Editor’s Note: Reprinted from Oxford American Magazine.
My husband Daryl tells two stories: In the first, his grandmother makes a dish called organ stew – every part of a freshly slaughtered pig that formerly served a life-giving function (heart, liver, stomach, pancreas, brain, lungs) is brought to a rolling boil in a large pot of salted water. What isn’t rendered chewable by human teeth is tossed into a bucket by the dining-room table, which, when full, is taken out back and fed to the surviving pigs. It’s an endless cycle, a Draconian, pig-eat-pig kind of world.
In the second story, my husband’s father picks up a roast for dinner. Daryl hungrily pulls the foil aside to reveal, to his horror, a large, bald, crispy-toed possum, its tail dangling indeliciously over the edge of the platter.
I tell one story: Every spring, my family gathers around the table and eats gefilte fish, washing it down with kosher wine. At the Passover Seder my husband and I host for 10 friends at our tiny house in the foothills of the Appalachian mountain chain, I am the only Jew and, according to the friends, the indisputable winner of the “Repulsive Foods” contest.
Every culture has its culinary embarrassments. Boiled organs and roasted marsupials are my husband’s. A trio of whitefish, carp and pike, simmered with tails, fins, heads and bones, then ground and pressed into balls that quiver in a suspension reminiscent of hair gel, paired with a syrupy wine that coats the tongue like a cadmium oil slick, are mine.