Well, my mom was in town for a couple of days, so we went off for lunch with a friend of hers, up near Berkeley, in this new restaurant called Orchid Bowl Cafe (in English). My mom took one glance at the dual-language sign, and said, “Hmm–the Chinese version says ‘Macau Street’.”
(I always wondered if Chinese restaurant signs say what I think they do–aha! Now I know. )
Anyway, in addition to an odd assortment of Asian and Portuguese dishes (Macau is/was a Portuguese colony), they had some of the weirdest dishes I’ve seen. My personal favorite was “Ostrich gizzards with XO fresh lily flowers”, but they also had a dish called “Mixed Mushrooms with House Special Steamed Chicken”, which my mom promptly corrected to “In Cage, Mixed Mushrooms with Steamed Yellow-Feather Chicken” (from the Chinese version).
(Yeah. We were both wondering about the yellow-feathered part (not to mention the cage). But not enough to order it…)
At any rate, I was flipping through this bonanza of culinary riches, when I came across an appetizer: Marinated Duck Tongues with Peanuts.
Well, of course I *had* to try it. Anything *that* bizarre needs to be ordered. (Besides, my mom said they were OK–at the very least, she ate them and was still alive.)
It arrived as a dish of, well, duck tongues. They were about an inch and a half to two inches long, looked like, um, little duck tongues, and tasted sweet and salty, as you’d expect from anything in a sweet soy marinade. The texture was a bit odd–sort of crunchy and meaty, much like pig ears (hey, you grow up in a Chinese household, you get blase about odd organ meats)–and there was a little bone in the center, but overall I thought it was quite tasty, and certainly better than either rats or scorpions.
I ate most of them, but I have to admit I was suppressing bizarre images of buckets of duck tongues and flocks of poor tongueless ducks. It seems very strange to eat duck meat without any particular compunctions but get worked up over duck tongues–perhaps it’s because you can eat duck meat without feeling guilt over more than one duck, but twenty duck tongues means twenty ducks. Of course, plenty of ducks get slaughtered and if no one ate the duck tongues, they’d just be wasted, but try explaining that to your subconscious. There’s still something sort of guilty about the experience of eating an entire flock’s worth of duck tongues, even if no one else in the world could possibly be interested in eating them.
Afterwards, we went to Oakland Chinatown and looked in at a bunch of the shops…we went to a Chinese apothecary, where my mom pointed out dried sea cucumber skins and deer tendons to me, and stopped by a Chinese butcher, where they had live water (sea?) turtles and live tortoises for sale. I was pointing at one and asking my mom what on earth they did with them (chop them up and put them in soup apparently) when a guy came out with a cleaver, thinking we wanted one of them. I’m personally rather fond of tortoises, and would just as soon not kill turtles (some of my best friends are reptiles!), so we passed and moved on.
I am still tempted by that deer tendon…I have the feeling that if I soaked it and shaved it, I’d have the makings of great lashings for that, umm, set of deerskin moccasins I’ll never get around to making. But still, haven’t you always wanted deer sinew to sew things with?
(Actually I’m not sure–is the sinew usually used tendons or muscle? “Sinew” is technically muscle fiber, but I think tendons would be a lot stronger. They’re also only marginally edible, so sewing with them would be much less wasteful.)
Speaking of tendon, hide, and so on, I just bought some beautiful red suede from http://www.theshamanstore.com (Premalaya Bookstore), which I plan to cut and sew into a leather bikini/harness for next year’s AIDS Ride. I’m envisioning a red studded bikini top with studded collar, a red “skirt” made of dangly red suede rags, and of course a red whip to go with it all.
Day 5 of AIDS Lifecycle is “Dress in Red Day”, and of course the boys all take the chance to get into their most fabulous red dresses that day. Since they’re all going femme, and putting on their best frilly regalia, I figured I’d go the other direction, and go butch for the day. But I’m using red suede because it’s easier on the skin than straight-up leather, and this particular red suede is a beautiful brilliant red, that’s not too easy to find in regular leather. (If you know of a good place to find a thin-yet-durable, soft, conventional leather in bright red, lemme know–I want some!)
In other words, I’m going butch, but in a femme-y sort of way. 🙂
So anyway, having gotten the leather, and the underwire cups, I’m now looking for fake studs to put on the leather. If you know where I can find that, let me know–for now, I’m going down to my local Jo-Ann’s just to see if they’ve got it. I’m betting not; after that, I’ll try looking up leatherworkers’s supply stores. There’s got to be at least one of them in the Bay Area.
Oh yeah…if anyone knows where I can get good red leather suitable for whip-making, and directions for how to make one, let me know. I have no idea where I’d find a decorative *red* whip, and I’ve always wanted to try making one, SO…. 🙂
Tien
