hiddenmuse: (Interesting)
hiddenmuse ([personal profile] hiddenmuse) wrote2004-06-29 01:10 pm

Not for the squeamish

Since I do like to try and expand my culinary horizons from time to time (yes, believe it or not, Kellie...), when a co-worker offered me a lychee, I thought I'd give that a whirl.

Well, let me say that my retention level for the weirdest things is unbelievably high. Especially since as I was peeling into the lychee, all I could think of were two things: a Tony Kornheiser column I'd read in one of his books a couple of years ago, and my Anatomy & Physiology (A&P) class in college.

Sure, they sound wildly divergent, but, they do parallel. Here's how it works: The Tony Kornheiser column involved his talking about growing up in a Jewish household, and his family's tradition of going out for Chinese food every Sunday.

The particular Chinese restaurant they would go to served the usual fare we've come to expect, as well as dessert: "vanilla ice cream - with chunks of ice still in it, and lychees, which looked like eyeballs in a bowl".


As for my A&P class, well, since we were getting into the particulars about the body, one thing we did in Lab was dissect a cow eyeball. Really. So, peeling into the lychee, and having it squirt out a small bit of juice did remind me of the cow's eye leaking out its aqueous humour (the fluid within our eyeballs) onto the dissection tray. As for the smell and taste of the lychee, well, it did smell pretty decent and the taste wasn't too bad.

I just couldn't get past the whole "eyeball" thing. So, I think that I'll stick with lychee in my Aromacreme deodorant from Lush - it's nicer there. At least it's not presented in a squick-me-out context.

[identity profile] hiddenmuse.livejournal.com 2004-06-29 03:22 pm (UTC)(link)
You did tell me that story - and I think it's interesting that it has almost always been in you to not harm animals (even in that context), while I hardly had any reservations about going forth with dissections of whatever was offered up to us in science class.

Probably that perverse innate sense of curiousity.

[identity profile] sigmaration.livejournal.com 2004-06-29 03:25 pm (UTC)(link)
When you think about it that way, it's a wonder I wasn't a vegetarian from age 10 or something. It sounds really dumb, but I never really realized that it was an option, I guess.

[identity profile] hiddenmuse.livejournal.com 2004-06-29 03:38 pm (UTC)(link)
Putting it that way - it's amazing that I didn't end up as a chick version of Ted Nugent or something. *shudders in disgust*