Tuesday, 11/23/04 - 19:24
Suppose one morning you discovered that the lawn outside your door was made of caviar, foies gras, truffles, and fat netting, all in attractive casings that would keep them fresh indefinitely. Further suppose that nobody else wanted any of it, and indeed considered the foies gras something of a pest due to its propensity for attacking trees. Or in slightly more practical terms, suppose you discovered that you had access to a prodigious supply of delicious, exceptionally fresh uni -- a.k.a. sea urchin "roe," actually gonads -- for only the price of gas money to drive to the beach. What would you do? I mean, other eating them plain, over rice, in pasta with lemon and garlic, and bringing them to potlucks.
Know what's funny? A pie in the face is funny. While sitting in a vanagon with a flat tire when your spare is out of air, waiting for AAA to send someone with an air compressor -- when you have two tanks of highly compressed leftover air in the back of your van, and no way to get them into your tires. Woman in a tow truck eventually came and rescued us, and we got home only an hour or so late. I think we were both strangely gratified to be rescued by a cute blonde chick. I sorta want to be her when I grow up. The next day we started looking for new tires, and found out no one makes them anymore. Incidentally, since our black car is in the shop in LA for a happy fun $900 of repairs, this means Ted and I are both driving our brother's big white Toyota. We're really lucky to have a family that can loan us vehicles and help us finance our car repairs into 2 or 3 easy payments.
Anyway, did you know that the recreational hunting limit on sea urchins in California is 35 per day? That's enough to feed your family of 8-10 an uni dinner every night. If you could sell it, it would be worth over a hundred dollars, maybe more, depending on the quality. What we took yesterday -- about 15 urchins -- is enough for two good dinners for two. Also, when you hollow out the urchins' insides and throw them in the trash, the spines twitch hypnotically for at least a half hour, like a cross between a lava lamp and a chicken with its head cut off.
I think the first paragraph of this entry doesn't adequately do justice to the fact that the sea urchins are alive, living on the bottom of the sea, before we kill them. Is the imagery of plentiful food lying around for the picking a variant of a pre-industrial peasant utopia, or is it the horrific consumer mentality I've learned from buying packaged chicken, now reapplied to living things more generally? Hmm. Perhaps I'll have to go with the latter.
Ted was asking people on scubaboard about hunting octopus, and now they're accusing him of kidnapping their pet golden retrievers for a snack.
Long live Diaryland!
The five most recent entries:
More Naval Gazing - Saturday, 8/13/05
Anniversary Diving - Friday, 8/12/05
Academic Tip of the Week - Tuesday, May. 17, 2005
How to tell a Midwesterner - Sunday, 4/24/05
Academic Feelings - Thursday, 4/21/05
Ted's most recent entry:
Monday, May 12