‘Omg, how can you eat that thing?’
“What thing?”

The question comes right when I am savoring a bite from my escargot and about to take a sip of my wine!

Escargot, bugs, horsemeat, yes the famous Italian horsemeat tartar also known as raw horsemeat, meat sauce made of genuine pork blood…

It’s really not that hard. First I breathe in its scent, and then I gently take a bite and savor it. Because human beings in principle do not cook anything inedible. A human being is supposed to eat this! Well, after all it’s another human who cooks these ingredients. Why would anyone cook something that smells awful, tastes awful and she wouldn’t eat herself? The disgust that appears on my face as I write this is the reflection of your prejudice. You may of course not like them. But to be able to say “I don’t like this”, first you should give them a try, shouldn’t you?

My mother has a very similar attitude. Let alone worms or snails, she also resists to eat the delicious lobster and even shrimp because she thinks they look like giant bugs. Although I’m sure that she’d love it if she would only try once, I can’t bring home shrimp to cook. Same with the octopus. She says it looks like mucus! I can hear you saying “is that for real?”. Yeah, that’s for real. Right onto your plate from the documentary… Because all of this is a different perspective.
The snail that you find utterly disgusting may be the only living thing some people were able to eat at some particular time and those people may have created terrific cooking techniques to turn it into a delicious meal. Just like sashimi, or raw fish, that you find delicious may look disgusting to some other. They are all various animals at the end of the day.

A fact about gastronomic history is that some dishes have been prepared during the times of poverty or war, and the techniques and recipes have been devised accordingly. Even the food in grandiose palaces originates have commoner’s roots. Except for the delicacies solely for purposes of pleasure such ice cream especially created for kings.

Can someone please tell me why you make a disgusted face at the pork, calling it filthy? If pig is a filthy animal, how would you explain the fact that it’s one of the main food ingredients in Europe that is unarguably ahead of us (in Turkey) in terms of hygiene standards?

Alright, if we say it’s a religious sin, then to the Hindus it’s a sin to eat cow meat! Some societies say dog meat is forbidden while another says it’s the peak of taste! Some worship the bugs we crush while some fry and eat them! So how does that work?

And then there’s the vegetarianism. Fine, not eating meat is totally understandable. Honestly, even I am so close to being a vegetarian but not because of the animal rights, it’s because I don’t rely at all on the sanitary conditions of this century’s fabricated poultry and meat. Many people I know exclaiming everywhere “animals do not exist so we can eat them, you must not eat any animals, how gross! how awful!” sit at the fish restaurant by the Bosphorus right after these declarations and gobble up an octopus beaten on rocks to death or a lobster put alive on the skewer that goes through its internal organs so it doesn’t bend its tail while boiling, and talk about their heroic cause and holiness of protecting sheep from being slaughtered. So how does that work? Plants are also living then. What if the cabbage is getting hurt while boiling at low heat before being stuffed with rice?

It is one’s choice to live with the learnt stereotypes, religions or traditions that are passed from one generation to the next. I can never judge someone for not eating the escargot. Just as I don’t like seeing a disgusted face in front me while I eat my snail with delight.

So, I take a bite of my escargot and raise my glass to the unique but unfortunate fate of the grapes that contributed to the creation of this wine!

Cheers…