I prithee go and get me some repast;

I care not what,

So it be wholesome food.

– Shakespeare,The Taming of the Shrew IV, 3

Yu eat? Do you dine? Do you partake? Do you eat on top of the table or under the furniture? Do you eat with your mouth full or do you leave space? Do you dribble and need a bib like a baby? You have to be so careful when and where you ask those questions, for we are in the age of political correctness and words do tend to have double meanings. The French call it a double entendre.

Lovindeer, the singer, has a safe retort to those questions if he’s asked by a lady. His response to her asking him, “Yu eat?” is simply to reply, “Yu cook?” Well, this is all about food and nothing that’s under the table. There are no other implications, insinuations, inferences, or innuendos. Any other appetising inference is purely incidental. So get up from under the dining table.

The fact is, Jamaicans love to eat, and as a result, our food ranks among the best in the world. The food of some countries are just rank. We eat lots of stuff, from chicken to beef, from chicken to pork, from chicken to curry goat…. did I mention chicken?

But we eat other things too, as we’ll find out right after these responses to ‘Money changes everything’.

Boss Man,

It’s interesting to read your article and you explain it real.

Sinzala

Zambia

Hi Tony,

An excerpt from the lyricsFor The Love Of Money by The Ojays says it all.

An excerpt from the lyrics

For The Love Of Money by The Ojays says it all.

“For the love of money

People will steal from their mother

For the love of money

People will rob their own brother

For the love of money

People can’t even walk the street

Because they never know

Who in the world they’re gonna meet

For that lean, mean, mean green

Almighty dollar.”

Wickham

Ontario, Canada

Recently I saw a video online that really got my attention. It showed a donkey being slaughtered by an Oriental man right here in public in the broad daylight before the eyes of curious onlookers. He tethered the hapless animal to a pole, unsheathed a long butcher’s knife and proceeded to kill the beast right there.

Recently I saw a video online that really got my attention. It showed a donkey being slaughtered by an Oriental man right here in public in the broad daylight before the eyes of curious onlookers. He tethered the hapless animal to a pole, unsheathed a long butcher’s knife and proceeded to kill the beast right there.

As the donkey gasped and went down, writhing in agony, flailing its legs, blood gushing like a geyser from the wound in its neck, some people cried out in horror. The last time I saw anything like that was many years ago at a railroad cattle slaughter house in the country when I was a little boy. Those memories never leave.

But this was no cow. It was a donkey, and many people who saw that video said that they’d never eat at certain restaurants again… ever. But I say, “What’s the big deal?” Plus, Jamaicans who are not Oriental do the same thing, and not by ‘Occident’ either.

I always remember the story of a dance being held in St Thomas where these two guys had a flourishing soup stand going full hundred. Hot soup was selling like… well, hot soup, and patrons relished the flavour and the aroma. “What a way dis soup ya nice. Bring me some more.”

Well, late in the night, some nosy persons peered behind the soup stall and saw the hooves, head, tail and other parts of a donkey. All hell broke loose as the dance mash up and those two guys got the beating of their lives.

But why? Didn’t the soup taste delicious, was it not hot and tasty and people clamoured for more? Were they not satisfied customers? And who’s to tell that they weren’t eating donkey meat for many years? After all, those soup vendors were regulars in the district. It’s just that, unfortunately, their ruse was discovered and they got an ass whipping for the ass that they served up. Was it asinine behaviour on the part of those irate patrons?

If we can eat cows, sheep, goats, deer, why can’t we eat donkey? They pretty much look the same, both on the inside and on the outside. People eat rabbits, yet would find eating a rat abhorrent. Look at a rabbit and a rat — just different in size, that’s all.

In fact, in many parts of the world, horse and donkey meat are considered a delicacy. Plus, all those people fighting against that practice may have been making asses of themselves for many years and not even know it. We are what we eat. So if you eat cat, you know what that makes you. Go to Japan and order udon, and then ask what it really is. We love mannish water and cow cod soup, which constitute the genitals of ram goats and bulls, respectively. Now, that takes balls.

