the liver incident

Up until last night, I´d been a model homestay daughter. (Well, with the exception of breaking the lock on the front door. Twice. And that time I knocked over a dinner glass and its shattered pieces flew to every corner of the room. But anyway, that could have happened to anyone.) The point is, I´ve been respectful and polite, and, most importantly, have secured my status in The Clean Plate Club by sopping up every last morsel of food from my plate with a piece of bread at the end of every meal. I think the only thing I´ve ever left on my plate is extra fat from steak. And everyone does that, so it´s okay.

But then last night happened. Carlos dished up plates of steaming food, and I helped carry them to the table. I was really hungry, and knew I was going out later, so didn´t ask for my normal amount of ¨un poco¨ because I figured I´d be up late and would appreciate the extra fuel. I should know by now that ¨un poco¨ works with Lourdes, but to Carlos its still a full plate ... which means if I don´t say anything, I get a mound of food. Literally.

Well anyway, it looked good - a heap of rice covered in a sauce of tomatoes and onions and peppers and meat. (Or at least what I thought was meat.) It was steaming in my face and my mouth was watering and I was trying to be patient while everyone sat down and began to eat. Finally everyone was settled and I dug in. The first bite tasted a little funny. Hmm, maybe it was just a bad bite. But then the second tasted really funny. Funny enough for me to need to wash it down with water. I was starting to worry; there was a lot of food in front of me. Bite three was all my brain and taste buds and stomach needed to say, ¨Okay, that´s enough. This stuff is nasty. And if you keep eating it, we´re not going to let you keep it down.¨ Damn.

I sat and pondered the consequences of shoveling it down without breathing and hoping I didn´t throw up versus leaving it on my plate and facing the wrath of wasting food and feeling like an inconsiderate guest in someone´s home. The seconds ticked away as I watched everyone eat and exclaim how delicious it was. I went over the lines in my head. ¨No, no me gusta, perdón. No me hace sentir bien. No estoy acostrumbrado a comer este tipo de carne.¨ (¨No, I don´t like it, I´m sorry. It doesn´t make me feel well. I´m not used to eating this kind of meat.¨ )

Now, I´m sure most of you understand how strange this is for me. I love food. I am not picky. I will eat almost anything put in front of me. I have a tough stomach, one that rarely causes me to vomit. So the fact that the thought of putting one more bite of this mystery meat into my mouth caused me to feel nauseous is a clear indicator of just how much it repulsed me.

So I sat, wringing my hands under the table, and started thinking about what type of ¨meat¨ was sitting before me. My best guess was liver. I´m not sure if I´ve ever eaten liver before; I don´t think I have. Maybe it was just intuition, or maybe the knowledge of what liver tastes like is in my genes, since my mom ate a lot of liver growing up. (If you like liver, I´m not judging. It´s just not for me.)

Anyway, the dreaded moment arrived. Carlos asked why I wasn´t eating. I took a breath and fed him my rehearsed lines and waited for the hammer to fall. He looked at me skeptically, then simply told me, ¨Well, it´s what we´re having to eat tonight.¨ This I understood. I was not asking for a different dinner ... I was just not going to be able to eat the one in front of me. I felt like a little kid being scolded for not eating her vegetables, and being threatened to be sent to bed hungry.

He told me it was liver (suspicion confirmed), and that everyone in England, France and Spain likes to eat it. Not really a linear thought pattern , since I´m from Minnesota and have Dutch and Norwegian ancestors, but okay, point taken. I sat in silence, looking down at my plate, trying not to breathe in liver fumes, feeling very uncomfortable.

After a little while he told me I could have some rice with just the sauce if I wanted. Sauce infused with liver taste. I politely declined. Then he offered rice with just butter. I politely declined again, choosing to eat a piece of bread instead. It was very awkward.

Then, thankfully, the plate was cleared and my pile of internal-organs-on-rice was dumped into the garbage. I felt relieved not to have my guilt and embarassment staring up at me from my non-empty plate anymore, but still embarassed to have wasted so much food.

I realize this might not sound like a big deal, but I´ve learned how offensive it is to leave food on the plate, and I´ve been praised numerous times for being such a good eater and never wasting any food, and Lourdes has told me more than once not to disappoint her by not eating everything I´ve been served. There´s a lot of pressure going into mealtime, I tell you. Food is no joke in the Lavie household.

The silver lining of all of this was that it was Juan´s birthday, and Carlos had baked him a cake, and since I was starving I had room for two pieces of the double-layered-strawberry-cream-carmel-merengue conconction. It was really good, and made me feel better. Plus Carlos even smiled at me when he offered me a second piece, so I don´t think he was mad at me. Phew.

However, The Liver Incident now holds second place in the Top Three Worst Food Experiences Of My Life, along with the intestine and brain I ate in Spain and the goat stew with fur still stuck to the meat I ate in Kenya. The Intenstine and Brain Incident wasn´t that bad, because I was at a restaurant with my parents and could spit things out and not finish what I´d ordered, so it holds third place. But The Goat Stew Incident was a whole different story ... I mean, the villagers in this town slaughtered a goat for us - a very meaningful, rare, expensive gesture - and ladled up the soup and sat next to us with expectant looks on their faces. I had to eat that whole bowl of soup, goat hair and all. Now that deserves a blue ribbon.

The Incident has also given me a new perspective on a memory I have from my childhood. We had an exchange student from Costa Rica stay with us for a month or so when I was about seven or eight years old. His name was Steven, and he had a hard time adjusting to life in the U.S. I clearly remember him absolutely hating cross-country skiing, really wanting to go to the Mall of America, crying on the phone to his parents in the hallway, driving an electronic car across our newly polished hardwood floors, and wasting an entire bowl of cream-of-wheat because he didn´t like it. Now clearly cream-of-wheat is no chopped liver, but maybe to him it tasted just as awful. For some reason I was really upset about the wasting of the cream-of-wheat, and it´s a memory that´s stayed with me. But now I have a new understanding of The Cream-of-Wheat Incident and of what Steven must have been going though. It feels good to be able to shed a little light on something that caused me such confusion as a little girl.