Wednesday 4 June 2008

How Can I Eat Slugs?

My father had the unfussiest palate of any human being I have ever met; he could and did sample rattlesnake, jack rabbit, weeds, insects, and anything my mother chose to serve, including intentionally burnt cabbage, and peanut butter and mustard sandwiches. I have tried to emulate him. Although I spent my first fifteen years picking bits of onion out of salad and turning my nose up at a lot of meals (remember, I had a mother who served peanut butter and mustard sandwiches), I have come a long way. No longer am I a fussy eater, and in this respect, I would make my father proud. But to my knowledge, he never ate slugs, and neither have I. I'm not saying I never would, but it would take a lot. Like the sort of horrible hunger I hope to never experience.

Then, some time after my post about slugs, I saw that someone had found my blog after googling the following question: How can I eat slugs? (You've got to love the ambiguity of that question!) My post about slugs was just a load of venting after they'd scarfed my pumpkin seedlings, but this was something I have wondered about for ages: given that eating escargot is seen as fairly posh and sophisticated, why not eat garden snails, properly prepared? And if garden snails can be eaten, then why not shell-less snails, or slugs?

Okay, I'll tell you: because of the ewww factor. When you encounter escargot, the ewww factor has been reduced to virtually nil. You tend to be in a posh restaurant, dressed in your best. The escargot are served piping hot with loads of butter, herbs, and garlic, in a fancy little dish, by someone who may make more money than you do. Never mind that they are a little rubbery; that as you chew, your imagination may stray to the garden path, along which many things may be found, such as dog-do, bird droppings, and what my cat buries; you're in a nice place, you've got loads of French bread to sop up the garlicky butter with, and you've got wine. Lots of wine.

Take away the good silverware and the cute little dish, the wine and warm, crusty French bread and all the other accoutrements -- and you've got a rather creepy, though endearing, little garden pest exuding slime.

Still, I fought off the ewww response and examined this intellectually. I have met people who claim to have eaten a lot of snails and slugs: every Japanese person who lived through the war has a story about hunting for garden mollusks. A Korean friend who lived through the war as a child remembers her mother and brothers going into her garden to dig for slugs and snails in the snow. There are countless tales of POWs eating slugs during the war -- roasting them in Borneo, boiling them in Burma. People have eaten slugs and survived, so why don't we do this?

So I did some googling of my own and found the stories of two contemporary non-starving men who have eaten slugs. And boy, are they interesting.

The first story is from Sydney, Australia. In 2003, a student swallowed two Leopard slugs on a bet, thus earning himself 20 Australian dollars and a nasty case of meningitis. Tests found that the meningitis was caused by a worm normally seen in rat lungs but carried as larvae in slugs and snails. Doctors had to drain fluid from inside the young man's skull, and he spent two and a half weeks in the hospital. It was five months before he was able to resume his normal lifestyle. Apparently, children have died from meningitis after eating slugs, and others have contracted it after eating lettuce contaminated with slug slime.

Okay: meningitis. That's a really good reason not to eat slugs. But you can get trichinosis from eating raw pork. You can get BSE from eating beef, even if it's cooked; you can get a nasty parasite from eating gefilte fish. So the problem here isn't eating slugs, it's eating unprepared slugs.

The next slug-eater is Tim Pearce, Assistant Curator and Head, Section of Mollusks, Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and a total hero in my book. Because he doesn't just swallow slugs raw on a dare; he tells you how to do it right.

Unfortunately, after reading about how to do it, all I can say is that I hope I'm never reduced to eating slugs. But I'm going to tell you how anyway because this is a full-service blog.

Apparently, the digestive gland of some slug species is foul-tasting. But not to worry -- it can be removed while cooking by making "a longitudinal slit in the tail and peeling the skin back, then either pulling off or cutting off the dark- colored...gland." I read on, open-mouthed, about recommended slime removal, achieved by putting live slugs into a 50-50 water/vinegar solution. "The solution," Dr. Pearce tell us, "is fatal to the slugs in a few minutes, and in the process, they exude most of their slime. Also, when you are boiling them, change the water after a minute or two to remove further slime."

Dr. Pearce also points out that slugs generate more slime than snails, perhaps as a defensive measure since they don't have shells. (Works on me.)

"After they are cooked (and the digestive gland removed, if necessary)," writes Dr. Pearce, "you can use the slugs as you would clams (e.g., slug chowder); be creative." If necessary, dear God. How do you find that out?

