Lye is indeed necessary to make lutefisk. Whatever happened to Limburger cheese, the infamous dairy product that was a prop in so much 1930s comedy? As for the Cream of Mushroom soup incident, Lynda Barry did a great strip about something similar, about her brother who stupidly purchased a bad hot dog and barfed all night. She said she could turn him green with the very mention of a hot dog…(under a drawing of a hot dog and bun: DOES THIS LOOK FAMILIAR?) “And that’s how I became such a good artist!”
Incidentally, they sell canned pork brains and gravy in the south. Good eatin’, slaver, drool.
Great piece. You’re still rocking. My best friend kept a pantry full of recalled and tainted products, including a can of botulized Bon Vivant vichyssoise, from a lot that may have been the font of our nation’s proud tradition of food panics.
And durian fruit is so foul-smelling that it’s banned from the better hotels in Thailand and Vietnam. In Indonesia during the first Gulf War, they had a durian flavored hard candy. The brand was called Scud.
Great story. I had a small collection of weird canned foods the highlight being a can of snake soup- “Three cans of snake meat and bamboo shoots “ Purchased in Chinatown Victoria Canada. There was a cobra on the label. I lost it in a move.
Really enjoying your writing since discovering you here a couple weeks ago Cintra. Very funny.
Surströmming evenings are one of my most distinctive memories from living in Sweden. We would all put a peg on our noses and prepare to open the tin - very very carefully. I actually enjoyed the taste - we spread it over soft bread with layers of mashed potatoes and lots of butter. It just tasted like hunks of salt - I love salt. Oh and of course washed down with vodka.
The whole evening of opening the foul smelling tin is a really fun ritual over there.
Can't give any feedback on the lutefisk as haven't smelt or tried that.
What happened if a nose clip fell off? Did that person immediately start projectile vomiting leading to a chain reaction? What an unusual food. My friend moved to Thailand and reports they have a rotten fish sauce that is utterly vile and was quite horrified to watch his wife eat pig intestine soup still containing the contents.
😊 You should give it a go yourself I reckon so you can find out. I think the nose clips were more of a silly game than anything. Often our mind imagines things to be worse than they actually are.
Can't see myself eating pig intestine soup though, especially as I'm a veg - aquarian these days!
I am always inspired by learning how humans preserve their food, or alternatively make the most of every part of the animal/vegetable for health and economical reasons. Something often forgotten in the modern day fast food, convenience, added chemical preservatives society we live in.
Thank-you for this...the "ulultating" was fun not to mention hazardous waste disposal...the NRC needs to hire you to improve on their cave/tunnel ideas for spent fuel. Your piece forced me into pantry here where i've kept for posterity a can of Liberal Democrat Boston Baked Beans which after 20 years in a deep south old home i never installed air in until a month ago has taken on a rather ominous appearance. A novelty item and i had never read the label until now and its peeling and faded but reads "Let's make sure no Kerry-bashing, meat-eating, fur-wearing, gun-toting, oil-drilling, SUV-driving, Limbaugh-listening, conservative Republican, capitalist pig, gets elected: Get OUT AND VOTE 2004" i used to keep it on the window sill but it had left a rust mark stain only a healthy dose of alcohol based shellack could cover the donkey on it has buck teeth and a shock of weird hair like Trump
My Mom described possibly the worst. She became very pale when describing her grandfather eating maggot cheese. Mercifully this cheese is illegal now in EU as, occasionally, the maggots begin to eat the person who ate them.
I live in Minnesota, where lutefisk is a thing for many people of Scandinavian heritage. It's divisive, and I do believe there is lye involved. I've never had it. But I'm thinking the lye, under pressure in a can, is what may cause it to explode.
I think the two main causes of pressure in a can are bacterial growth such as if the autoclave process wasn’t hot enough or long enough, and much more common interior varnish defect so the metal touches the food and oxidizes releasing hydrogen gas. The image of a stinking food bomb being carried out by a disposal team in hazmat is hilarious. I bet we see this written into a movie soon!
great story! that tik-tok mushroom soup is hilarious. in junior school i had a friend and i made her vomit twice!!! it was funny then....kind of still is now!
Don’t forget teenage rum and Coke overdose acquired revulsion🤮 syndrome. Just the smell of rum and Coke made my stomach pulse and twitch until I was maybe 30, and I still will not drink it.
Is it possible you mixed up “lutefisk” and “Surströmming”? I’ve eaten lutefisk and it has a mild smell but the Surströmming is known to cause vomiting.
I concur. Some foods are to die for. Lutefisk is for to die.
