the adlards

MGW takes no prisoners. The Spring rains brought snails to the Cape Town garden. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of snails. Each evening just after dark a foray party would head into the front garden and ruthlessly stomp fifty or sixty snails. Then My Sister In Law intervened. If snails were human I’d call her a humanitarian. I guess in the event she’s a snailitarian. Anyway, snails started being collected in 500ml containers and transported to a nearby park for release. The roads were checked for snail trails to make sure they weren’t returning.

Eventually a day came when Josie decided she – “and Dad” – would like to cook and eat the snails they were collecting. I’m still not absolutely sure who put her up to that. For the past two weeks we’ve had a tank full of snails purging their little guts of anything poisonous by feasting on fresh lettuce and mixed veg every morning.

Today was cooking day for the snails. Yes, I have slime on my hands. Unremarkably, after washing snails, plunging snails into boiling water and simmering snails, shelling snails, cooking snails in stock and arranging fetchingly on princess plate Josie wasn’t having any of it.

[Pokes a snail] “Dad, it’s quite squidgey.”
“Yes it is love.”
“I don’t think I quite want it.”
“Are you sure, because you won’t have another chance?”
“Could you keep it in the fridge until I’m five?”
“No, but if you want snails when you’re five we can cook some more.”
“OK. I don’t want these ones Daddy.”

Daddy ate two and won’t be trying this again.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 27th, 2007 at 7:20 pm by james and is filed under Food, Josie, Ramblings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.