I am not making fun of Dr. Pearce. In fact, I sincerely admire him just as I admired my father, who could eat ants and rattlesnakes. Also, I'm betting that if we watched clams prepared, say, or other food we deem perfectly acceptable, we'd be as grossed out as I am by the thought of desliming slugs or removing their digestive glands. Or --(feh!)-- slug chowder.

Anyone want some nice vegetable soup?

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53 comments:

Tabitha said...

*raising hand*
I'll go for some vegetable soup, thank you! LOL!!

I do love your stories. :)

Anonymous said...

Hey Mary...our familial similarities do not end at hoarding. My father has what we call an iron stomach. One time he and my brother ate the same lunch meat which supposedly bore a little white spot in the center. My dad said it was nothing, it won't hurt ya!! And it didn't hurt HIM, but my brother spent the next 24 hours bent over the toilet claiming my father tried to kill him. He might have had a case if my dad hadn't eaten the same stuff and was unaffected!!! Oh, the meals, don't get me started.

Travis Erwin said...

I always wonder about eh first guy to look at snails, or slugs, or crawdads and said Hey I know that looks disgusting but I'm gonna eat it anyway. There had to be booze and a dare involved.

Gorilla Bananas said...

I wonder whether you can make sandwich paste from slugs by mashing them up. The slime might actually come in use then. Mustard and slug sandwich could be a delicacy.

debra said...

I am currently experiencing the phase beyond the ewwwwwwww, commonly known as the gag. I also experience this reflex when I consider liver. My mother once made liver with a new recipe, which, she said, tasted just like pepper steak. Full of optimism, I lifted the lid of the casserole and took a deep breath. L-I-V-E-R. I can still smell it. And gag.
Please pass the vegetable soup, Mary.

Brave Astronaut said...

Hey, with enough butter and garlic, almost anything can taste good. Escargot (sorry, I know they're slugs, but we'll get along fine if we keep calling them escargot) is one of those foods that I will always order if it is on the menu (provided that menu is in a good, French restaurant.

Mary Witzl said...

Tabitha -- Thank you for not running away and gagging -- like my kids do whenever I mention slugs and cooking in the same sentence. I'll put on a big pot of vegetable soup, (if the slugs leave me any vegetables, that is).

Kathie -- My father had this too, as did my grandfather and his father before him. They called it a cast iron stomach and were very proud of their ability to digest just about anything. I sometimes think they must have created the most amazingly complex immune systems. And other times I think they just lucked out.

If we ever meet, we'll have a lot of fun comparing meals! My mother hated to cook and eagerly sought out short cuts. The peanut butter and mustard thing was really a creative bit of cuisine on her part.

Travis -- You are so right, and I'm betting it was a bunch of guys, too, rather than just one on his own. Or if it was just one, he was a very hungry guy. We owe them a lot, but I can't help but think there's a good reason why slugs never made it to the crawdad level of human consumption.

GB -- Hey, I've got a blender, and I'll bet you do too; which one of us will try this first?

One of my father's entomologist buddies experimented in his kitchen with ground-up insects, putting them into savory pancakes. My kids don't know how lucky they've got it.

Debra -- I am with you 100% on liver. Nothing will get me past the smell, the texture, or the thought of all that blood. (Sorry!) A friend of mine, hearing that I was anemic, kindly cooked me a dinner in which everything was loaded with iron, including a huge stew made with liver. I wanted so badly to please her by eating even part of it, but just the smell made me gag.

BA -- I've had them too, but I'd be less inclined to order them if I were sampling the wares of a street vendor. I've heard of people purging snails on a variety of herbs and oatmeal, for as long as two weeks. Somehow the thought of them munching on fresh herbs and oatmeal first makes the thought of eating them a little nicer.

Charles Gramlich said...

I'd eat slugs myself, but I'd want them cooked well.

Tigermama said...

Gross! No slugs for moi but my dear husband eats all kinds of "gross" things. Fish eyes, cow intestines, pigs feet, pigs face (Okinawan specialty), and many more.

Time for breakfast! :)

laura said...

I love escargot but I don't know why as I'm a very squeamish person! I'm like an ostrich with its head in the sand, if I don't see it being prepared then it doesn't look like a snail...

-eve- said...

wow
engrossing
thing about eating slugs would be, 'if they don't taste good, why eat them?'
Unless they're healthy, perhaps...? ;-)

Carolie said...