Some un-canny coincidences: I also used to travel overseas on writing assignments, and it was a trip to Japan (of course) that seeded my own ultimately substantial collection of weird foods. I think my top favorite was the packet of dried soup powder from West Africa, its graphics promising a connection of some sort to male virility, with a drawing of a leering, horny, dancing goat on the front. The Swedish gummies called Dirty Diapers were kind of fun too. Did you ever have those Japanese candies(at least I think they were candies) shaped like tiny hamburgers, with pictures of psychedelic pandas eating hamburgers on the box?
There are so many other synchronicities going on here I’ll have to save sharing them for another time. I do have to mention the astonishing resemblance of your gorilla to a 10” high, pliable, rubber gorilla my brother once gifted me. His name was Reggie, which for no reason whatsoever I still find hilarious. I’ve no idea where he’s gone.
I’d agree with the mix up. Lutefisk is bland and white and served with white sauce. Surströmming is the most disgusting thing ever. Unless it was fermented lutefisk-surströmming 🤷🏼♀️
I ate lutefisk and I enjoyed it. I’m not very adventurous with food. I tried baby eels because I thought they were noodles and that left a brain scar, the tiny eyes I noticed too late. I watched those surstromming challenges in you tube and I’m pretty sure I will not be attempting to eat that .
Eyes on noodles!! 😳🫣 Yikes! I tried surströmming and it was hideous. Vomit inducing. It’s just rotten eggs/sulfur 🤢 Lutefisk is bland. The white sauce served with it is bland.
All of this was fantastic, but what really killed me was "The entire walk over and into the park we felt like ice-truckers transporting nitroglycerine."
I used to have a modest food museum, but alas, multiple moves have paired it down to a durian/mung-bean Twinkie.
That sounds awesomely horrible. I would have been proud to own it.
I'll mail it to you.
Lye is indeed necessary to make lutefisk. Whatever happened to Limburger cheese, the infamous dairy product that was a prop in so much 1930s comedy? As for the Cream of Mushroom soup incident, Lynda Barry did a great strip about something similar, about her brother who stupidly purchased a bad hot dog and barfed all night. She said she could turn him green with the very mention of a hot dog…(under a drawing of a hot dog and bun: DOES THIS LOOK FAMILIAR?) “And that’s how I became such a good artist!”
Incidentally, they sell canned pork brains and gravy in the south. Good eatin’, slaver, drool.
GOD I LOVE LYNDA BARRY. I have all of her dog-eared comic books. She is an icon.
Yes!
Great piece. You’re still rocking. My best friend kept a pantry full of recalled and tainted products, including a can of botulized Bon Vivant vichyssoise, from a lot that may have been the font of our nation’s proud tradition of food panics.
And durian fruit is so foul-smelling that it’s banned from the better hotels in Thailand and Vietnam. In Indonesia during the first Gulf War, they had a durian flavored hard candy. The brand was called Scud.
Marvelous. Thank you.
Great story. I had a small collection of weird canned foods the highlight being a can of snake soup- “Three cans of snake meat and bamboo shoots “ Purchased in Chinatown Victoria Canada. There was a cobra on the label. I lost it in a move.
That sounds highly covetable. I love anything with a cobra on it.
Really enjoying your writing since discovering you here a couple weeks ago Cintra. Very funny.
Surströmming evenings are one of my most distinctive memories from living in Sweden. We would all put a peg on our noses and prepare to open the tin - very very carefully. I actually enjoyed the taste - we spread it over soft bread with layers of mashed potatoes and lots of butter. It just tasted like hunks of salt - I love salt. Oh and of course washed down with vodka.
The whole evening of opening the foul smelling tin is a really fun ritual over there.
Can't give any feedback on the lutefisk as haven't smelt or tried that.
Wow! Thanks for providing the counterpoint. "One woman's vomit-trigger is another woman's salt."
Vodka helps all recipes, I find.
What happened if a nose clip fell off? Did that person immediately start projectile vomiting leading to a chain reaction? What an unusual food. My friend moved to Thailand and reports they have a rotten fish sauce that is utterly vile and was quite horrified to watch his wife eat pig intestine soup still containing the contents.
😊 You should give it a go yourself I reckon so you can find out. I think the nose clips were more of a silly game than anything. Often our mind imagines things to be worse than they actually are.
Can't see myself eating pig intestine soup though, especially as I'm a veg - aquarian these days!
I am always inspired by learning how humans preserve their food, or alternatively make the most of every part of the animal/vegetable for health and economical reasons. Something often forgotten in the modern day fast food, convenience, added chemical preservatives society we live in.
