn’t able to figure out if it was because I had ingested too much mould (which honestly seems unlikely because I live in Toronto and this whole city is full of mould), or if just thinking about eating that mould made me think I was sick, or if it’s because I recently challenged myself to eat the largest cauliflower in the world.

Here's the smoothie that I ate that
might have been mouldy.

But mould really is disgusting, and I don’t want to eat it anymore. It's a revolting terror. It just grows on things. It is so unwelcome. It just shows up. And the worst part isn't even that you have to throw out whatever food it has colonized; the worst part is that it is such a horrifying thing to ever have to encounter. Luckily I usually keep tabs on what I have and what needs to be eaten, but there is nothing worse than enjoying a basket of berries, only to discover about half way through that they're infested with mould.

Here's a picture of me with a mould cap. My sister says that I
look like the Phantom of the Opera. Can you imagine what a
terrible story that would be? If his face was so horrific that covering
it with mould would actually be an improvement?

I don't have much else to say about mould. No one likes it. No one wants to eat it (unless it's cheese, but still... cheese with visible mould on it is an abomination). Although, maybe I do have one more thing to say about it. A lot has been posted about how McDonalds' burgers and fries don't seem to mould (this has been debunked several times), and how this is a sign that McDonalds' food isn't "real" food. But if mould is the only valid indicator of what is real food and what isn't, then I don't want to have any part of real food. Why won't McDonalds' burgers mould? Because they're better than all other foods that will. Obviously those tiny and delicious McDonalds burgers are an improvement on all those other mouldy foods. The future is here, and it isn't mouldy.

I will never understand why food has such a hard time to uphold

Its natural state and will inevitably start to grow mould.

"Dear Food Thoughtz:" Oily Italian Bodies

Dear Food Thoughtz,

I understand that the Romans used to use olive oil in lieu of soap because they had not yet discovered the latter. Thinking of this does not give me a very good feeling. How does it make you feel? Thanks in advance.

Cheers,

Not-feeling-so-clean

Dear Not-Feeling-So-Clean,

Oh boy. I bet you now regret not writing “…because they had not yet discovered the lather” – am I right!?

Anyway, thank you for your interesting albeit somewhat irrelevant query. The Romans did in fact wash themselves with olive oil. At first I thought this was disgusting because I am opposed to any type of edible object coming into contact with any part of the human body that isn’t the mouth. And then I thought that it was ridiculous the Romans were advanced in so many ways (especially in the areas of day beds and gruesome entertainment, and likely a combination of the two) but didn’t have access to soap and instead had to rely on olive oil. And then I wondered why they didn’t have access to soap because they were all over the place, so why didn’t they just pillage it from some Celts (or Babylonians?)? And then I lost all sympathy for the Romans because of course that Empire failed—who could ever afford to bathe exclusively in olive oil? It is so expensive? I can’t imagine being in charge of the Roman budget; it must have been so stressful.

But then I actually bothered myself to find out a) what soap is and b) how the Romans actually washed themselves with olive oil, and now I’m kind of on board with it. First of all, soap is just animal fat mixed with burnt things or something. And secondly, they weren’t just, like, rolling around in a pit of oil and hoping it would clean them. They would lather it on their bodies and then a slave, presumably, would scrape it off of them. Which kind of sounds great—especially the part about the slave. But, right? Don’t you think it would be nice to scrape oil off of your body? Don’t you think that sounds like a great way to clean yourself? So now I’m confused about how I feel about it. I guess I think it’s fine. I’m not sure if I will try it any time soon, but if you were looking for my blessing to pour extra virgin all over yourself and scrape it off, you had it like five years ago. I know you’re somewhere in China right now, but there have been a lot of good olive oil sales here the past few weeks.

But since we’re on the topic of Romans: I have long been fascinated by the concept of lounging on a day bed while someone drapes a clump of grapes into my mouth. Have you ever tried this? It’s not actually very relaxing, it’s certainly not convenient, and frankly, I think it might be a choking hazard. Not recommended.

