Month: November 2020

Compared to most other carnivorous cultures, U.S. Americans are among the world’s most finicky meat eaters.  If we were a pride of lions that had just chased down a wildebeest and were gathered around for the feast, we would tend to concern ourselves with the wildebeest tenderloin, chuck roast and prime rib, leaving the majority of the carcass to rot in the sun.  Not so for much of the rest of the world, who might remark, “Hey, you’ve left some of the best parts!”

In the U.S., many people are selective about both the animal parts we eat as well as the types of creatures we consume.  As for the parts, except for a few traditional dishes (liver and onions) and many culture-within-a-culture variations, we tend to stick to the muscle and fat of the animals we eat.  There are a few notable exceptions, about which most people are either blissfully ignorant or in complete denial.  For example, that ballpark hotdog we’re sharfing down is composed mainly of “variety meats”, a labelling euphemism for “guts”, and no amount of mustard and relish can cover up that fact. 

For perspective’s sake, let’s pause a moment to recognize that there are hundreds of millions of earth’s inhabitants who eat no meat whatsoever, either out of necessity or for health, religious, or environmental reasons I personally am not of their tribe, but I respect them for their convictions, discipline, or for the fact that they might eat meat if it were available.  I am a confirmed carnivore, having grown up on a Texas cattle ranch no less, where we always had a large freezer stuffed with beef wrapped in white butcher paper.  Most Sunday nights of the year were spent gathered around our family altar, the brick barbecue grill in the backyard, as the high priest (Dad) cooked and served Fred Flintstone-sized slabs of sirloin or T-bones.

Having said that, though, I must admit that I’ve never been very adventurous when it comes to what meat I eat.   I tend to stick to the more traditional (for my culture) cuts of meat, which are mostly muscle.  I prefer my chicken in the form of a skinless breast and my fish deboned and non-fishy.  My “meat credo” is fairly straightforward:  “No Organs.”  After all, organs are designed to produce, secrete, transport, filter, or store many substances that I, for one, don’t want coming in direct contact with the parts I ingest.  But, alas, from a global perspective, I am in the minority.  The rest of the world beckons for me to broaden my gastronomic horizons.

As I stroll past our a local butcher shop here in Brussels, I spot a whole baby pig that appears to be peacefully sleeping, naked, on a bed of ice.  Trays of brains, hearts, and tongues vie for space with brightly feathered pheasants and ducks with beaks and feet still attached.  No part is wasted.  This efficiency of utilization is found in most parts in the world.  Once on a trip to Taiwan, I was eating with a Chinese family when Robert, the university student son, sought to engage me in conversation to practice his English.  Keying off of the main course, he asked, “Which part of the chicken do you not like?”  I mentioned the back and the neck, to which Robert responded, “I do not like the chicken’s ass!”  Yes, I allowed, add that to my list, too.  On that same trip I ate chicken’s feet two ways — boiled (like chewing rubber bands with goose bumps) and roasted whole, with claws intact. (Saves on toothpicks.)  On my last trip to China, I enjoyed dishes made from cow lungs and beef tendons, among many other picturesque dishes. (See photo below.)

I’m the first to admit that much of my Organ Aversion is purely mental.  And when it comes to the types of animals we eat, it is emotional as well. Different cultures may have wildly different attachments to the same species.  Why do we have no qualms about eating cows but get apoplectic at the thought of eating a horse?  After all, here in Europe there is the cheval right next to the boeuf at the supermarket.

