Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Fall Celebration
Well, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? I was going to write a bit about my trip to San Diego, but first I want to tell you this seasonal tale. . .
There it sat, staring me down with its spherical, mindless, coal-black eyes. Its bloody-black body armor, complete with menacing spines, made it look like some sinister medieval jousting champion. I considered carefully what I was about to do. One false move, and the repulsive creature would stick me, leaving a painful, bloody wound. My thoughts raced as I calculated the best method of attack. The creature’s many spindly, segmented legs looked like they belonged on some prehistoric insect. Brown-tinged briny liquid seeped from under its formidable armor and pooled around its gaping claws. Revolted by the creature, I was losing my nerve. I had to do this quickly, or not at all. . .Slowly, as if I feared that it would recoil from the approach of my hand, I reached for it, hesitated, and felt the sudden jab. . .
“Just pick the thing up and tear its tail off! It’s just a crawdad, for cry’n out loud!”
“Ow!” I rubbed my side in the spot where my husband, KA, had just elbowed me in the ribs.
“But they’re so. . .insect-like! They remind me of spiders. . .and I HATE spiders!”
“But you’ve eaten them before. You always said that you liked them. . .”
Yes, it’s true. I do like the taste of crawfish. The Swedes, do, too. Swedish royalty has been enjoying them since the mid-1500’s. Over the centuries, the custom of consuming these arthropods, which actually are related to spiders and other multi-legged creepy-crawlies, spread throughout the masses as a celebration of the coming of Fall.
Last Saturday night, KA and I joined the masses at a traditional Swedish crayfish party. The hosts had made sure that all the right trappings were in place. . .a big tent in the garden with huge paper lanterns in the shape of smiling full moons hanging overhead, lots of bread and cheese, plenty of brännvin (which I’m convinced actually means ‘spiced kerosene’ in Swedish) and, of course, the delicacy of honor, the bottom-feeding mud bug, as crawfish are sometimes called in the US.
Liking the taste of crawfish is one thing. Even if I can overlook their prehistoric bug-like appearance, it’s how you have to get at them that really bothers me. You basically have to rip them apart with your bare hands! I mean, what other food do civilized people eat that way? Imagine someone inviting you for dinner, handing you a whole cooked chicken--head, feet, feathers, and all, and saying, “Have at it! Bon Appetit!” It amounts to the same thing doesn’t it? Of course, all of the grocery stores sell crawfish tails in little plastic tubs, all properly peeled and deveined. Believe me, I’d opt for this sanitized version if it wouldn’t get me laughed out of the country. After all, a genuine Swedish crawfish party is not only about merriment—it’s about dismemberment.
As it is, I can’t stomach much more than removing and peeling the tail. For me, that’s the only edible part. There are a lot of people, though, who have a much broader view of what is edible—such as the guy I ended up sitting next to.
While KA was busy chatting up the woman on his left, the guy on my right was telling me all about his favorite brands of beer while he proceeded to completely dismantel a crawfish as if he were a little boy disassembling a snap-together toy. I felt a swell of nausea, just like I felt back in high school biology lab when we had to slice up the frogs in formaldehyde. Yes, this dinner was quickly turning into a dissection. And once the guy had the creature in bits and pieces, each individual one received his special attention.
“THHHLLOOOUURP!”
Oh no! He’s sucking the. . .the. . .contents out of the creature’s head! I looked away, trying to hide my disgust.
“You know how making love in a canoe is similar to American beer?” he asked between sloppy slurps.
“Yeah, I’ve heard that one. They're both fu . . .”
"Attention, everyone!" I was interrupted by a heavy-set man with a red face sitting at the other side of the long table. He had picked up his copy of the song leaflet we had all received upon arrival. Looking very much like a preacher at a tent revival meeting, he began leading us enthusiastically in a song extolling the virtues of crawfish. The song ended with everyone scooping up their brännvin glasses with sticky hands and yelling “Skål!”
“They're both damn close to water!” My table companion delivered the punch line of his joke as he slammed down his empty glass and roared with laughter. He then began scooping orangish goo, which he called 'butter', out of the now unrecognizable animal’s body cavity and licking it off his pinky finger.
I quickly poured myself another shot of brännvin, not because I liked it, but to numb my senses. Not only was this guy eating entrails, he totally fumbled the punch line of the most over-told joke in all of Sweden!
When he finally did get around to peeling the only truly edible part—the tail, he ceremoniously slit out the muddy vein with his thumbnail and dangled it in front of my nose.
“Intestine!” he announced proudly, as if presenting a newborn child he had brought straight from its mother’s womb.
YUCK! I fought to stifle a gag as the red-faced man began the umpteenth crawfish song of the evening.
By now, the carnage was almost complete. Empty, broken exoskeletons were strewn about like burned-out cars. Lifeless heads and stiff limbs lay abandoned on plates. The paper moon lanterns looked down upon the macabre scene with sinister smiles while folks chatted and laughed over the broken bodies. I hung my aching head and gazed down absently with weary eyes. Determined to keep my plate from looking like an autopsy table, I had kept it as clear as possible, diligently dumping all remains every time someone brought around the big plastic body. . ., um, I mean, trash bag. The only thing laying there now in a little pool of briny dill fluid was a single black bead.
Aw, great! I broke my necklace! I put a sticky hand to my chest and felt that the beads were still intact. Then it hit me. That’s not a bead. . .It’s a spherical, mindless, coal-black EYE! AHHHH!
“What’s up with your wife?”
The man who had been sitting next to me and whom I had awkwardly scrambled over in a mad dash for the bathroom was asking for an explanation for my hasty exit.
“I don’t know.” KA shrugged. “I swear, sometimes she makes no sense to me whatsoever. As she ran by, she said something about flunking her high school biology lab.”
