Suburban Goddess

Growing up in Louisiana toughens you up. Down home, we rip the heads off stuff & suck its brains out. My grandmother’s gumbo consisted of crabs (the WHOLE crab), shrimp (with the vein, you wussies!), and anything else that happened to float into her net on the bayou that day. Add eight years in the restaurant industry on top of an upbringing like that, well, let’s just say I could eat damn near anything without blinking. I have a cast-iron stomach.

So I was pretty much unfazed when we took the in-laws to the Chinese buffet last night. I mean, you see all kinds of weird stuff on an authentic Chinese buffet; it kind of reminds me of home. (”Is it dead?” “Yup.” “Then let’s eat it!”) I filled a plate with food I could identify for both Alex & I, and returned to the table to find a discussion in progress.

“Oh! They had those?” my sister-in-law (SIL) exclaimed.

“Yep,” my father-in-law (FIL) answered, popping something into his mouth.

“Shut up,” my mother-in-law (MIL) interjected quickly.

“Have what?” I asked, curious.

“NOTHING,” MIL barked. I looked at SIL, but she kept her eyes down and echoed quietly, “Nothing.” I looked at my husband, and he shrugged. MIL kept her eyes averted to the right, far away from FIL’s plate. I tried to peer across the table, but it was a large round table & FIL was sitting directly across from me, too far to distinguish the offending food. (I’m also convinced I’m going blind, because anything past two feet in front of me is blurry.) We continued to eat in uncomfortable silence, my MIL obviously upset by something. A few moments later, SIL returned with her plate, & MIL immediately became distrought again, sighing heavily and turning her eyes upward. I looked over at SIL’s plate. There was a small pile of squiggly pupple little creatures.

“Ew…Is that-”

“DO YOU MIND???” MIL exclaimed. SIL looked at me with a mischevious smile.

“The whole thing?” I whispered. It was a baby octopus. It looked like a bath toy that Alex would play with; a perfectly-formed, rubbery, purple ocotpus, small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. On closer inspection, you could see the tiny little suckers on each tentacle that obviously weren’t strong enough to keep the poor creature from being ripped away from it’s natural habitiat & plunked down into a pot of boiling water. It was a miniture version of those huge sea-creatures you see on the Discovery channel, with two large eyes on either side of it’s little rubber head. SIL popped one in her mouth, a tentacle sticking out the side of her lips. I had to fight the urge to both laugh & barf at the same time. She happily speared another with her fork & bit it in half.

“You eat the whole thing?” my husband said loudly. MIL looked like she was going to scratch his eyes out.

“Uh huh,” SIL answered, chewing with gusto.

“THAT’S IT,” MIL proclaimed, throwing her napkin on the table in disgust and walking away.

That is dinner with the in-laws. Always entertaining.

This entry was posted on December 22, 2006 at 7:09 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.