*gulp* Wow, I'm glad I just ate them, and didn't have to "de-gland" them. Ewwwwwww.

I've never heard of peanut butter and mustard, though I've had 1. peanut butter, bacon and mayonnaise, 2. peanut butter and dill pickle, and 3. peanut butter with raisins (my grandmother called those "flies and earwax sandwiches" to watch us shiver, delightedly grossed-out).

I love clam chowder, and I love escargot (and have had slugs prepared this way)...maybe if we could call them something other than "slugs"?

I'm in Taiwan right now, eating adventurously and trying not to wonder what things actually are as I try them. So far, my favorite is a dried bacon and sugar powder added to meat and vegetable fillings in steamed buns and the large, lumpy rice balls. Powdered bacon candy. MMMMMMmmm! And that amazing soup I had last night with the tender meat that didn't really seem like beef, or pork....I Do. Not. Want. To. Know.

Mary Witzl said...

Charles -- Me too -- I think. I've eaten road and a few other indifferently prepared things besides, but my slugs would have to be cooked by someone with impeccable Cordon-bleu credentials.

Tigermama -- That is impressive! I've eaten fish eyes, and in one aunt's garage, I can still remember a certain glass jar filled with pickled pigs' feet that even now makes me shiver. But the way I see it, people who can eat animals' faces are admirable; at least they know where the meat is coming from.
Is your husband Okinawan?

Laura -- I feel pretty much the same way. You've got to hand it to people who have cooked their own slugs. I tell myself that if the need should ever arise, I'll be sitting pretty. You ought to see how many of them are in my compost heap. I could easily supply the entire neighborhood.

Eve -- A couple of people in Australia could tell you that the one thing slugs are not is healthy! I'm betting the kid who swallowed that slug will be careful about what he eats from now on.

Carolie -- What a wonderful grandmother you had! I've taken to doing this with one of my youngest's friends who is finicky about everything. Whenever she visits, I delight in giving perfectly normal things disgusting names. I figure if someone is going to gag at homemade tomato sauce with garlic, red wine, and herbs, they might as well gag at bats' blood with festering mold.

If you're in Taipei, have some snake. It's very good -- a little like unagi! I believe the Chinese can make just about anything taste good, though my husband argues this is not the case in Mainland China.

Kim Ayres said...

I would have thought the species or breed would have been quite important. The common garden snails in the UK were introduced by the Romans as a delicacy (I think that's right, unless I'm mixing it up with pheasants, but I don't have time to Google it).

A Paperback Writer said...

Gee, I am so very glad I decided to peruse your blog while I ate breakfast this morning.
I must respectfully disagree with brave astronaut: I don't care how much garlic you put on a snail; it's still a snail.
I have eaten escargot and found it high in the ick factor realm. Right up there with octopus (which has 8 legs and is pretty much nothing more than a big water spider as far as food goes). And I've had to eat a lot of octopus on dance tours in Italy.
Other less-common stuff I've eaten includes: reindeer (good), ostrich (greasy), camel hoof soup (high gag factor, but I ate a whole bowl because I was being filmed in China), duck brain (ew. but I ate it), duck tongue (twice! once fried and once stewed. fried has a lower gag factor), solidified duck fat (swallowed whole as quickly as possible), and fermented goose egg (I managed to spit this one descretely into my napkin when the camera was on my friend. I felt that this was the lesser evil compared to barfing all over the table in a famous restaurant and offending the Chinese government which was paying for our dinner.)

I could eat rattlesnake and feel okay about it. Squirrels would be fine. But I'd sooner eat rats than slugs, if it came down to starvation.

Tigermama said...

No he`s not Okinawan but we lived there for almost 3 years. The face wasn`t his favourite but he still craves the feet...go figure! (That last sentence is extremely weird if taken out of context!)

Chris Eldin said...

EWWWW!!!! Unprepared slug...
We pretty much are vegetarians around here anyway....

LOL--You *are* a full service blog!!!
:-)

Mary Witzl said...

Kim -- If this is true, the Romans have a lot to answer for, speaking purely as a gardener. They introduced ground elder too, a lovely (and edible, I am told) plant which is a little too exuberant and tends to crowd everything else out. I've been aggravating my arthritic shoulder over it in our garden, and still it keeps popping back. I wish I had a couple of Romans I could get to take it all out for me. While they were at it, they could collect all the slugs and snails too...

