Weird Foods

Okay, everyone probably has their weird concoctions or Dagwood sandwiches that they used to make. Unusual combinations put together or some bizarre family recipe that others looked at like it would crawl off the plate and bite. Sometimes you could pull someone over to your side, and introduce them to the delights of strange delicacies.

I’ve already talked about some of my gross childhood foods. Well, there were other foods that were a bit of a mystery why we liked them, or even why we would eat them. Probably the oddest was “Beans I Like.” Yes indeed; that is what we called this culinary delight. Here are the three ingredients to this uh…unique vision of nutrition. Lima beans, watery tomato soup, wieners. That’s it. We seemed to like it too, from the name. But all I can surmise is that compared to those mushy frozen vegetables that I mentioned in gross foods, these were heaven. I don’t understand it either.

Then there was Velveeta Cheese and its creamier cousin, Cheeze Whiz. Cheeze Whiz could at least be scooped onto celery or crackers but Velveeta was the closest thing to eating plastic that ever existed in a pseudo cheese. I mean really, what was in that stuff? Granted they make cheddars in bright orange and Velveeta tried to mimic that, but it was molded into these thin plasticky pieces of milk product. Of course, kids love crap and that was a parent sanctioned piece o’ crap. Sure these “foods” still exist but I think I’d rather eat a leather shoe and probably get more nutrition though I did love those Velveeta days for grilled cheese sandwiches.

A somewhat odd food I was introduced to by a boyfriend was radish sandwiches. You take bread of your choice, smother it in butter, slice a lot of radishes, stack them in, salt and pepper them, and voila. An interesting vegetarian sandwich, which could be  a challenge to eat with little disks of radish slipping left and right, yet there was something good and crunchy about it.

When I used to eat hot dogs, or for that matter some sandwiches, I would toss a lot of potato chips into the bun/bread. Like I mentioned in Gross Foods of Childhood, I don’t really like mushy textures and I do like crunchy. It added another dimension of crunchy if unwholesome goodness. I’m not beyond the potato chip trick now, should I have potato chips and bread hanging about.

From: http://sweatpantsmom.blogspot.com/--creative commons

That really is it for the memorably weird foods of the past. There were truly good foods and the truly gruesome. One I didn’t mention before was those Jello molds with little bits of canned fruit and marshmallows in them. I know that during the War people didn’t always get fresh fruit in the days before massive shipping by every route possible, so canned fruit was sometimes a treasured treat. It falls into that mushy fruit category to me. Pineapple, not too bad. Peaches, meh. Pears…pallid corpselike mounds with no flavor. (shudder) And then in some ponderously jiggling, translucent green or orange blob reminiscent of a bad scifi B movie. Even as a kid I found that hideous and nightmarish beyond belief. No wonder I started writing speculative fiction.

It didn’t help that I ended up in the hospital at one point and was fed nothing but Jello, apple juice and consomme soup. Guess what I hate to this day? And Jello shooters (vodka used as the liquid when making Jello), please, just give me the straight vodka.

I was one of those odd kids that loved the crust on bread and always wanted the end piece (chewy) and liked what we then called brown bread, the pre-cursor to whole wheat bread. Though I do remember taking bread and compressing it (sans crust) into a dense dough ball to eat.

My family was probably a typical, whitebread Canadian family. Nothing to adventuresome except for once in a while when my mother brought home fresh crab or a coconut. Other than that, short ribs, pork chops, roast, hamburger, wieners, (tongue!), liver, fish and chips, maybe salmon, meatloaf, etc. were the common fair. Ah, those good ole days. When it comes to food it’s only my mother’s baking that was truly wonderful. The rest is happily relegated to memory.

Weird Pets

Dutch Rabbit Wiki Commons

The other day we got talking about the weirdness of some pets. I have a friend whose cat will eat any flowers she brings into the house. One of my cats loved bread and would eat a whole loaf if he could. Another friend had a cat that loved fruit. It’s known that cats will eat corn, olives and melon. What appeals to their taste buds, I don’t know. But other animals can have just as many odd habits.

I grew up in a household that had dog, cats, rabbit, budgie and guppies (a turtle at one point too). My particular pet was the rabbits. I had several successive Dutch rabbits. They remain small with (the most common colors of) grey or black hindquarters, white upper torso and black ears with whtie on the face. The paws, including the hind ones will usually be white. Kind of the same as the tuxedo cats.

In Calgary we kept the rabbit in a hutch outside. It had free run of the fenced yard during the day and when weather was really cold, we’d bring it in though it probably would have been find in its hay. Rabbits are easy to train to use the litter box and are fairly calm though if they’re startled the sharp digging claws that they sport can do some damage.

I think I had three rabbits in all but maybe it was only two. I remember Snuffy and then the male. My mother named him after the Minister of Highways because they were both odd. I didn’t know what she meant at the time but now might hazard a guess.

Gordon Taylor was a bit different for a rabbit. Rabbits are naturally timid, but Gordon had to stand up to his own with two cats and a German Shepherd. In the summer I’d see one of the cats chasing the rabbit around the yard and whereas this might give concern to some, we soon learned not to worry because the next few seconds would see Gordon chasing the cat around the yard.

It could be that the cat was running in terror because Gordon, true to his species, was a very amorous bunny. I don’t know if he ever tried to hump the cats but we have pictures of him hanging on the Shepherd’s tail (all that he could reach) and trying to make mad passionate love to it. The dog pretty much rolled its eyes and ignored him.

Gordon’s odd penchants ran to food too. As I teenager I would sometimes eat a raw wiener (why on God’s green earth, I don’t know) and one day I was doing this and holding Gordon. He leaned over and took a giant chomp out of the wiener. I stood looking down at him in shock, saying, You’re not supposed to do that. You’re a vegetarian.  Not only did he swallow that piece but he took another bite.

Gordon also was very fond of chocolate. We had to put him in a kennel once when we went away. I greeted him with a chocolate bar, which he nearly swallowed whole. I didn’t know then that chocolate isn’t good for animals, especially dogs, but if it did Gordon any harm, he never showed it.

Being a cocky little rabbit with a big dog attitude, Gordon also loved to race around the yard. Sometimes he’d kick up his hind feet and squirt. I don’t know what this signified but he did it to me once. I was so mad I picked him up and dunked him in a tub of cold water. He never did it again.

Gordon died mysteriously, his neck broken. We don’t know if a dog got into the yard (ours would have said something) or if he hit the fence. He wasn’t savaged and his skin was unbroken.

I stopped having rabbits for pets after the last one died, a little female, in a way so gruesome I still shudder (and won’t relate here). But after that I said no more. Rabbits rarely died natural deaths and it was too much. Still they were gentle and interesting pets and definitely had their individual personalities and predilections, like Gordon Taylor. He gets to go down in history as one of the quirkiest pets I had.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_rabbit