Carl sent me to the store for soy sauce and water chestnuts. I returned to the smell of chicken stir fried with onions and other vegetables and saw that Carl had also added some whole grain spaghetti. He dumped in the little container of water chestnuts, splashed some soy sauce and voila! We had supper, courtesy of Carl. Considering Carl never follows a recipe, and he has been known to prepare some truly awful dishes, this one was a winner. The crunch of the water chestnuts mingled with the chewy chicken and the starchy spaghetti made it even more enjoyable for me.
Katie and Hailey, on the other hand, did not enjoy their first experience with water chestnuts and picked them out one by one before otherwise cleaning their plates. "What are these things?" they asked.
"Water chestnuts."
"Disgusting."
The older they get, the more disgusting things there seem to be in the world.
Later Katie and Hailey snuggled into my king sized bed with me for some rare, late-evening conversation. We started by discussing college, if you can believe it. Is college fun? Where will they live? How can they get scholarships?
Somehow the course of the conversation turned from their college aspirations to my agricultural upbringing. I recalled a time when my family worked cattle. My job was to help steer the young bulls into the cattle chute, a metal contraption that squeezed each side of the bull to hold it steady while it was branded, medicated and...um...castrated.
"What do you mean, castrated?" Katie asked.
"Well," I hesitated. I considered not telling them, but realized I was about their age when this event took place.
"They cut off the cow's nuts," Carl chimed in. So much for tact.
"Actually, they cut off the bull's testicles. Cows are female."
"Ewww!"
"There's more," I continued with my agrarian story. "That evening I noticed some strange, whitish, egg-shaped things filling our kitchen sink. When I asked mom what they were, she told me supper. When I pressed, she told me they were called Rocky Mountain Oysters. She fried them up and we ate them that evening."
"What were they?" Hailey asked.
"They were the bull testicles from earlier that day."
"Yeah. Bull nuts," Carl chimed in again. At least he was getting gender correct now even if he still lacked tact."
"That's disgusting!" Hailey said, scrunching her nose. This time I had to agree.
"Why do they call them Rocky Mountain Oysters? They're not oysters."
"You got me," I answered. "I've always wondered the same thing."
We all contemplated that for a few moments until Katie said, "Now I'm scared," with a sudden look of alarm on her face. "What exactly IS a water chestnut?"
3 comments:
*snort* I will be laughing about that all day. Priceless!
Oh mama, I can imagine the poor look of terror on her face as she was wondering what in the heck water chestnuts realllly are!
Hi I found you via the Dandy Walker interest, my 2 yr old son has it too, we're currently going through a lot of medical stuff with him, just wanted to drop by and say HI
Post a Comment