Aug 17 2007
You Know What Really Gets My Goat?
Flashback Friday!
I’m a vegetarian. Sometimes I’m a vegan. I have many reasons for this, but the main one is that I can’t eat red meat because I don’t have the enzyme that digests it. And, um, if my body can’t digest it… well… you can imagine that it’s not a good outcome.
My parents always insisted it was all in my head. So, like any good parent, they would sneak beef into my food. And every time, I would puke it up, or *ahem* have other digestive… issues.
To this day, my dad still thinks it’s all in my head. I’m not quite sure what further proof I need to offer. All the doctors’ notes and buckets of puke in the world couldn’t convince him.
(In fairness, I understand their lack of belief in my ailment, as it should be noted that another reason for me not to eat meat is that I’m terribly picky–the pickiest eater you’ve ever met. I always have been, I always will be. Yeah, my two year old doesn’t hold a candle to me. And I hate the look, smell, and texture of meat. I cannot fathom how anyone could choose to eat it–enzyme or no enzyme.)
However, I’m also an adventurous traveler.
The two don’t exactly, um, go well together.
One lovely afternoon, my parents and I found ourselves to be the guests of honor in a rural town in San Juan, Argentina. I had just turned 18. My father was considered a Very Important Person in these parts. Being the guests of honor always meant one thing: I would have to eat meat. And I would be very sick. (Okay, that’s two things.)
However, what I didn’t know about this little village is that the traditional dish to serve to your guests of honor is chivo.
Goat.
In this case, a goat that was specially handpicked from the bishop’s personal flock.
In such a situation, there is no way to say, “no, thank you. I don’t want to eat your goat.” That is simply not an option. ‘Tis better to eat the goat and spend the rest of the day puking than to disappoint, offend, and insult your host.
It gets better.
Everyone eats the goat. But the guest of honor gets… the brain. I am not making this up. The head is cooked with the rest of the body and the brains are, therefore, boiled inside the skull. So they crack open the skull and scoop out the soupy brains and bestow them upon the lucky guests of honor.
Well, I couldn’t do it. There was this head, in front of me. It had singed eyebrows. CRACK!!! They broke open the skull. I couldn’t look. I couldn’t stand it. Thank goodness I was a trained actress, or I would have lost it all entirely right there–just watching, let alone eating! I could feel my gag reflex kick in…
My parents found it all a great adventure.
I thought I was going to DIE.
FORTUNATELY, my father found a nice way of sharing the brains around and *oops* there wasn’t enough left for me. Phew! But, it didn’t get me off the hook completely. I still had to eat the rotten animal’s leg. Which I did, with feigned grace and dignity.
I’m not sure at what point during the course of my goat-leg-eating that I casually excused myself, trying to make it to the bathroom in time. I didn’t make it. I rounded a corner where no one could see me and I purged my soul of the wretched beast. Oh what joy and rapture it was to have it all come back up and not sit inside me, stewing and burbling for a week.
I returned, charming and sweet. They were utterly delighted with me.
Fortunately, we left before I could tell anyone about the… uh… mess in the hallway. I mean, the only thing less comfortable than telling the impoverished village that you won’t eat their goat is telling them that you just ralphed up their goat in the church hallway. So, I sorta didn’t tell them.
I suspect that, upon discovery, they were no longer delighted with me…
br>
haha funny
Interesting too to realise how much we are influenced (apart from your body not digesting red meat) by our culture as into what we think is normal to eat and what makes us choke when thinking that we’ll be served this or that….
Personally I enjoy a typical Flemish dish very much which is rabbit (prepared with dried plumbs , baked appels and beer!…mmmmmmmmmmm) where the head is often still part of the dish as well.
And I love the French delicacies snails (with lots of garlic butter!! oh yesssss) and frog legs (really not gross at all…just tiny chicken leggs really) etc…And I love preparing cows tongue myself: very very tender meat that just melts in your mouth.
but then I also totally gross out over some ‘delicacies’ from other cultures :p. I am sure I would not meet the levels of mandatory politeness in some cultures as I don’t think I could eat anything anywhere.
Well now between you and Goofball I have lost my appetite. Thanks ladies, makes dieting today a bit easier!!
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHH
That was SO not the picture I needed to see before I eat my breakfast.
YUCK YUCK!
I couldn’t have put a bite in my mouth - I just couldn’t!
Holy crap.
That’s horrible.
My stomach is turning at this very moment.
Boiled brains?! Scooped up? Cracked head?
I just threw up a little in my mouth.
hahahahaha Brill. Ralphing the detested animal in the church hall? That is just ooh-ick. But sooooooooooo funny!
Man, I love your stories.
MammaLoves comment above totally has me giggling too!
That was way too funny.
That picture though…ICK!!!
Though I wouldn’t like to eat Goat, especially like that, I am a carnivore. I like me a big juicy steak with sauteed mushrooms whenver finances allow.
I wonder if my husband has that enzyme problem. He loves to eat steak but always has bathroom isues afterward.
