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0 of 3 Premium Clicks used this month SUBSCRIBE Print + Online Subscriber Activation | Register x Forgot Password | Need an Account? e-edition | subscribe | newsletter | deals Classifieds Jobs Autos Real Estate FEATURED » NEWS NOW OSF season attendance down slightly because of wildfire smoke ... Invasive species tui chub discovered at Diamond Lake ... Volunteers try to protect iconic Haystack Rock ... OSF season attendance down slightly because of wildfire smoke ... Invasive species tui chub discovered at Diamond Lake ... Volunteers try to protect iconic Haystack Rock ... Page H. Onorato: Did you really eat that? Comment By Page H. Onorato More Content Now MailTribune.com By Page H. Onorato More Content Now Posted Apr. 22, 2015 at 8:05 AM By Page H. Onorato More Content Now Posted Apr. 22, 2015 at 8:05 AM » Social News I, like many of you, was subjected to the torture of having to clean my plate at every meal as a child. We were encouraged, ordered, threatened and bribed to eat everything, with dire consequences if we didn’t. Although many strange foods appeared on my dinner plate, things like kidney stew, beef tongue and sweetbreads, fortunately, I was spared the agony of having to consume one of my father’s favorites, brains and eggs. Whether he ate this dish because he liked it or because it was macho, I often wondered, but he would carry on, smacking his lips and saying silly things like “This is D for duh (delicious).” Folks have consumed odd things over the years for a variety of reasons. Often, the food was all that was available, or it was the least expensive. Some unusual edibles are fads, some are regional, and many are actually eaten for enjoyment. Take my friend from upstate New York. “I never had grits until I came down here to live,” he admitted, “But I really like them. They’re so good with grape jelly.” Of course I straightened him out in a hurry. “Kent, nobody eats jelly on grits. You eat them with butter or egg juice or gravy or shrimp, but not grape jelly.” I felt the same way when Aunt Sister fixed one of her favorite snacks, an apple, bacon and peanut butter sandwich. “How can you eat that?” I asked her. Her reply was a shrug as she chomped away with gusto. Remember the scene in “To Kill a Mockingbird” where Scout is aghast when her friend Walter comes for dinner? “He’s gone and drowned his dinner in syrup,” she criticizes, deserving the whack on the rear she gets from Calpurnia. I had an uncle who put sorghum on his turnip greens and mayonnaise on his fish, and no one dared criticize. Then there are those folks who can’t eat anything without ketchup on it. I know one such aficionado of the red bottle who puts ketchup on his pancakes. Oh, but come to think of it, there are those who think I’m weird for putting it in my oyster stew. One dainty little lady I know actually crunches down on her chicken bone when she’s finished gnawing the meat off her drumstick. “It’s the best part of the chicken,” she exclaims. I shuddered at the thought of eating raw fish, things like ceviche and sushi. “But Page,” a friend reminded me, “You love oyster cocktail, don’t you? And clams on the half shell. They’re all raw, so what’s the difference?” Hmm, so they are, I had to admit, but still find raw fish a bit unnerving. Is it an odd habit, or is it just me who thinks it strange to put sugar on tomatoes? Or to sprinkle it on rice for a breakfast dish? Or to soak cucumbers in sugar water or put it in corn bread? There’s no accounting for people’s taste in food. We think it odd that things like canned giant water bugs and fried spiders and white ant eggs and pickled snake heads are eaten in other cultures, while we consume all kinds of weird stuff ourselves, like hog intestines and private parts of steer. I heard once of a group in South Carolina that calls itself the Colon Club; you have to consume 30 feet of chitt’lins in order to be a member. And yes, people actually eat mountain oysters; there are 3,870 recipes for them online. Plus, we sit around feeling chichi as we nibble on caviar and escargot, then make fun of those who enjoy a snack of grub worms and salted locusts. There are those who relish inedible things like dirt, starch, crayons, chalk and such. There are those who won’t eat anything blue, or anything looking at you (a whole lobster, a suckling pig, a stuffed salmon) or anything with wings. Looks like it’s live and let live at the dinner table, so I’ll gladly leave the brains and eggs to you macho types. But don’t you go making fun of me when I put mustard on my fried egg sandwich. Lexington (N.C.) Dispatch columnist Page H. Onorato is a retired teacher. By Page H. Onorato More Content Now MailTribune.com By Page H. 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