The Romans also had a reusable communal poo-sponge, so make of that what you will.

The Coconut

I wanted to write a whole post about the coconut—how much I hate shredded coconut, how gross I think it is that coconut milk/water looks exactly like milk “slash” water and how annoying it is that coconut milk is a “thing” now, how impractical coconuts are, and maybe a brief note on how I don’t know what they are (a giant seed??)—but then I remembered that I have these two pictures of me in Honduras,  and I think they perfectly sum up how I feel about coconut.

Here’s me trying the coconut.  I can’t even remember how I got my hands on this.  I guess someone just gave it to me. I definitely didn’t pay for it and I definitely didn’t break it open myself. 

...And here’s my reaction to trying the coconut.  Right?  Don’t you have such a clear idea of how I feel about coconuts now?

When you travel, you learn so much
 

About beauty, and relevance, and simplicity, and such


And sometimes in Honduras you learn why you hate the coconut.

The Bison Burger

2013 has been, so far, a year of new discoveries. Well, of one discovery. And actually, I discovered this last year, but the ramifications have been rippling outward ever since. I have often seen “Bison Burgers” listed on menus, but until December 2012, I had always assumed that in this context, “bison” only referred to a breed of cattle or a kind of beef, like “angus.” Admittedly, although being a lover of burgers, I know very little about them or the different kinds of beef that go into them (or even that there is such a thing as “a different kind of beef”). I certainly never imagined that we have the option of eating actual bison burgers, because if obsessively playing Oregon Trail throughout elementary school or looking at that picture of all those buffalo* skulls (and I always imagine Teddy Roosevelt standing on top of this, but I think I am just confusing this photo with the one of T-Roos and the elephant) has taught me anything, it’s that we have killed far too many bison and now they don’t exist. I personally used to kill several thousand pounds worth of bison, and as it would not all fit in my wagon, it was presumably left on the plains to rot.

Learning that bison burgers are actually made from bison was a strange moment for me. I was at once forced to acknowledge two pieces of information that I always carry with me, but that I have never once actually put together: 1) that yes, the European settlers did slaughter pretty much all the bison and then compiled their remains into a mountain of bones, and 2) that my elementary school music teacher breeds (or perhaps bred?) bison, so of course they must still exist and exist substantial enough numbers that would suggest we can make burgers out of bison meat. But the idea of bison burgers seems kind of grotesque and unnecessary to me. 

When I first looked at this finished product, I thought, Wow. What a
dream come true! A mountain of burgers! But a mountain of burgers would
be so disgusting in reality. They would be so soggy and soft and you couldn't
actually perch atop them, like this gentleman is doing, because that soggy
mass of bread and meat couldn't possibly support your weight. And while
slowly sinking into a pit of old burgers isn't the worst fate, I think it's one I
would nevertheless meet with an annoyed "Ew."

I really want to stress here that I do not care where out meat comes from. If I were to care about the ethics of factory farming, then I would probably have to stop eating that meat, and I honestly cannot be bothered about animal welfare enough to even slightly complicate my life by paying more for or by tracking down a place that sells ethically raised meat. And yet, on one hand, I kind of feel like maybe we should just leave the bison alone because I don’t trust anyone to not slaughter them all at once in an orgiastic frenzy of gore, since that seems to be how we typically interact with bison. But on the other hand, even if we have developed a moderated way of rearing and slaughtering bison, I still don’t want to eat it. I wouldn’t eat a bison burger no matter how it was raised or where it came from or how much it cost because bison give me the impression of being too wild and too unkempt to actually eat. Thinking of them reminds me of that time Rory (and his family) came to sheer one of our alpacas (Tommy Tippy Toes, for the record), but in the end the alpaca hair (fur?) was too tangled and frizzy and full of various materials from our field to be useful to anyone and eventually it was all just thrown away, and the idea of trying to extract meat from a bison carcass makes me worry that the inevitable dust and old twigs would get into the meat and would remain there throughout the cooking process and that I would be forever pulling out random things out of the burger. And also? Bison burgers are just one more food on a long list of foods that I absolutely do not need in my life. Why would I need to supplement my beef burger intake with bison burgers? I am always worrying that I am not eating nearly enough burgers as it is, and I approach every burger opportunity with relish (not with actual pickle-relish, because that is disgusting) and am not willing to sacrifice even one of these occasions in favour of trying a different kind of burger that I already know to be totally redundant and superfluous because I have already discovered the burgers that I like.

