Food is one of those things that you just can't live without. I have found some exceptions to this rule. When I was young, about every other Sunday night we would have oyster stew for supper. This might sound fine to some of you, but I do not like oysters. I would avoid this supper just as long as I could. Everyone except me really liked this meal. I would fill the bowl up with as many saltine crackers as I could and be very careful to just catch the broth with the ladle. No oysters in my oyster stew! I hope that all of you know that you can't clean oysters. When you eat them you eat all of them! Anyway, I would just eat the wet crackers and it was all I could do to get it down. Sometimes they would substitute salmon for oysters, but not very often.
About ten years ago, I worked in a textile mill in Greensboro, NC. One of my best friends there was named Gerald. Once in a while he would bring something in for lunch and heat it up in the cafeteria microwave. This was my first introduction to chitlins. Chitlins are pig intestines that have been cleaned out real well. When that microwave finished the room smelled of what used to be inside of the chitlins. Right then! I knew that chitlins were somehow related to oysters. Not really, but they were according to my food chain. Once he found out that I disliked this foul odor, he would bring this same meal just as often as he could. Some days he would bring chicken feet, pig ears and all manner of foul food. One day while he was enjoying his meal, I told him maybe he needed to put a little corn in his chitlins. You don't serve chitlins and corn in the same meal because corn will mess up a good pot of chitlins. If you do serve them together don't stir corn and chitlins with the same spoon. Corn is one of the grains fed to pigs. How clean were those things anyway?
He still brought them after that, but they had somehow lost some of their magic to him after I mentioned the corn. Must have been the thought of it or something. Gerald! If you read this, just know that I am thinking of you and hope your are well. I hope to see you again sometime soon, but you can't use my microwave.
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