Tuesday 11^th September

Last week at a dinner party where we had very delicious food the conversation turned to…not so delicious meals…

I’m not sure who won.  I was laughing too much to put forward my own not-so-yummy meal but I will give a brief description right now.

Yuckerella soup.  It was served up to me buy an over-enthusiastic Polish woman at a multicultural work lunch.  There were many delicious things on the table, and I found myself near Polska, who told me, very crossly, that Australians had no appreciation of the finer foods in life, and that nobody was trying her soup.  I am an obliging sort of chick so I said, Oh yes please, give me a BIG helping.  Or words to that effect.  It looked like onion rings in broth. Nothing too scary; I could eat all of that and make her very happy.  But… it didn’t make me happy.  It tasted horrid and the onion rings were strangely nasty in texture and flavour.  As I chewed away valiantly Polska said, “I don’t know why people here don’t eat tripe!”  Well I can tell you why; it is because it is NOT NICE!!!”  *

Chris told us about the food she ate in Central Asia when she was doing a tour of the -stans (Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Blahblahistan.)  It was a fabulous trip but…not for gourmet travellers.  The staple food, served up every day, sometimes three times, was called plov.  No not pilaff, which is light, fluffy and delicious.  Plov.  Rice with a few disheartened vegetables boiled through it and generously soaked in large amounts of thick mutton fat.  Yummo!

Pete, who loves all food and is the least fussy eater I have ever encountered, met his match in Uruguay.  His host invited him to a SPECIAL dinner.  A big BBQ feast.  And there on the grill were large steaming piles of…offal.  He said it was virtually inedible.  Grilled entrails, which were mostly chewy and full of thick yellow fat.  Ghastly!

Chris said that actually her worst meal ever (worse than plov??) was in Brighton.  She and Bob thought they would really enjoy some good old British fish and chips, and they lined up cheerily to get some in a Brighton fish & chippery.  When they opened their paper bags they found what seemed to be…deep fried vaseline coated in…deep fried vaseline batter!! 

But I think Donough won the prize, maybe for the best description… He and Margaret had dinner in a beautiful restaurant in France, where they were invited by a former Tasmanian chef, renowned for her delicious food.  Everything was delightful except for the main course, which was a virtually unadorned fried large intestine.  When it was cut open it smelled peculiarly horrid, like a freshly disembowelled sheep.  And it tasted, he said, in his inimitable way, like fried farts.

* One tripe story is never enough!  My friend Sally’s father was a large and cheerful farmer, brought up on tripe.  He could never understand why his wife Mary and his ungrateful children weren’t as keen on this delicacy.  One night he persuaded Mary to cook up a whole tripe in white sauce.  When he saw that nobody was going to share in this culinary treat he said, “Right, I’ll eat it all myself!”  And he did, defiantly, down to the last mouthful.  A whole tripe in thick white sauce.  Just as he set down his knife and fork, looking a bit, said Sally, over-full and maybe not quite as keen on the whole experience as when he had started, the phone rang.  “Where are you, mate?”  He had forgotten…it was the Annual General Dinner of some VIP club he belonged to, at Wrest Point. A huge and hearty dinner awaited him….