figmo@tymix.UUCP (Lynn Gold) (04/12/85)
Last summer, during a going-away luncheon for one of my (former) co-workers, I had such an experience... The aforementioned co-worker's luncheon was VERY Chinese (one of those deals where the menu is in Chinese -- exclusively!). I had made it through the pickled jellyfish and the whole fish in hot peppers fine. (Unless you were Chinese, much of this luncheon looked like something out of "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.") Anyway, after eating lots of weird (and delicious) foods whose names I couldn't understand, a dish with an almost familiar-sounding name is placed in front of me: Sea Cucumbers. Having never had them before (let's face it, you don't find too many of them on Slovak or Jewish dinner tables on a regular basis), I remarked, "This is a vegetable, right?" At this time everyone at my table looked up from their plates in amazement. Several of the people started chuckling. "Yeah, it's a vegetable, all right" guffawed one. It was then UNGENTLY explained to me that they were some kind of animal -- to quote one of the others, "It's like a snail. A common garden slug." I then smirked and tried to use the same excuse my father and his father (who was a big fan of escargot) have used whenever they were in a situation where they were expected to eat something they didn't want to: "I can't. It's not Kosher!" --Lynn Gold Tymnet, Inc. ...tymix!figmo
jeff@rtech.ARPA (Jeff Lichtman) (04/16/85)
> ... after eating lots of weird (and > delicious) foods whose names I couldn't understand, a dish with an almost > familiar-sounding name is placed in front of me: Sea Cucumbers. Having > never had them before (let's face it, you don't find too many of them on > Slovak or Jewish dinner tables on a regular basis), I remarked, "This is > a vegetable, right?" > ... > It was then UNGENTLY explained to me that they were some kind of animal -- > to quote one of the others, "It's like a snail. A common garden slug." > > --Lynn Gold Sea cucumbers are members of the phylum echinodermata, which also includes starfish and sea urchins. Slugs and snails are molluscs, not echinoderms. However, I have seen sea cucmbers in the wild, and they don't look much more appetizing than slugs. -- Jeff Lichtman at rtech (Relational Technology, Inc.) aka Swazoo Koolak