“Must be the brännvin,” the men said in unison.
There it sat, staring me down with its spherical, mindless, coal-black eyes. Its bloody-black body armor, complete with menacing spines, made it look like some sinister medieval jousting champion. I considered carefully what I was about to do. One false move, and the repulsive creature would stick me, leaving a painful, bloody wound. My thoughts raced as I calculated the best method of attack. The creature’s many spindly, segmented legs looked like they belonged on some prehistoric insect. Brown-tinged briny liquid seeped from under its formidable armor and pooled around its gaping claws. Revolted by the creature, I was losing my nerve. I had to do this quickly, or not at all. . .Slowly, as if I feared that it would recoil from the approach of my hand, I reached for it, hesitated, and felt the sudden jab. . .
“Just pick the thing up and tear its tail off! It’s just a crawdad, for cry’n out loud!”
“Ow!” I rubbed my side in the spot where my husband, KA, had just elbowed me in the ribs.
“But they’re so. . .insect-like! They remind me of spiders. . .and I HATE spiders!”
“But you’ve eaten them before. You always said that you liked them. . .”
Yes, it’s true. I do like the taste of crawfish. The Swedes, do, too. Swedish royalty has been enjoying them since the mid-1500’s. Over the centuries, the custom of consuming these arthropods, which actually are related to spiders and other multi-legged creepy-crawlies, spread throughout the masses as a celebration of the coming of Fall.
Last Saturday night, KA and I joined the masses at a traditional Swedish crayfish party. The hosts had made sure that all the right trappings were in place. . .a big tent in the garden with huge paper lanterns in the shape of smiling full moons hanging overhead, lots of bread and cheese, plenty of brännvin (which I’m convinced actually means ‘spiced kerosene’ in Swedish) and, of course, the delicacy of honor, the bottom-feeding mud bug, as crawfish are sometimes called in the US.
Liking the taste of crawfish is one thing. Even if I can overlook their prehistoric bug-like appearance, it’s how you have to get at them that really bothers me. You basically have to rip them apart with your bare hands! I mean, what other food do civilized people eat that way? Imagine someone inviting you for dinner, handing you a whole cooked chicken--head, feet, feathers, and all, and saying, “Have at it! Bon Appetit!” It amounts to the same thing doesn’t it? Of course, all of the grocery stores sell crawfish tails in little plastic tubs, all properly peeled and deveined. Believe me, I’d opt for this sanitized version if it wouldn’t get me laughed out of the country. After all, a genuine Swedish crawfish party is not only about merriment—it’s about dismemberment.
As it is, I can’t stomach much more than removing and peeling the tail. For me, that’s the only edible part. There are a lot of people, though, who have a much broader view of what is edible—such as the guy I ended up sitting next to.
While KA was busy chatting up the woman on his left, the guy on my right was telling me all about his favorite brands of beer while he proceeded to completely dismantel a crawfish as if he were a little boy disassembling a snap-together toy. I felt a swell of nausea, just like I felt back in high school biology lab when we had to slice up the frogs in formaldehyde. Yes, this dinner was quickly turning into a dissection. And once the guy had the creature in bits and pieces, each individual one received his special attention.
“THHHLLOOOUURP!”
Oh no! He’s sucking the. . .the. . .contents out of the creature’s head! I looked away, trying to hide my disgust.
“You know how making love in a canoe is similar to American beer?” he asked between sloppy slurps.
“Yeah, I’ve heard that one. They're both fu . . .”
"Attention, everyone!" I was interrupted by a heavy-set man with a red face sitting at the other side of the long table. He had picked up his copy of the song leaflet we had all received upon arrival. Looking very much like a preacher at a tent revival meeting, he began leading us enthusiastically in a song extolling the virtues of crawfish. The song ended with everyone scooping up their brännvin glasses with sticky hands and yelling “Skål!”
“They're both damn close to water!” My table companion delivered the punch line of his joke as he slammed down his empty glass and roared with laughter. He then began scooping orangish goo, which he called 'butter', out of the now unrecognizable animal’s body cavity and licking it off his pinky finger.
I quickly poured myself another shot of brännvin, not because I liked it, but to numb my senses. Not only was this guy eating entrails, he totally fumbled the punch line of the most over-told joke in all of Sweden!
When he finally did get around to peeling the only truly edible part—the tail, he ceremoniously slit out the muddy vein with his thumbnail and dangled it in front of my nose.
“Intestine!” he announced proudly, as if presenting a newborn child he had brought straight from its mother’s womb.
YUCK! I fought to stifle a gag as the red-faced man began the umpteenth crawfish song of the evening.
By now, the carnage was almost complete. Empty, broken exoskeletons were strewn about like burned-out cars. Lifeless heads and stiff limbs lay abandoned on plates. The paper moon lanterns looked down upon the macabre scene with sinister smiles while folks chatted and laughed over the broken bodies. I hung my aching head and gazed down absently with weary eyes. Determined to keep my plate from looking like an autopsy table, I had kept it as clear as possible, diligently dumping all remains every time someone brought around the big plastic body. . ., um, I mean, trash bag. The only thing laying there now in a little pool of briny dill fluid was a single black bead.
Aw, great! I broke my necklace! I put a sticky hand to my chest and felt that the beads were still intact. Then it hit me. That’s not a bead. . .It’s a spherical, mindless, coal-black EYE! AHHHH!
“What’s up with your wife?”
The man who had been sitting next to me and whom I had awkwardly scrambled over in a mad dash for the bathroom was asking for an explanation for my hasty exit.
“I don’t know.” KA shrugged. “I swear, sometimes she makes no sense to me whatsoever. As she ran by, she said something about flunking her high school biology lab.”
“Must be the brännvin,” the men said in unison.
# posted by Karen @ 2:28 PM 