APW -- I love the fact that you have such a rich culinary background, and I commend you for finishing that camel hoof soup; you're a better woman than I am! I like the taste of octopus and squid, and I don't mind preparing them either. I know they're mollusks, like snails and slugs, but I don't see them gliding over the neighbor's dog-do in our garden. I've eaten all the duck stuff too, but it just about breaks my heart: I think ducks are charming, endearing little creatures -- AND they eat slugs! I don't feel the same way about geese, and would happily eat another fermented goose egg if I could get one.

I'd eat rats before I'd eat slugs, but they too would be way, way down on my list.

Tigermama -- I'm impressed: your husband really went native! If you ever visit the American South, make sure and get him some pig trotters. I'm betting they still eat them there. (How right you are about that sentence sounding funny out of context. Context is everything!)

Chris -- $20 (Australian) just isn't enough, is it? You'd have to pay me thousands just to deslime my own slugs, come to that. That's thousands of U.S. dollars, too. I too am virtually a vegetarian, and after reading about slugs, all the more so.

Robert the Skeptic said...

This is waaaaaayy more information than I need to know about preparing slugs for consumption!! I have eaten escargot and they are indeed rubbery... I think they are a novelty food eaten for the shock value rather than the taste.

In Japan, we adopted the "don't ask, don't tell" policy and didn't ask what we were eating until AFTER we ate it. That worked well until my wife encountered her first slice of Lotus Root. She, at the minimum, wanted to know if it was of "animal" or "vegetable" origin.

Yes, some nasty parasites live some of their life cycle in mollusks. I make it a rule not to eat them.

Ello - Ellen Oh said...

I love vegetable soup - with slug stock of course! ;o)

kara said...

i am very glad i read this now that i've finished my dinner. cottage cheese and doritos. together. brilliant combo and i wasn't even the one to invent it.

Eryl Shields said...

I nearly chocked to death on a mouthful of tea when I read 'Slug Chowder' But this was a hugely informative and enjoyable post. You never know when we might need to know how to prepare what ever is available to eat.

Pig's trotters were one of my childhood favourite foods, haven't had them for years though.

Unknown said...

If I ever get hungry enough to eat slugs, I believe I will become a vegetarian. Roots and grass and bark sound altogether lovely, considering the options. Are you trying to convert the world to a meatless diet, one slug at time?

Mary Witzl said...

Robert -- I remember that about snails from biology (and now I am struggling to remember how to spell schistosomiasis...) Slugs seem to have plenty of nasty bugs themselves, so it really is hard to get excited about all the potentially free meat they constitute.

I love lotus root and have two in my refrigerator as I write this, but I too couldn't figure out what it was at first. The only Japanese food I really can't get behind is natto. Nasty, smelly stuff, and as slimy as slugs...

Ello -- Slug stock -- I love that! It might be fun to see which one of us can think of the grossest thing, but as we're both really good at this I'm afraid we might disgust everyone else to bits.

Kara -- Cottage cheese and doritos sound like a great combination, especially when you consider all the other dodgy options out there.

Eryl -- Slug chowder didn't get me hungry either! And I agree: you never know when you might need to know how to deslime slugs, and fortune favors the prepared. I say that in all seriousness, though I fervently hope I'll never need this particular skill.

Carole -- I want to agree with you, but then I've just had dinner. If I were really hungry, I think I might just be able to eat slugs. Which is why I aim never to be hungry if I can help it. Maybe I am getting a little evangelistic about vegetarianism, come to think of it!

Kappa no He said...

We have those garden slugs and the ones that raid the rice field (jumbo taneshi)! Every year when they come out I get to listen to m elderly neighbors wax nostalgic about eating them.

Mary Witzl said...

I've never heard of jumbo taneshi. Is that a local term, do you know?

You should write down those stories. I read Haruko and Theodore Cook's 'Japan at War: an Oral History of Japan' a few years back and there are a few slug and snail eating stories there too. If I'd eaten slugs and snails, I'd definitely want to tell people about it. Especially kids who've never known poverty or real need.

Miss Snail Pail said...

