Culinary Courage

Yesterday Nolan began the day by eating a hot pepper in his breakfast soup (yes, pho bo, rice noodle soup with beef for breakfast).  Foster double-dog dared him, and the next thing we heard was, "There's no turning back!"  He threw back a raw pepper, chewed way too many times and swallowed.  We braced ourselves for the wailing.  He shook his head a few times and smiled at his accomplishment.  He then drained every drink on the table and inhaled the pile of bean sprouts like they were going out of style.  He rubbed limes on his lips throughout the meal, but he never questioned his decision to do something so ridiculous.  This kid is an adventurous eater.

Next up came super-thick Vietnamese iced coffee served with  condensed milk and a serious kick.  Thanks to his Starbucks (venti decaf iced coffee) habit, this presented no problems whatsoever.

 

For dinner it was a plate of frog legs.  Apparently the trauma of the previous day's visit to the market where we had watched frog after frog get whacked against the table did not make a lasting impression. They got a big thumbs-up.

Tastes like chicken!

Next up were chicken feet.  While visiting a tiny island on the Mekong River, our guide informed us that chicken was a good menu choice. We thought that meant it was a house specialty of some kind. "No," she informed us, "chicken is good here because it is a small island with no electricity, so it must be fresh. In the city the electricity is not so good, so the chicken sits in the refrigerator and, when the power goes out, it gets spoiled."  I thought back to all of the chicken I had eaten in the past few days and felt ill.  Then I thought about what "fresh" chicken meant, and I felt ill.  I wondered which of the wandering chickens was destined to become our "fresh" chicken momentarily.

Because a chicken would be sacrificed for our meal, it was necessary to order an entire chicken, so we agreed upon two different preparation methods and agreed to buy the whole chicken - half roasted and half prepared with chili and lime.  I plugged my ears and hoped I wouldn't hear the chicken scream.  Brianna decided she would stick with rice (already having been put off by the whole elephant ear fish that had arrived at the table earlier).

The first plate of chicken parts arrived, and Nolan dug in.  Chili lime chicken feet pleased his palate just fine.  I generously heaped the various organs onto John's bowl of rice.  He then moved them back to the serving plate.  Eventually the roasted half of the chicken arrived with more recognizable portions of the bird.  By then I was hankering for a processed, dinosaur-shaped, freezer-burned nugget of some kind.  Fresh food can be way overrated sometimes.

Elephant Ear Fish

Tastes like chicken!