 What’s the big deal?  Well, it seems like a big deal to me!  I grew up watching now-ancient shows like “Fury”, whose tagline was “FURY! The story of a horse…and a boy who loves him.”  I think back over those episodes and wonder if I had misinterpreted that special relationship between Joey and his horse:  “Way to save me from the abandoned mine, Fury!  Now let’s hurry home and get you a big bag of oats – You’re looking a little thin…”

Saddled with such long-held associations, I bridled at the thought of eating horsemeat, but in the spirit of experimentation, I reined in my aversion and bought a nice horse steak at the market and threw it on the grill.  I cooked it medium-well and dug in with some trepidation.  The verdict?  It was palatable, and it wouldn’t have been half bad if I hadn’t known what it was.  Years ago in junior high, a friend offered me a piece of chocolate that tasted like a crunchy chocolate candy bar.  “How was it?” he asked with mischievous cackle.  “Great,” I said, after which he gleefully informed me that it was a chocolate covered grasshopper.  It would have been OK had I not known – It’s mostly mental. 

The fact is, dietary preferences have cultural roots and are neither right nor wrong.  What is appetizing and appropriate is culturally conditioned.  For instance, many Australians devour large quantities of Vegemite, a dark brown yeasty, salty goo that tastes to the uninitiated like something scraped out of a rusted water heater.  Is it unappetizing?  Not to them, because they have grown up eating it.  On the other hand, I have met a number of Australians who are repulsed by the taste of peanut butter, which is, of course, the manna from heaven referenced in the Bible.

So what are the lessons from this?  First, all joking aside, we shouldn’t judge others’ foods and eating habits.  Listen to yourself, and when you hear yourself using words such as weird, gross, or repulsive, you’ve crossed that line.  Stick to describing and not criticizing.  At least be willing to say, “It is gross to me.” Or “It’s not something I like to eat.” 

Also, eat what you like, but be willing to stretch your dietary comfort zone a little.  If nothing else you’ll have something new to brag about!   This is also a critical part of cross-cultural etiquette.  In many cultures, turning down an offered dish is not interpreted as merely a personal preference but as a social snub.  In parts of Asia, when you are offered the eyes of the fish being served, be honored and not repulsed! (Play like that squish and spurt is a grape…)

Another point of personal reflection is around the amount of waste of edible foodstuffs in our lifestyles.   In light of world conditions, many of us waste an obscene amount of food.  No, you don’t have to eat the chicken’s feet or the cow’s stomach, but do take a look at what you throw away in a week and make responsible adjustments.

Well, it’s lunchtime, so I’ll stop for now.  Anyone up for a salad?

It had only been a few days since we three siblings sat by Larry’s bedside as he fought the last rounds of his fight against liver failure.  And now we stood in the hot Texas sun at our brother’s funeral at the Plano Municipal Cemetery, only steps away from the burial plots of our mother and father, both buried less than five years earlier.

Larry was a year younger than I but looked years older, both from the ravages of the disease and a 50-year life lived hard. A few months earlier, when he was weak but still lucid, I travelled back from Europe to spend some time with him before the imminent end.  We sat talking for several days in the small frame house in the country where we were reared.  There was a palpable awkwardness as we struggled to make casual conversation, with an elephant in the room being that we’d had very little meaningful contact over the past 25 years.  But the mood relaxed during the times when we would reminisce, looking out the window over the pecan orchards of our former ranch, down to the creek and woods where years ago we hiked and fished and camped, and to the fields where we chopped weeds and baled hay.  Much of this was in the mind’s eye of our memories, for now the former home place was bisected by a six-lane street and dotted with columned mansions, a community college, and a megachurch.

In some ways, Larry’s was not your typical funeral.  For one thing, we laid him to rest in a casket spray painted in camouflage and covered not with flowers but with an arrangement of cattails, fishing net and a duck decoy.  The paint job was the creative inspiration of my older brother and younger sister, who deemed it a fitting tribute to our avid hunter/fisherman brother but which no doubt led to some interesting conversations around the coffee machine at the Ted Dickey Funeral Home.

There in the funeral crowd stood Mr. Green, my high school history teacher, as well as Mr. Millender, my junior high football coach/geography teacher. (In those days, a standard combination).  And there was my seventh grade science teacher/third cousin Lester (or as I was instructed to call him back then, Mr. Prince).  There were various relatives and several high school acquaintances, many of whom had never moved away and seemed stuck in a time warp.  I hadn’t seen some of these people since LBJ was President, but they greeted me as if we had just talked at our lockers after math class.  (“Man, it’s good to see you, Donny!  How have you been?  Hey, remember that Boy Scout campout where we put that can of chili in Tim’s sleeping bag?”)  

