If you’ve been paying attention, you know I am the product of Southern folk.  If you are the product of Southern folk, then you know they will eat just about anything.  Did you ever wonder why?  When I was younger I remember being in the car with my parents and having them stop by the roadside and pick leaves off of a plant, take them home and fry them in (probably) bacon grease with some egg and eat them.  Polk salat…not salad, as I thought for years…salat is what the funky leaves were.  Do you know what it does to your children when you pullover and graze on a road trip?  It’s not good.  Every time we saw some road kill, I was afraid the car would stop.  Every time I saw a plant with berries I was afraid that Jed and Jethrine were gonna jump out of the truck and set to pickin’.  It was a scary environment to grow up in. 

You can probably empathize, even if you aren’t blessed to be from the south, as far as greens go.  I mean, there are seven zillion kinds of lettuce.  Here’s the difference…have you ever had mystery meat?  Mystery meat is any meat that can’t be determined by observation.  It doesn’t look like anything you’ve ever had before.  My father was a hunter.  He brought game home and expected us to eat it.  He would kill small things and large things, and when he killed all I could think of was the beautiful animals in Bambi.  That didn’t really fly in my family.  It was kind of “you’ll eat what’s put in front of you and you’ll like it.”  There were times when the budget was tight and mom would dig something out of the freezer.  It was like something being removed from the morgue.  She would put it in the ‘fridge to thaw.  I would try to read the butcher’s paper to see what it was, but usually the moisture in the freezer had worn the ink off the package.  The next night she would peel off the white paper, and there would be the meat…but what kind of meat was it?  I was the youngest child.  My sister that was older than me by 6 years loved to torture me and she would tell me it was a kitten, or my pet rabbit, or anything that would bring me to tears.  When dinner was ready I would pass my plate to my dad and he would start putting things on it for me.  “Do you want potatoes?  Do you want green beans?  Do you want chicken?”  I looked at him like he was from another planet.  I had seen the butcher’s paper.  I knew he had never hunted a chicken.  What in the hell did he take me for?  For one thing, there wasn’t a drumstick to be seen, and that was the best part of a chicken.  He had lost his mind, and apparently thought I was as stupid as he was.  How to respond?  Now keeping in mind that I was probably all of six years old and momentarily stunned I answered in the only sensible way I could.  I looked at my father and said, “that’s no damn chicken!”  There was a brief silence around the dinner table that night. Brief,  Then laughter erupted.  I was so relieved, I thought I had gotten by with it.  I mean after all, I was just speaking out of shock.  It was temporary insanity judge…I swear.  Finally everyone calmed down and mom said come here and I went to her and she took me by the hand and led me to the bathroom.  I was so stupid, I didn’t even see it coming when she washed my mouth out with soap.  I don’t remember what the soap tasted like, but I’d be willing to bet it was better than the mystery meat…which I didn’t eat.  I did eat everything else though…at least the things I recognized.

My parents will eat anything.  It’s truly disturbing.  I have seen them eat turnips and the green tops that come with them.  I have seen them eat beets, mustard greens, chicken gizzards, dandelion greens, but perhaps the worst of all is generic Spam.  This gelatinous gunk is called Treet.  For the life of me I can’t imagine why.  Until I left home, there was always a metal can, with a key on the back of it, of Treet in the cabinet.  My father loved it!  He would put it on crackers, he would fry it in the morning and have it with eggs and toast, he would slice a slab of it off and have a Treet sandwich.  I wouldn’t touch the stuff with a ten foot pole.  He asked me once why I wouldn’t even try it and how I could be so against something I had never even tasted.  Here is what I tried to explain to my father: Meat shouldn’t come in a can.  When it comes in a can and you have to remove it a horrendous glopping sound happens and it is beyond gross.  Then it looks like it is covered in snot.  If you look at it, you see a gray glob of square mush that has snot dripping off of it and I have never in my life seen that in any butcher shop or meat section at the grocery therefore in my mind it is undefined and I don’t eat undefined foods.  I was about fifteen at this time, and pretty sure the world revolved around me and what I liked and disliked.  So explaining Treet to my poor idiot father was just one of my many daughterly duties.  I had like a million.  OMG!!  Anyway, later in that week I was leaving the house to go on a date, and I went in to kiss my dad goodbye.  While I was there I asked him to come and meet the guy I was going out with.  Mom already had and apparently she had informed him about my date because he said.  “Boys shouldn’t go out with my daughter.  Let me tell you why, they have one thing on their minds and it isn’t the movies or a pizza.  They come in here with zits on their faces looking like they inhaled a pepperoni pizza and the pepperoni just stuck there.  It is beyond gross.  I have never seen a boy that is worth you.  Not in school or in the gym therefore this date is undefined and I don’t go meet undefined boys.”  (I took liberties with the quote it has been several years and I may not have it verbatim.)  I had to crack up.  My dad had just compared my date to generic Spam.  As it turned out he was right, but I still haven’t ever eaten canned meat.  Maybe it’s because that date left such a bad taste in my mouth.  I just don’t know.

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