Tom’s Big Picture

Steve Sailer compares the benign Cuban ethnic lobby to the totalitarian Israel Lobby.

England declares toddlers racist who dislike nasty foreign food.

I remember I had a friend in college for a while who was an Indian Muslim (as an aside, I remember the Muslim international students pharisaically getting their Aggie rings cast in some kind of freak aluminum alloy that looked like silver, because they can’t wear gold or silver; by this late hour the saying “Highway 6 runs both ways” was considered insensitive to those who bucked Aggie tradition).

He kept trying to tell me how great Indian food was.  Now, I have roots in Louisiana, so I have a pretty high standard for food.  So we go to this buffet place near campus at A&M that reeked of curry and other things hinting at their lack of proportion in seasoning their food.

And then I figured out why this particular Indian food was so bad.  Apparently, since India is such a messed up amalgam of various cults and sects, any restaurant serving a limited clientele (like international students at Texas A&M) must cater to every cult’s preferences.  Of course, the cult following Mohammed can’t eat pork or shellfish.

But the cult that really ruins the party are the Jainists, who believe that onion, garlic and salt are all foods that lead to sexual desire, which they find morally unacceptable.  Really, they believe that junk.  Last time I checked, you didn’t get onions or garlic on your food if you were potentially looking to indulge sexual desire, but no self-respecting Oriental cult is going to let logic get in the way.

So the food was basically really hot and over-seasoned, but with no salt, onion or garlic.  And way too much dang curry.  What’s up with the curry?  It’s like cinnamon but stomach-turning in large doses.  It’s like some cultures get stuck in these monotonic cul-de-sacs with their cuisine- way too much of one type of flavor.  Ever smelled soy sauce from outside someone’s house?

So to avoid hurting my friend’s feelings, I took to an old trick I discovered when I was seven.  If I cut my food into small enough pieces, I can swallow it like a pill without tasting it much.  Works like a charm on Brussel sprouts AND Indian “cuisine”.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 11th, 2008 at 9:10 am and is filed under Heritage & Culture, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.