Thank-you for this...the "ulultating" was fun not to mention hazardous waste disposal...the NRC needs to hire you to improve on their cave/tunnel ideas for spent fuel. Your piece forced me into pantry here where i've kept for posterity a can of Liberal Democrat Boston Baked Beans which after 20 years in a deep south old home i never installed air in until a month ago has taken on a rather ominous appearance. A novelty item and i had never read the label until now and its peeling and faded but reads "Let's make sure no Kerry-bashing, meat-eating, fur-wearing, gun-toting, oil-drilling, SUV-driving, Limbaugh-listening, conservative Republican, capitalist pig, gets elected: Get OUT AND VOTE 2004" i used to keep it on the window sill but it had left a rust mark stain only a healthy dose of alcohol based shellack could cover the donkey on it has buck teeth and a shock of weird hair like Trump
Thank you, Cintra! That was hilarious and so true about this horrible Viking food torture; my wife is Norwegian and even she will not touch this!
Ancient white people food is alarmingly terrible.
My Mom described possibly the worst. She became very pale when describing her grandfather eating maggot cheese. Mercifully this cheese is illegal now in EU as, occasionally, the maggots begin to eat the person who ate them.
I live in Minnesota, where lutefisk is a thing for many people of Scandinavian heritage. It's divisive, and I do believe there is lye involved. I've never had it. But I'm thinking the lye, under pressure in a can, is what may cause it to explode.
Disgustingness caused it to be volatile.
I think the two main causes of pressure in a can are bacterial growth such as if the autoclave process wasn’t hot enough or long enough, and much more common interior varnish defect so the metal touches the food and oxidizes releasing hydrogen gas. The image of a stinking food bomb being carried out by a disposal team in hazmat is hilarious. I bet we see this written into a movie soon!
So good. Painting and writing. A one-person Renaissance
You are too kind!!
great story! that tik-tok mushroom soup is hilarious. in junior school i had a friend and i made her vomit twice!!! it was funny then....kind of still is now!
I think it's still funny.
Thanks! I enjoyed your story…but I’m not sure why..!
I’m so curious about the history of this cream of mushroom soup reaction. 😀 I wonder how much/ what kind of exposure it took.
One good childhood trauma will do it, usually.
Don’t forget teenage rum and Coke overdose acquired revulsion🤮 syndrome. Just the smell of rum and Coke made my stomach pulse and twitch until I was maybe 30, and I still will not drink it.
Hilarious 😂
Is it possible you mixed up “lutefisk” and “Surströmming”? I’ve eaten lutefisk and it has a mild smell but the Surströmming is known to cause vomiting.
no.
I concur. Some foods are to die for. Lutefisk is for to die.
Some un-canny coincidences: I also used to travel overseas on writing assignments, and it was a trip to Japan (of course) that seeded my own ultimately substantial collection of weird foods. I think my top favorite was the packet of dried soup powder from West Africa, its graphics promising a connection of some sort to male virility, with a drawing of a leering, horny, dancing goat on the front. The Swedish gummies called Dirty Diapers were kind of fun too. Did you ever have those Japanese candies(at least I think they were candies) shaped like tiny hamburgers, with pictures of psychedelic pandas eating hamburgers on the box?
There are so many other synchronicities going on here I’ll have to save sharing them for another time. I do have to mention the astonishing resemblance of your gorilla to a 10” high, pliable, rubber gorilla my brother once gifted me. His name was Reggie, which for no reason whatsoever I still find hilarious. I’ve no idea where he’s gone.
I could have this conversation with you for like 4 hours.
I concur.
I’d agree with the mix up. Lutefisk is bland and white and served with white sauce. Surströmming is the most disgusting thing ever. Unless it was fermented lutefisk-surströmming 🤷🏼♀️
I ate lutefisk and I enjoyed it. I’m not very adventurous with food. I tried baby eels because I thought they were noodles and that left a brain scar, the tiny eyes I noticed too late. I watched those surstromming challenges in you tube and I’m pretty sure I will not be attempting to eat that .
Eyes on noodles!! 😳🫣 Yikes! I tried surströmming and it was hideous. Vomit inducing. It’s just rotten eggs/sulfur 🤢 Lutefisk is bland. The white sauce served with it is bland.
Agreed. But maybe she has more sensitive tastes than we.
Re: the Falcon and the Snowman - Did anyone else immediately picture Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare in "Fargo"?
I couldn't rightly say.
All of this was fantastic, but what really killed me was "The entire walk over and into the park we felt like ice-truckers transporting nitroglycerine."