/ck/ - Food & Cooking

Oh god.

Greentext time.

>Be me, going through hormone regulation treatment because endocrine system shit itself.
>Taste buds change while on meds, start to like different foods. Canned sardines become one of these foods.
>They satisfy every salt craving I've ever had.
>My two orange cats crowd me for nibbles on the fish, and I share fish. I bond closer with these floofs. Feels real good.
>Continue to eat sardines for months.
>Eat them straight out of the can.
>Put them in soup or use them as soup toppings
>Chill them and mix them with tuna to make tuna-sardine salad.
>Fry them very lightly to give them crispy skin.
>Life is good.
>One day I buy about 10 cans because ice storms were coming and I needed to stock up.
>Decided to make sardine sandwich with tomatoes and mustard.
>Spread mustard on bread, cut tomatoes into perfect slices, place all nice and pretty on bread.
>Open can of sardines, as usual.
>See one bloated, fat sardine. Her belly has been split open and her eye has popped out of her socket. Her mouth is open as if she was screaming for the ride to end.
>I knew it was a she because her stomach had exploded with eggs.
>In the can are what I assume are hundreds of grainy, dark brown pellets of sardine eggs.
>The sight is abhorrent. I dropped the can on the table and curled up my fingers.
>I was looking into the eye of a fermented mother.
>But I was still hungry.
>I think... Caviar. Right? It wouldn't be high grade but they are fish eggs. Maybe there would be some flavor. Some of the saltiness I had grown so accustomed to.
>I dip a spoon into the decomposed egg pile and scoop some out. Just a bit, just the tip of the spoon... And I press them to my lips. I open my mouth and I let the eggs rest on my tongue.

(1/2)

I had endocrine and metabolism illnesses when I was a child, and one of the things I carried with me until very recently (so for about 21 years) was that when I began to eat I would get progressively hungrier throughout the meal. The more food I ate, the emptier my stomach felt. As a kid, it prompted some god awful table manners of me eating very quickly because I was hungry all the damn time.

So one day I was sitting with my mom and dad eating lasagna. We only had it on Easter and Christmas, so it would have been a holiday. And I guess I was eating ridiculously fast or I was being messy. I was 4 or 5 years old at the time, I think. 6 at the oldest. And my fucking father just went ballistic yelling at me, calling me a pig, actually making grunting and oinking sounds. This continued for a few minutes, I don't remember what my mom said but I just sat with my head down because I wasn't allowed to leave the table.

Don't ever mock your kid at the dinner table. There's nothing more embarrassing than being made a fool of while you're eating.