Ew. As a vegetarian / vegan myself, I think I would have had the same reaction.
When I studied in Argentina, it took a very long time for people to get that I didn’t eat ANY meat.
Ohhhhmyyyyyyy. There is a cooked goat’s head on my computer screen!
I’ll never forget seeing my Italian moter-in-law crack open a sheep’s skull and scoop out the brains. She even picked it up when she was done and sucked out the rest throug the eye socket! I kid you not! And I was pregnant at the time, which definitely made things interesting…
Oh-h-h, that picture! I understand some cultures do the same with monkeys, ack!
How you got as far as the church hallway I don’t know, I think I would have done it bringing the first fork full of any part of that meal to my mouth with that on the table!
I’m not going to think about this for the rest of the day now, or I will have to find a suitable hallway. E-e-e-w-w.
Hurlph. Braaaghfh.
> (leans over trash can by desk)
Ew-Ah. VERY, very, EW.
I’m not big on meat. I hate the texture of beef that isn’t thoroughly cooked, but if it’s got a char to it, I like it.
I’m pretty picky about which cuts I’ll eat, too.
I don’t even think The Man - a meat LOVER - could stomach the goat head, though.
I think it’s all in your head. Er… I mean the goat’s head!
Good God! That almost set off MY gag reflex and I don’t even have one!
Once, I was visting a man I was dating and we went to his mother’s house for lunch. Fabulous woman! I almost married him just so I could have her! She was a vegetarian of sorts, but still ate fish. So she had prepared a seafood stew. Served it up in a gorgeous… oh what’s that thing called… ANYWAY, I don’t like mussels and I don’t like clams, etc. I do like shrimp and crab and lobster, etc. (I am NOT a picky eater, btw, but these are some of the few things I don’t like.)
So, as you do, I believe that you eat what is put in front of you. I was very careful to get only “things” out of the stew that I knew I could eat. She said, “Oh Teri, take some mussels.” So I did. She said, “Oh Teri, take some of everything!” So I said, “I did. I have shrimp, crab, clams, mussels… and…” At this point I stopped short at viewing something that got into my plate, I have no idea how! “…….and octopus!” What? How did I miss that? An entire little octopus with legs and all? Ewwwwwwwwwww….
I tried to eat it. Couldn’t do it. I just scooted it under the mussel shell, which I had overturned (meat still intact inside) and began to “help” cleaning off the table. Rushed into the kitchen and swooped that offensive creatures into the trash!
No comparison to a goats-head story.
Wow… umm… eeewwww.
I think that wins my grossest story of the day award… and I work for a newspaper!
Sincere congratulations to you for holding it together long enough to at least get to the hall… very bad if you would have pulled a George Bush on them. Very bad.
Sssssssssiiiiiiiicccckk.
I’m not a vegetarian but seeing that may have changed my mind.
I lost my appetite. That is just so gross. I eat meat, but I don’t want no goat brain.
I’m also not going to think about this for the rest of the day, or I won’t make it to the bathroom. The comments that follow are almost as bad as the story itself.
I am laughing in a gag reflex sort-of way!
Diisguuuuuusting!
I am adventurous to a point. Had I been in your shoes at that dinner…I would have fainted and slid right under the table.
You are a better woman that me
omg what a picture!! luckily I ate before I read this…I do NOT know how you kept it together…lol.
Oh, Brill, it is all in your head.
I may have vomited a little just thinking about the goat head….ewwwwwww.
~Singing~ “Memory! All alone in the moonlight! Can she please lose her memory? Stop the gagging tonight….”
It’s completely understandable that you hate the idea of even eating meat. It’s always been bad to you.
But the goat brain. Oh man. I’m dry heaving over here just reading your description. You must be one hell of an actress!
I used to eat non-veg when i was a kid. Now that i have started attending yoga classes i stopped doing that. Because there i had learned that it has been unanimously accepted that the vegetarian food also contains all those nutrients’ which are present in non-vegetarian food.
Now see, my Dad would have loved the brain. He was always eating gross things like that.
Uh, seriously? Yuck. I have the same effect with some milk products, only less severe.
So does this vegan lifestyle extend to the clothes you wear or do you just eat in a vegan way?
I went to a hippie university, so to be vegan was as normal as to be vegetarian which was more common than being a meat eater.
I am sick to my stomach now. Thanks, Brill.
This story is so far above and beyond the one I tell about having to eat blood pancackes. I may have to ralph . . .
I’m on catch up here.
Eurghhw, eurghhhhw, eurgggghhhhhh
I don’t think I could do it either. Steve, on the other hand, will eat anything. Pretty much. He recently ate both guinea pig and alpaca while in Peru. Me? I like pasta.
That’s gross. Especially because 1)I’ve never eaten goat meat and 2)Brains??
I have to admit though, that filipinos do eat gross things and I HAVE had some of it. (Cows Tongue, Pork blood, We do roast a whole pig and stick an apple in its mouth).
You poor thing.
I gotta ask… Did you tell your father that you didn’t make it to the bathroom?