Day by Dave by Dave Whamond for May 24, 2023

And eat you

It might be time to put the “GO” in escarGOt.

looks like the chef’s gonna have a candlelight dinner.

Still a bug… a slimy bug. Dress it up all you want, a snail is still just a slug with a camper.

Pay not attention to him…he’s a salty bartender, and thinks he’s upper crust.

Amazing that someone, somewhere said “Hey, let’s eat a slug with a shell”.

Mmmm – escargots bourguignon, with a good crusty bread to soak up the buttery, garlicky juices.

Yes, the local common garden snail is the European brown — Helix aspersa. They were imported to California in the early 1850s by a Frenchman who intended to sell them as food, but the market during the Gold Rush was too unsophisticated for snails. He ended up dumping some snails, and another collection escaped. Snails are hermaphroditic, so of course they reproduced like crazy. They cannot self-impregnate, but there are a lot of them. And here we are. I never liked them, but geese, ducks and chooks love them. Up here I don’t see them too much, but the green and black spotted variety of banana slug makes up for that. Those are nasty, at least that’s my conclusion after seeing one of my dogs get sicker than a, well, sicker than a dog, after eating one.

Will never forget my introduction to escargot, followed by sweetbreads … couldn’t wrap my brain around having seconds…!

I’m culinarily adventurous and have eaten both frog legs (see my post above) and calamari in my time. However, no escargot—yet.

I believe the chef is garlic buttering them up. Yes, I have eaten snails. They taste like garlic butter.