French food? Pah.
At age 14 or so we went on a school trip across the Channel that involved a stay with a French family for a couple of days. We were in pairs, and me and my mate were billeted with this pleasant enough working-class family somewhere near Rouen. The father was a butcher: when we remarked on the number of rabbits they had in cages in the garden, they pointed out that they were due for slaughter that weekend. Cute.

Anyway, they made a big song and dance about the meal they would serve us on the day we were due to leave: aside from rabbit (of course) there was a 'special surprise'. My friend (the wuss) refused to try either, but I enjoyed the rabbit and did at least try a mouthful of the surprise dish: a fist-sized grey ball, obviously meat on the outside but some sort of white-ish mush on the inside. It was pretty grim but I swallowed it, smiled and asked what it was.

They smiled back and told me, "It's sheep's brain wrapped in turkey meat."

Those sick French bastards will eat anything, I tell you.

By the by, when (somehow) I later found myself teaching English to French kids some years later, in the course of one particular lesson I would ask "Is anyone here a vegetarian?". Naturally (this being France) most of them didn't even know what a vegetarian was, and those few that did always said no. Then in one class a girl put up her hand and said yes. I was amazed, and asked her what sort of things she ate (I'm told it's not easy being a veggie in France). She replied, earnestly, "Well, I don't eat horse."

Close, ma chérie, mais pas de cigar.
( reallywittyname veraciously conspues lexiphanicism on, Thu 17 May 2007, 10:46, Reply)