Yea!! Garden mollusks are the new local food group for us here in Portland, OR. I am Miss Snail Pail, and haven't had much success finding snails to collect once I moved up here. I have found about 5. They are breeding now, but my mission to reduce garden pests without pesticides and provide nutritious local food has turned me to slugs. It has taken about 4 years to even consider it. I was certain my Slug Thug would arrive to drown them in a mug of beer. When in CA collecting the massive amount of snails in gardens, it didn't seem like slugs could ever pass my lips. But now I am in the process of trying to find affordable (free?) tissue analysis to show their nutritional value and check for pollutants. Anyone connected to a lab? I just wrote a piece about garden mollusks last night. Today I googled the topic, voila! It is time to savor the garden mollusk. I am going to put the little piece I wrote onto my website in the next few days. Please check it out. www.misssnailpail.org

Mary Witzl said...

Miss Snail Pail -- I left a comment on your blog. If you can manage to prepare and eat garden slugs, you have my sincere admiration. But COOK THEM WELL! I recommend getting in touch with Dr. Pearce. He obviously knows what he's doing.

My sister gardens and she is a vegetarian. She collects all her slugs in a pail and feeds them to the ducks in the local park. They're much better for ducks than bread crumbs, and I can promise you that the ducks appreciate them.

Miss Snail Pail said...

Thank you, Mary. I got your post on my blog too. I used to feed all the baby snails to the ducks, mid-size to a friend's hedgehog and turtles. I will have to contact Dr. Pearce. And about the wild plants you mentioned,I have loads of dandelion flowers in the freezer as we speak; planned to make wine, probably make fritters. I'll let you know how the slug situ goes. Calling Fish and Wildlife right now! ciao

alexiii said...

um... peanut butter and mustard? that's nasty.

Courtney said...

Thank you for this very informative post. I collected enough slugs last night to fill a pint jar and drowned them in beer, but they were definitely big enough to eat.

Mary Witzl said...

MSP -- How did the slugs cook? If I didn't know what they were, I'm betting I'd have enjoyed them very much.

Alexii -- My mother didn't think so, and neither did my sisters or father. I'm with you, though. I eat my peanut butter with jam or honey. I'm old-fashioned like that.

Ms Courtney -- You did deslime them first, right? And you removed the digestive gland?

I feel a little ill, writing that.

Daniel said...

I love this article! Now I can eat slugs! Yes! I think I will make slug chowder! I love chowder! I have been wondering how to eat slugs ever since I saw the crows eating them every morning from the road! It was like they were hopping along a buffet ;)

Mary Witzl said...

Well, now I know what the crows are after when I see them lined up on the road, pecking at God-knows-what. They're welcome to all the slugs they can eat as far as I'm concerned, and remind me to tell my farmer friends about this.

But come to think of it, what is it that crows DON'T eat? Just because they can -- or will -- eat something doesn't mean I'm going to line up for it.

Anonymous said...

I usually dare

but also take care

unlike the Unlucky Australian.

Today, too, I caught a (small though ) slug and was guaranteed that will be asked by my friends to swallow it.

and gosh...

your blog saved me when I hit the search.

Actually, I've had snakes and shrimps and caterpillars once or twice but never tried my teeth on a slug.

( Have to mention that I'm a big-big-big fan of Bear Grills from Man vs Wild series )

and yes...

I'd would definitely like to try it with proper procedure.
Would you please seek a video or pictorial guide regarding that ?

Thanks !

Enjoy !

Mary Witzl said...

Tom -- I'm glad my blog kept you from endangering your health through slug ingestion!

Now I'm thinking I'm going to HAVE to find a pictorial guide to slug preparation. Half the people who check out my blog seem to be fascinated by this subject.

Anna said...

Just found this blog entry by searching for "can you eat slugs" - and let me tell you I was reading this in open-mouthed horror.

I can be a pretty picky eater, although I will say I recently tried soft shell crab maki, and after getting over my "OMG I'm eating a whole unpeeled crab," I quite enjoyed it!

But I'll pass on the meningitis, thank you.

Mary Witzl said...

Anna -- I've only just found your comment -- sorry it's taken me so long to reply.

I'm fascinated to know that so many people wonder about eating slugs. I'd always wondered myself, but suspected I was the only one gross enough to consider such things. When you think about it, what's the difference between a soft-shelled crab and a slug? Perhaps we should think of a more poetic name for them, preferably in French: Escargot sans shell au jardin, or something...

Anonymous said...

Thank you for posting this! My son accidentally ate a slug tonight, because he thought it was a drip of chocolate from a s'more he made (hey, it was dark!). He has been worrying about his impending death ever since. Much appreciated. Now maybe we can all get a good night's sleep.

