I like to pride myself on eating things that most people won’t eat. I don’t mean non-foodstuffs, although those that know me probably have seen me devour a ballpoint pen or two. Oh, and also my fingernails. I’m not talking about that though. What I mean here is foods that are somewhat bizarre and out of the mainstream of American eating. I don’t get that many opportunities in America, but I do look for fun stuff wherever I can. I’m a huge fan of Andrew Zimmern.
I had a friend when I lived in DC who was a second generation Korean-American. He used to take us out to Korean restaurants and order everything for us, in Korean, so that what we got was a complete surprise. It was always really fun to find out what he ordered, because I was pretty sure he was trying to gross us out. I remember eating shrimp with him once and they were fried whole and unpeeled. It’s amazing how big a shrimp is when it’s got its head on. I’m looking at this 6 inch sea monster lying on my plate thinking that it’s going to be a lot of work to remove the head and peel the damn thing. Besides that, it’s a waste of good batter; all the good fried stuff is just going to get lost in the process. I’m getting ready start my shrimp surgery when I see him pick one up and bite the head off and start crunching away. Oh my! So that’s how you do it. I ate my first complete shrimp that night, and frankly, thought it was pretty gross.
I’ve actually caught shrimp before. I’ve been out on a boat in the middle of Puget Sound dropping shrimp pots with open cans of cat food 200 ft. down. I then hauled them back up manually only to find them empty. It can be frustrating. Over the course of the day I was out shrimping, we did this 10 or 15 times to catch about 200 shrimp in all. They were small. We didn’t eat the heads, although I can tell you after the amount of work it took to catch those bastards I’m not sure why not.
So, all of this has been leading up to my story for today. Last night I went out to sushi for dinner. Among the many things I ordered was a pair of amaebi (sweet raw shrimp). At most places that I go for sushi, amaebi is served with the fried heads. I don’t eat them. It’s not that I’m grossed out or anything, it’s the texture of the exoskeleton. I don’t really like the way it feels when I chew it. Last night though, I was really hungry and I hadn’t ordered that much food. The little crustacean head was just begging to be eaten. I grabbed one up in my chopsticks, and starting from the thorax, bit it in half. I started chewing. I could tell that I had gotten a few whole antennae in the bite. They felt a bit like toothpicks breaking apart as I chewed. I worked my way through the crunchy bite and swallowed. I felt a sharp pain in the side of my mouth. Ouch! I thought, this really hurts! I could feel a stabbing pain that just radiated through the side of my mouth. I tried to move my tongue but the pain increased. My eyes were starting to water. I was thinking that everyone must think I’ve had too much wasabi. I was almost paralyzed in pain and really didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t even really figure out exactly where the source of the pain was as it seemed to be in multiple places at once. I took a drink of water. No help! I took a drink of beer. Still the agony continued! I got up and went to the bathroom. Standing over the sink I dug back under my tongue with my index finger fishing, well shrimping actually, for the source of the pain. What I found was that a small piece of fried shrimp antenna had wedged itself sideways between my frenulum and lower gums. (for my uneducated readers, the frenulum is the membrane that connects your tongue to the bottom of your mouth. ) I pulled it out and was finally out of pain. No more shrimp heads for me for a while.
Even as I write this this morning, the market is starting to fall. It’s going to be a brutal day for investors. My prediction is that a market glitch will cause trading to halt about 1 hour before the final bell. Make sure you’re done with your weeks trading before 3:00 EST. Good luck and don’t eat any shrimp heads.
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