*I am only learning now that buffalo and bison are not the same animal. I always thought that bison was the plural form of buffalo.

Everyone says bison is better than beef:
More vitamins, leaner meat, and environmental relief.
But I don’t care enough about the ethics of factory farming
to eat a bison burger--what I consider to be a form of self-harming
Besides, you don’t have to act the act just to look the look:

Simply present an ethical image of yourself for all to see on facebook.

Cultural Connectionz: Hungarian Pig Roast

You can be sure that somewhere, deep in the Hungarian wild, a pig roast is going on right now. And you’re not invited. Presumably the Hungarians have developed some secret technique to roast a pig of their own invention and are not willing to share it with the rest of the world--just like their secret Mangalitsa pig, which has only recently been unearthed by the New York Times.

No wonder the Magyars wanted to keep this ludicrous sheep-pig to themselves.

No foreigner has ever attended a Hungarian pig roast (at least I haven't, so I assume no one else has either), so we can't be totally sure what goes on, but I am going to guess that a pig is roasted, consumed, and then everyone puts on their vest embroidered with gold braiding and performs a festive jig.

But quite frankly, I'm glad I've never been invited. One time we had a Christmas ham that was from an actual pig, and it tasted so totally foreign from the processed Schneider's ham nuggets that I'm used to and tasted so totally like a ham that I did not enjoy it at all.

Update:

It turns out you are invited for the nominal fee of 35€. And although now is as good a place as any to discuss the urban bourgeoisie's fetishism of the lower (and typically rural) classes, I'm not going to because it makes me too angry.

Sound the alarm! Grab your gold-braided vest!

Double the horses, therefore double the pace:

Why shouldn't one man ride two horses abreast?

The irrefutable logic of the Hungarian race

Three more for each man, there's no time to waste!

The pig roast has started! It's already begun!

All 'cross the puszta, we must go post-haste!

If we don't get there soon it will already be done!

But the pig roast was over; it came and it went:

Just one more thing for the Hungarian to lament

The Mango

Mangoes are not fit for human consumption. Like most things from the third world, the mango’s purpose is to patiently wait for it to be improved upon in the form of juice or as an artificial flavour. The actual mango is nearly impossible to quarter and revolting to ingest. It is full of little hairs (which have no place inside of a fruit!!!) and has an unpleasant texture which is simultaneously too soft, too hard, and too slimy. However, begrudgingly I must admit that mangoes don’t have an entirely unpleasant taste. I tried a fresh one once when I was in Colombia (I couldn’t bring myself to try the papaya), more out of sheer desperation than anything else. I did not feel the immediate urge to gag, however the hairs were very unpleasant and off-putting. I would not try another mango.

Look at this beautifully cubed mango! What a
beautiful bed it would make! And if you got cold,
you could wrap yourself in its hairs.

Here are some appropriate things to do with a mango:

• Look at store displays. Ripe mangoes are a beautiful swirling of reds, oranges and yellows. If you see an unripe green mango, avert your gaze.

• Watch someone cut up a mango into cubes that are still attached to the skin. Then imagine yourself laying on top of a giant cubed-mango divan.

That’s about it. Mangoes are extremely limiting.

You ate a mango? How exotic!
But honestly, it’s quite quixotic:
Why spend your money on some hair
When your head alone has enough to spare?