Mary Witzl said...

Anonymous -- You have my sincere sympathies! If one of my daughters had mistaken a slug for a s'more, I don't believe she'd ever get over it. Hope your son's slug wasn't one of the bad ones -- and that your son can trade on this amusing anecdote for years to come.

Anonymous said...

Haha, brilliant! Enjoyed reading it: well-written and funny, thanx! (although I sincerely hope I won't ever need to put my new-found knowledge to practice...)

Mary Witzl said...

Anonymous -- Thank you.

Fortune favors the prepared; it's nice to know they're there if we're ever THAT desperate. And God knows, there are certainly enough of them.

Matt said...

I ate a slug on Saturday night at a friend's party. It was crawling across the patio and we got to discussing slugs vs. snails and escargot and all of that and it got turned on me about eating that particular slug. I said I would if i could cook and flavor it and that's where the fun began. People chipped in some money and dared me to do it. I grilled the slug in tin foil and then boiled it clean multiple times with light beer. all this while i prepared a butter, garlic, salt, pepper and mustard sauce that i eventually boiled the slug in the sauce. Added a dipping sauce and ate it. It actually didn't taste bad. Very much like escargot except that it was much bigger so it stuck around for awhile longer. No ill affects to this point, some money in my pocket and a good story.

Mary Witzl said...

Matt -- Good for you -- I'm impressed. The best part is, if you ever want more, you're well set up. There's no shortage of slugs in this world and it's hard to imagine there ever will be.

Bandwidth Bastard said...

Just got off the phone with a friend of mine in New Jersey. Seems they have a bumper crop of slugs this year. He mentioned that a remarkably large specimen drew his attention in his neighborhood. Then I recalled seeing one at a friend's house when I was a child. It must have been 7 or 8 inches long. We wondered if people ate them, and if so, how. The inevitable Google search followed, and here I am.
Despite warnings from hospital officials, I think if slugs are cleaned, boiled and then fried or stewed they should be fine. But then I eat octopi, beef tongue, beef tripe, lamb tongue, squid, eel, raw eggs etc. So what do I know.

Mary Witzl said...

BB -- Although I have no way of knowing, I'll bet the factor that makes most people wonder whether you can eat slugs is how huge some of them are. Who wants to go to all the trouble of cleaning and gutting if they're puny little things? I always know when it's raining in various places around the world: I get a bumper crop of blog visitors who have no doubt watched some gargantuan mollusk slither across their porch and asked themselves the same question.

I love eels, squid, and octopus, and I eat raw eggs and raw fish too, despite the salmonella risk. But I wouldn't touch raw meat or poultry with a barge pole.

Patrick said...

I just ate a slug on a dare. Fried it up well-done in oil and garlic. It wasn't half bad. Basically flavorless and chewy. We didn't have internet where I was so I didn't get a chance to get freaked out by the meningitis risk.

Now I'm wondering about the nutritional profile. I prefer harvesting to weeding (eat the weeds!), and would consider doing the same with slugs in the future. Talk about a sustainable protein.

Mary Witzl said...

I've eaten plenty of weeds too: hairy bittercress is as tasty as watercress, dandelions are good and nutritious, and they say ground elder is better for you than spinach. But I tip my hat to you for managing the slug, fried with garlic or otherwise. With such a brave spirit, you've definitely got a sustainable future.

Adam said...

Thanks for sharing. I was considering chowing down on the slugs in my garden in revenge for destroying my tomato crop. But really, probably not worth the effort at this point.

Mary Witzl said...

Adam -- I had no idea that slugs ate tomato plants. For some reason, the slugs in our garden leave our few (hardy) tomato plants alone. They've taken out all my marigolds, dahlias, and hostas, so I should be grateful for small favors.

Seb said...

After recently eating snails and enjoying them I'm glad I found this.

Shall stick to paying my £20 to a random restaurant every few years for the garden pest bonanza.

Excellent blog. Ta

Mary Witzl said...

Seb -- I'm with you on this. I have enormous respect for the pioneers who prepare and eat slugs for themselves, but unless our financial situation takes a real nose-dive, I won't be joining them in a hurry.

Thank you for your praise.

Anonymous said...

I thought I invented peanut butter and mustard sandwiches. It has to be unsweetened peanut butter and spicy mustard, on rye bread with slices of ripe tomatoes and curry powder - delicious!!!