I remember going to a restaurant here with my better half and she ordered the Seafood Delight. Well, she was delighted for a while, until she spied through the corner of her eye some little chopped up pieces of octopus tentacles, obvious because of the suckers. Well, the scream that came from her could break glass. Calmly I said, “But you ordered the seafood delight. And those delightful creatures all come from the sea.”

My making light of the situation did not diminish her angst and we had to order something more familiar, like curry goat…or was it donkey? We’ll never know, and neither will you, unless you own a butcher shop.

But even curry goat is not eaten by some people, and I have American friends who find the practice disgusting, distasteful. One man’s meat is another man’s donkey. I also have foreign friends who won’t eat anything if the head is still attached. So that lovely fish at Hellshire Beach or Port Royal will have to be decapitated before they partake of it. And yet we love fish head so much.

What we eat is all a question of cultural upbringing, and one man’s meat is another man’s macabre meal. Not only that, but how we eat is different too. Slurping noodles straight up from the bowl is considered a disgusting faux pas here, yet it’s the correct way in some countries. So is eating with your hands. Eating under the table is still questionable.

In some parts of the world, people eat cats, dogs, opossums, snakes, wild rats, monkeys, and other fauna that we would find repulsive. Bush meat in Africa is a culinary catastrophe for most people from the western world.

Some tribes of Africa, like the Masai, subsist on the blood and milk of cattle, animals that they revere and would never kill. Many people here love pork, although some dreads do not touch swine. And yet I witnessed a dread ordering lunch, loudly declaring that he doesn’t eat pork, but quietly asked for some pork chops gravy to saturate his rice. “You can put some of the pork gravy pon I and I ital stew.”

Other people are vegetarians and are so picky with their food that it makes you wonder why they even bother to eat. They don’t want gluten, don’t drink milk, don’t want eggs, hate rice, don’t eat meat, can’t eat fish, can’t tolerate shellfish. “My word, is there anything that you can eat?”

But being that selective is a bourgeoisie modern-day first-world aristocratic luxury that most of the rest of the world cannot indulge in. In some countries people simply have to eat what’s available. I recently saw a newscast of people in Syria starving to death. In other parts of the world they don’t even have drinking water. I don’t think that those folks would be too selective about what they eat.

A starving man cannot afford to be picky and choosy when it comes to his next meal. “Vegetarians? They can talk. Just pass me that boiled muskrat.”

Some people are so picky, yet they don’t even know what they’re eating. I have seen exposé of restaurants in foreign, and you’d be shocked at what goes on behind closed doors. I shudder to think what happens here.

You loathe frog legs and escargot (snails) from the French, yet you love curried conch and conch soup. A conch is a giant snail that lives in the sea. It’s a snail, folks, a snail. So do you eat to live or live to eat; and are you selective about what goes in your mouth, or does anything go down your gullet? “How say you to a fat tripe finely broiled,” said Shakespeare.

Some men cannot refuse what’s put before them and will gorge on anything that a woman puts in their mouth. They will dine at the table, on the floor, or under the furniture. Which again beggars the question, ‘Yu eat?’

More time.

seido1@hotmail.com

Footnote: Fun and joke aside though, Jamaicans love to eat, and restaurants — fast food joints, patty establishments, soup kitchens and bakeries are doing a brisk business. But our people tend to eat too much and it’s showing. Obesity is on the rise, and with it the attendant ailments, such as high blood pressure, diabetes and other problems that accompany fatness. This even affects our children who dine on too much fast food. Most people eat simply out of habit and not real need. “Twelve o’clock now, I should really eat something.” And they eat too much. Obesity is classed as a disease.

Footnote: Fun and joke aside though, Jamaicans love to eat, and restaurants — fast food joints, patty establishments, soup kitchens and bakeries are doing a brisk business. But our people tend to eat too much and it’s showing. Obesity is on the rise, and with it the attendant ailments, such as high blood pressure, diabetes and other problems that accompany fatness. This even affects our children who dine on too much fast food. Most people eat simply out of habit and not real need. “Twelve o’clock now, I should really eat something.” And they eat too much. Obesity is classed as a disease.