If you’re reading this, you may have gone to public school. You went to school somewhere to learn how to read, right? If you went to public school, you probably ate public school lunch. You may have had a favorite meal and were so excited when pizza burger day came around. Or mac and cheese. My cafeteria back in Pennsylvania made really good brownies.
Sloppy joe. Slop, sloppy joe
Now that I teach in a public school, I get to eat breakfast and lunch there too. We eat what the kids eat. However, there are no pizza burgers or brownies. Rice is served at every meal. Sometimes I eat it and sometimes I skip it. I appreciate it either way, though, because I can identify it on sight. There’s no guessing what’s in it. It is simple and up-front. No secrets.
It’s the other dishes that I’m not quite sure about. But I smile and nod when the cafeteria lady offers me a spoonful. I have no idea what it is a majority of the time but I might love it, so I try it. And the cafeteria lady smiles back at me as she heaps the food onto my plate. She might be thinking, “Dig in, you silly white girl. ”
You never know until you try it.
I’ve discussed interesting snacks so far and if the chicken feet article did nothing else for you, I hope it taught you that the Chinese waste very little when they’re preparing food. If you haven’t learned this lesson from me yet, read on.
I love pork. Bacon, pulled pork, barbecue pork. It’s so good. And I never find bones. Until China. Last week, I nibbled on so many different parts of the pig (or zhu, in Chinese. Rhyme it with “shoe.”)
Veggies to the rescue, almost
Thankfully every day there is some kind of vegetable. Some crisp, leafy green that shines like a beacon, like a lighthouse in the night. I know that vegetables are my friends. The sole exception is cilantro, which I like to call the Devil’s Herb.
One item the lunch lady blessed me with is pictured to the right. I was so excited as I watched the pieces fall onto my plate. I thought they were mushrooms. I love mushrooms. They looked so saucy and brown and delicious.
I couldn’t wait to chopstick them into my face. I hesitated long enough to ask another teacher what it was and she told me it’s a pig toe. Its texture reminded me of meat-flavored gelatin. My excitement faded quickly. The little piggy’s toe was not like roast beef but it made me want to go “wee wee wee” all the way home.
On a different afternoon, this hunk of something showed up, nestled among some onions and peppers. I rolled it around on my plate and tried to make heads or tails of it.
I thought I had identified where the fingernail would go. I was concerned for the dear chef, thinking maybe he’d lost a shouzhi, or finger. Then my teacher friend Janet said it’s the pig tail.
Immediately I wondered why it wasn’t a cute little spiral like I had seen at all the fairs I’ve been to. There was nothing cute about it, but at least Janet ended up making tails of it after all. It also had a gelatinous texture and was not my favorite thing.
How many licks does it take?
My favorite thing ended up being another item first mistaken for mushrooms. I held it between my chopsticks, looking around the table and making eye contact with each of my three coworkers sitting with me. Alice and Linda stared at the “mushroom” and it looked like they were trying to think of the English word.
Sweet Vicki, sitting across from me, glanced at it, looked at me and didn’t say a word. I stuck the whole thing in my mouth. Vicki waited until I chewed a couple times before she said, “it is the tongue. Of the pig.” I’d forgotten to take my phone to lunch that day so I don’t have photographic proof this time. But I will eat that again.
I bet I could eat a plateful of those beef tips…
Lunch lady only gave me one piece of this stuff and at first I felt slighted. I thought it looked like beef tips. So saucy and brown. So solid. And no bones! I didn’t see a single bone shard sticking out of it anywhere.
Then I squeezed it with my chopsticks and it was like a marshmallow. My chopsticks could meet in the middle of this “meat.” It shook like jelly when I waved it around the table. I gave it a shimmy in the direction of my teacher friend Joan, who comes from northern China. She proudly told me it’s pig blood. Just a big ol’ piece of blood.
I ate a corner of it and decided I did not appreciate its texture. As far as I know, I am not lacking iron in my diet either – thank you, leafy greens – so I put it back on my plate and dug into my bok choy. I can’t wait to see what’s for lunch next week!
