This is a food story

It is kinda neat, to me, when we humans from different cultures meet each other. Often there is friction, which is kind of normal, to me, to include our bellys.

What still amazes me, is the food stories between the different cultures, but even more the stories that come from when urban meets rural in about any culture and time, like what we eat, and thrive on, to include feeding our kids.

Obviously, to me, the world is becoming more urban, whether that is good or bad, I do not know. And during that process, just what we eat is also changing, like what we eat and serve our Families.

This is a fun story.

I had an Afghani friend decades ago at Ft. Sill, and we agreed that even most foreigners were considered "dirty" by the local mothers protecting their kids, like that was a "universal" truth. For example, one can drink from any glass, but then most mothers clean it before their kids can use it, of course in a suttle way that most guys know. The same fellow would also offer me Afghani food home cooked in his BOQ room, and I would nibble and politely decline going for more. Mostly, it was a chicken meal, by the way, and usually I left hungry, but also thinking I had done my best to accommodate my friend. I also suspect, he thought otherwise.

So let me devolve into other food stories, mostly about wherever ever we live.

It has to do with eating possum, which a lot of people still eat in the rural USA.

It must be a rural recipe, which includes Monterey (Tennessee). Even my Groton (South Carolina) time had many having 2 or 3 possums for super bowl parties. Even the local Piggly Wiggly in Estill there offered chicken legs, like the real thing.

The key thing is to feed possums food you trust, like dog food, for a few days
or more. This lets this carrion eater "clean out". Usually, one keeps them
in something like a chicken coop.

Paul Hargis (my caretaker at the time) once told me that once he saw a possum crawling out of a dead cow carcass, and that was when he lost interest in eating possum.

Back not long ago when I trapped actively, mostly I caught raccoons, but
did catch some possums, too.

In one location it got to be like Red Fox 14, Williams 0. Bummer. I guess
it enjoyed all the sardines and soy oil I could provide.

And I remember when my mother's mother wrung a chickens neck as part of
preparing it for a meal in Franklin, Tn. USA. After seeing all that, I and Max (ny brother) would not eat it, though when you think about it, it was probably cleaner
than store bought.

I've never tried possum; in fact tonight I am eating some stuffed (with
scallops and crabmeat) sole.

PS Back in my USMC time we had some severe racial problems, and one solution was to have soul food day in the mess hall once a week. Well this idea backfired because most black Marines were from cities, and abhorred foods like "Chitlins". Of course, being from rural Tennessee, I was very familiar with it, too, since it was often made at home, including by JoJo (my mother) if you can believe that. I myself would not eat it, though I have eaten other strange things (to me) in my time around the world.

PPS One more USMC story. One of my ruff tuff Marine friends went to a wedding in Istanbul, Turkey, and at the reception they had a local delicacy; cold
soup with chopped lambs intestine. Well, he ate it, and then proceeded to
blow chow in front of everybody. Give him credit, at least he reported it on himself.