Back in the hometown I left 35 years ago, I took a look in the mirror, and my roots were showing.

Like most of us, there is much of my past that I embrace and some memories that are less than fond.  My parents were urbanites who in 1954 decided to move from the city to the country, so I grew up with a foot in both camps. This urban/rural dichotomy was part of my early years.  My grandfather was a CPA in a big accounting firm in the city, but he had an illiterate brother who lived down the road from us in a small house with no indoor plumbing.  I spent hours fishing on the creek bank but also had opportunities to attend the theatre and classical concerts in nearby Dallas throughout high school.

There is much I appreciate and miss about my younger years, but when the time came to physically and emotionally leave home, it was not a difficult decision.  And my life since has been a journey of expanding horizons.  In college and with every subsequent career move, my involvement with the world has broadened.  Long before moving to Europe, I was involved and interacting with people from around the globe.  Before relocating to Belgium, I had travelled to other countries over 80 times. Now I have lived overseas three times for 14 years.  The cumulative effect has been the development of an increasingly global mindset and a greater cultural awareness, but here’s the thing:  It is built upon the foundation of my own cultural roots.

This is a key intercultural paradox:  In order to accept, understand and adapt to other cultures, a necessary first step is to understand and embrace your own cultural heritage and social identities. Why?  Because your world view, values, behaviors, and perspectives are greatly shaped by the sum of your cultural influences and the social groups to which you belong.  Being aware of “where you’re coming from” makes you more conscious of your biases, ethnocentricity, and reactions to different people.

So how does examining my cultural roots make me more interculturally aware and adaptable?  In and of itself, it doesn’t.  It’s only one key ingredient, but it’s a major first step.

When I am put in a situation or encounter that crosses culture or other differences, I am better able to do three things:

First, I can be in touch with my emotional reactions to differences.  At times I may feel irritation, impatience, confusion, embarrassment, or any number of emotions when I encounter differences.  It’s easier now to realize that hey, something’s messin’ with my Cultural Comfort Zone (See those Texas roots?) and react to the situation accordingly.

I can also be more aware of my tendency toward ethnocentrism.  It’s natural to see the universe through my cultural lenses, but it becomes a problem if I unconsciously make negative judgments about everything that is different.  Being conscious of my cultural conditioning makes it easier to say, “It’s different” rather than “It’s wrong or inferior.” This is not to say that the gut reactions totally disappear or that my picture is now included in the dictionary next to the definition of “patience”.  When living in Brussels, it still bothered me when I arrived home to find someone parked in MY driveway, but not so much when I realize that I capitalized MY because of my cultural norms and values around privacy and property, which are different than those of my European neighbors.  I still don’t like people cutting in line, but it helps me to be more patient when I am aware that I grew up with a different view of lines and orderliness.  I can be more comfortable when someone violates my personal space, more tolerant of what feels like a blunt response, or even more open-minded when someone says something critical of my home culture.

And I can be more sensitive to how my behaviors and attitudes may hinder my effectiveness.  The more I can examine my actions in light of the different culture I’m encountering, the more I begin to notice where my “typical” behaviors may at best lessen my effectiveness and at worst offend or alienate others.  Certain things that are quite acceptable in my home culture may not be in other parts of the world.  I can decide to just act the way I would back home, or I can opt to move out of my comfort zone and choose to behave in a culturally-appropriate way and thus relate more effectively.

Don’t misunderstand – cultural adaptability does not require you to be something you’re not or to abandon your heritage or identity.  In fact, it is just the opposite –  when you are true to yourself and have a clear view of your own identity, it frees you up to develop the perspectives, motivation, and skills needed to relate to just about anyone, anywhere.