In case it fails to display, once again, the subject header should
read, "Sluggish Newsday"
subtitled: with friends like US who needs enemies...?
Does the aroma of sizzling Escargots whet your appetite? ... or is
the slimy-slider all-wet as a food item in your culinary
repertoire ? Hope your pun-quotient hasn't gone soddenly sere ...
as the following toxic-tale, plate du jour will otherwise surely
turn your tummy against phylum mollusca forever. Turns out the
little buggers have a taste for heavy metal ... and we're not
talkin' Led Zep either.
Side note - unless you are of a 'certain age' you may not realize
that the US "dropped" three enormous hydrogen bombs on Spain forty
years ago. They were among the largest H-bombs ever deployed.
That's right ... and what is equally miraculous is that we have
somehow managed to marginalize that incident in the world-press
over the years - since there were only a few dozen fatalities.
Savory or not, the snail has a long and diverse history as a human
food source, even though not all varieties are edible; and many
(now more than ever) are poisonous. Snail shells have been found
at numerous archaeological sites, especially in the Mediterranean
basin - and snails were an everyday item in the diet of the Romans
and Greeks, etc. They are not "Kosher" but then again neither is
lobster or scallops.
Escargots, as prepared in French cuisine, is a mostly-garlic dish
said to contain cooked snails... but who can be sure with that
much butter, garlic herbs and spices ... heck, the budget-gourmet
could probably turn road-kill into a delicacy with that recipe.
BTW the French word, and the edible species itself, are of Catalan
(Spanish) origin.
The following news story is almost an "anniversary" remembrance of
that other Spanish miracle, not the contemporaneous Franco
'desarollla', but the Palomares fizzler, or whatever it was - is
now buried deeply in the annals of the 'highly improbable, but
true' ! ... hmmm... kinda reminiscent of the practice of eating
snails. BTW - the "fortieth" is traditionally known as the
Ruby-Anniversary, but in Spain it is more like Plutonium.
"MADRID (Reuters) - The discovery of radioactive snails at a site
in southeastern Spain where three U.S. hydrogen bombs fell by
accident 40 years ago may trigger a new joint U.S.-Spanish
clean-up operation, officials said on Wednesday."
The hydrogen bombs fell near the fishing village of Palomares in
1966 after a mid-air collision between a bomber and a refueling
craft, in which seven of 11 crewmen died.
Hundreds of tons of soil were removed from the Palomares area and
shipped to the United States after high explosive igniters on two
bombs detonated on impact, spreading plutonium dust-bearing clouds
across nearby fields.
.. bon apetite & kick it up a notch....
Signed,
Emeril Bam-Bam Tuttle
famous Chef and creator of Escargot-Palomares (guaranteed
to glow in the dark)
