Eating Native
On my travels nothing quite makes me feel like I've gone native when
I do three basic things: learn as much of the language as I can, stay
in native digs, and - more than anything - eat like the locals. The
last - eating local - while maybe not as rewarding as the first two
- is always the one that provides the most fun memories for me.
Furthermore, to my land-bound conservative fellow Minnesotans, the
stories about foods I have ventured to try always seem to be a big
hit.
My most memorable meals were from a year I spent a year in Qaarsut, a
small village of 200 in north-west Greenland. I came to the country
as a vegetarian - and one with a reputation as a finicky eater at
that. But it was meat and fish or nothing.
The first week I was there - my new neighbor had killed a seal, one
of the mainstay traditional foods for these subsistence hunters. His
mother butchered the seal and as a special gift, I was offered a
slice of the prized raw bloody liver. For me it took a surprising
effort to just go for it. From there it was raw whale skin with a
layer of blubber, sea gulls and kittiwakes, dried caribou jerky,
ptarmigan - meat and fermented greens from its stomach, fish cheeks
and more.
Prejudice against food is a powerful and strange thing - and
overcoming it made me feel proud of myself, humbled by how
prejudice in any form can be so limiting, and...an almost secret
thrill that I could just possibly be... a native.
Love your show!
Mary
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