Bon Appetit !

Anyone with even a vague knowledge of me will definitely agree if I say I am something of a "foodie"!! Although not in the exact sense of the term, I must emphasise that I display an awful lot of zeal when it comes to eating. I am definitely adventurous with respect to vegetarian food but when it comes to devouring varied species from the animal-kingdom I do possess some boundaries. However I can recount maybe a couple of experiences in the past, where I have ventured, both knowingly and unknowingly beyond that realm. Some of the restrictions that I exercise are, that non-vegetarian food be cooked very well. I think its a better option too, health-wise, what with e-coli doing the rounds (do they thrive in meats ??) . Also, sea-food is mostly limited to fish, shrimp, crab and lobsters. Calamari, I have eaten once. But I am quite averse to tasting clams and mussels. That mental block is attributed to some of the stories I have heard from my mother, who by the way is extremely picky about non-vegetarian food and therefore is the odd one in my family of extremely carnivorous people. With that little introduction out of the way, let me proceed. Oh and just in case, a disclaimer, before you read on. If my blog appears to be offensive to you, especially because of my comments on certain foods, please remember, that it is purely unintentional and merely my manner of expressing my feeling. In any case I apologise for the same.

A few months back I was on a holiday, with my family, to Malaysia and Singapore. My mother is extremely familiar with Malaysian and Chinese food and she cautioned my dad and I to be judicious about what we sampled. Foods known to her, were ok. Strange new foods, were to be eaten at our own risk. I abided by that rule for most of the trip, until the last 2 days. My dad, who is not a big risk-taker, atleast when it comes to food, stuck to eating Indian food during the entire trip. He was happy eating sambar, rasam, chicken curry, fish fry, biriyani and the like. So it happened one evening, after shopping, that we decided to stop at a food mall for dinner. I must mention that I have never seen a larger array of South-Asian and South-East Asian eateries in one place before. My mom and I decided to get some food from a Chinese place. I picked an extremely appetizing-looking fried-noodle item, with my mom choosing a coconutty-noodle dish. Whilst my order was being prepared, I went over to the Indian eatery to pick up some biriyani, as usual, for my dad. As the waiter, was serving up the biriyani, I happened to glance at the menu on the Chinese restaurant next door. Right there, in bold letters, calling out, was this dish of "Pig-Organ's Soup". There was also a picture right next to it, just in case the 3 words didn't express enough already. You could see chopped up pieces of different organs, cooked I hope, floating around in boiled, lightly seasoned water !! Once again, my reaction is something similar to what a vegetarian with no knowledge of meat, would think about me enjoying a dish of yummy chicken curry, maybe ! I hope you guessed by now, that my large appetite, became something of a memory. So I trudged along to hand off the biriyani to my dad and hoped to wash away that bad moment, with the yummy fried noodles. But no matter what, that image of the soup still lingered over my mind's eye. Still, the optimist that I am, I eagerly walked up to pick up my food tray and what do I see. The yummy fried noodles is on the side and right in front of my eyes, is this big bowl of steaming soup. Floating around in it, were weird pieces of meat !! So I guess you all must have figured out what eventually happened. The yummy fried noodles, no longer appeared to be yummy. My folks were nice enough to taste the soup and deem it fit to eat. But nothing helped. The chicken biriyani didn't do it for me either. So that's how I lost my appetite that day and ended up drinking fruit juice for dinner.