“Yuck.”
That word has been in my mailbox lately, sprinkled through like spice on an entree. It reminds me of what a great language English is.
English is not some frou-frou language of genteel nuances or unique sounds. And while it might have started out as German Lite it has borrowed so much from other languages that it’s the largest and most predominate tongue on Earth. But beyond that English is fit. It’s muscular, punchy, to the point. English has brawn. It works out, demands attention, and gets things done. Try yelling EXTINGUISH THE CONFLAGRATION instead of PUT OUT THE FIRE, and see where that will get you. Latin just can’t hold a candelabra to English.
So yes, “yuck,” a taut, vigorous English word has been populating my emails of late. Why? The answer is the Acorn Grub film, the Bon Appetit film and my article on Palm Weevils. Eating insects or their lavae is, well, yucky. So powerful is that one word that several folks have sent just one word emails. Yuck is succinct. It tells me their mental state and their opinion. All of this reminds me of a commercial on the radio of late, in fact several times a day since we are entering our fall growing season.
After some typical radio machinations a woman announces that she puts (let’s say) Weeds-Be-Dead on her garden so her husband won’t have to weed it for six months. Now she says she can enjoy her garden rather than always watching him weed. You and I know that many of those yucky weeds he’s removing are quite edible and should be in the kitchen. Weeding can be harvesting; the food is fresh, nutritious, and close to free.
I am sure some folks who are eating dandelions once viewed them as “yucky.” Eating weeds is more than knowledge and experience. It’s also a matter of attitude… just as eating insects is a matter of attitude. One yucky attitude down, one to go.
It’s not the destination that’s important but rather the journey.
Yummy!
Yummy reading indeed 🙂
Wives-to-be take note! Be certain your prospective husband is attractive to watch whilst weeding. (The outfit modeled above may help.)
Or hurt. Depending.
yummm. 😉
(I do realize I’m not the first to be witty with this, but figure I’m adding balance to all those yucks ~ and, no, the yumm is not for the grubs, but I will keep them in mind for if times get truly desperate).
Thanks for all the great videos.
With the way the world is looking Newsome of those “yuck” sounds will be “thank you Lord, for this meal I found”.
I think it is worth mentioning that their are just some wild foods that are simply “yucky”. I have no aversion to grubs or insects, but i’m not going to eat soft fresh rabbit dung (which is supposed to be edible, as i have heard from my ex military grandfather). Great article though, i hope people open up to eating wild foods a little more 🙂
Since rabbits are true herbivores, their dung may perhaps thought of as fermented vegetables.
Even rabbits cannot digest much of the plant matter they consume. You may already know that, instead of regurgitating and re-chewing their food like cattle and other ruminants, rabbits eat their ‘night pellets’ – vegetation that has already passed all the way through their digestive tract once. These are likely the same droppings that would do humans the most good in an extreme survival situation. Most everyone would agree with you that it would take a pretty extreme situation to want to eat that! Yet people sometimes starve surrounded by far more appealing food. Not Green Dean!
Most true herbivores ‘eat’ their food at least twice. I remember an ad that showed dairy cattle on pasture, with type overlaid saying, ‘I can take grass and turn it into CREAM. What’s your superpower?’
With the help of a rumn full of microbes, cattle, like other ruminants, ingest a diet high in carbohydrates, with a high percentage of structural fiber, but they digest a diet high in fatty acids (aka fats) that the rumen microbes produce. Nearly all the protein they digest is the bodies of those microbes. Dr. David G. Pugh, DVM used to say that, since many of those microscopic creatures were classified as animals, and the fat and protein that cattle digested came from those microbes – cattle were actually ‘carnivores’.
Paraphrased… but Dr. Pugh is one of the most gifted speakers of all time, and used to jolt people into taking a fresh look at things they thought they knew by pointing out facts like this, in his inimitable style. I hope someone recorded a bunch of his presentations.
I read somewhere that in California, marijuana was fed to rabbits, and their “night pellets” (is this where we get the idea of the “Easter bunny” laying chocolate eggs around the fields?) were then dried and smoked, hence one of the more common terms used for weed.