Paul Theroux - The Tao of Travel - Enlightenments from Lives on the Road

Their geese seem to be of a middle race, between the wild and domestick kinds. They are so tame as to own a home, and so wild as sometimes to fly away.

Their native bread is made of oats, or barley. Of oatmeal they spread very thin cakes, coarse and hard, to which unaccustomed palates are not easily reconciled. The barley cakes are thicker and softer; I began to eat them without unwillingness; the blackness of their color raises some dislike, but the taste is not disagreeable. In most houses there is wheat flower, with which we were sure to be treated, if we staid long enough to have it kneaded and baked. As neither yeast nor leaven are used among them, their bread of every kind is unfermented. They make only cakes, and never mould a loaf.

A man of the Hebrides, for of the women's diet I can give no account, as soon as he appears in the morning, swallows a glass of whisky; yet they are not a drunken race, at least I was never present at much intemperance; but no man is so abstemious as to refuse the morning dram, which they call a skalk.

The word whisky signifies water, and is applied by way of eminence to strong water, or distilled liquor. The spirit drunk in the North is drawn from barley. I never tasted it, except once for experiment at the inn in Inverary, when I thought it preferable to any English malt brandy. It was strong but not pungent, and was free from the empyreumatick [burnt] taste or smell. What was the process I had no opportunity of inquiring, nor do I wish to improve the art of making poison pleasant.

Not long after the dram, may be expected the breakfast, a meal in which the Scots, whether of the lowlands or the mountains, must be confessed to excel us. The tea and coffee are accompanied not only with butter, but with honey, conserves, and marmalades. If an epicure could remove by a wish, in quest of sensual gratifications, wherever he had supped he would breakfast in Scotland.

In the islands however, they do what I found is not very easy to endure. They pollute the tea-table by plates piled with large slices of Cheshire cheese, which mingles its less grateful odors with the fragrance of the tea.

— Samuel Johnson, A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775)

The Raw Meat of the Druze

The Druze custom of eating raw meat fascinated [Lady Hester Stanhope, in 1812]. She recounted later, "I purchased of a Druze an immense sheep, the tail weighing eleven pounds, and desired it to be taken to a village, where I ordered the people assembled to eat. When I arrived, the sheep was alive; the moment it was killed it was skinned, and brought in raw upon a sort of dish made of matting, and in less than half an hour it was all devoured. The women ate of it as well as the men: the pieces of raw fat they swallowed were really frightful."

— James C. Simmons, Passionate Pilgrims: English

Travelers to the World of the Desert Arabs (1987)

Garlic, Food of the Fellah

Those skilled in simples [medicinal plants], Eastern as well as Western, praise garlic highly, declaring that it "strengthens the body, prepares the constitution for fatigue, brightens the sight, and, by increasing the digestive power, obviates the ill-effects arising from sudden change of air and water." The traveler inserts it into his dietary in some pleasant form, as "Provence butter," because he observes that, wherever fever and ague abound, the people ignorant of cause but observant of effect, make it a common article of food. The old Egyptians highly esteemed this vegetable, which, with onions and leeks, enters into the list of articles so much regretted by the Hebrews… In Arabia, however, the stranger must use this vegetable sparingly. The city people despise it as the food of a Fellah — a boor. The Wahhabis have a prejudice against onions, leeks and garlic, because the Prophet disliked their strong smell.

— Sir Richard Burton, Personal Narrative of a

Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah (1853)

A Slave in Gabon for His Evening Meal

Then [Remandji, king of the Apingi] said, "Be glad, oh spirit! And eat of the things we give thee."

Whereupon, to my astonishment, a slave was handed over to me bound, and Remandji said, "Kill him for your evening meal; he is tender and fat, and you must be hungry." It took me a moment to recover from my astonishment. Then I shook my head, spat violently on the ground, and made Minsho tell them that I abhorred the people who ate human flesh, and that I and my people never did so.

To which Remandji replied, "We always heard that you white people eat men. Why do you buy our people [as slaves]? Why do you come from nobody knows where, and carry off our men, and women, and children? Do you not fatten them in your far country and eat them? Therefore I give you this slave, that you might kill him and make your heart glad."

It was a difficult matter to explain to the king that he was much mistaken.

— Paul Du Chaillu, Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa (1861)

Many Eat the Hedgehog

SCOLDED BY BEDOUINS at the Teyma oasis for eating "swine's flesh,"

C. M. Doughty lost his temper, and raged:

If God have commanded you anything, keep it; I see you eat crows and kites, and the lesser carrion eagle. Some of you eat owls, some eat serpents. The great lizard you all eat, and locusts, and the spring-rat; Many eat the hedgehog; in certain (Hejaz) villages they eat rats, you cannot deny it! You eat the wolf, too, and the fox and the foul hyena. In a word, there is nothing so vile that some of you will not eat it.

— Travels in Arabia Deserta (1888)

Cats, Camels, Foxes, Owls, and Others

Andalusians do not eat cats and dogs even when they are very hungry, but in Estremadura they're regarded as delicacies. A woman from Alcantara who is fond of cats and would never kill one herself, tells me that she has eaten cat stew and that it is tastier than either rabbit or hare. The Estremadurans also eat martens and weasels and foxes, and declare, though I do not believe it, that a fried leg of fox is the best thing imaginable. But then they are a race of cattlemen and hunters, ancestors of the Argentine gauchos, and put in a pot whatever the gun brings down. The only animal they bar is the wolf. Gypsies eat frogs, snakes and lizards as well as farmyard animals that have died a natural death, while there is a whole village nearJerez which till a few years ago spent its night hunting the camels that ran wild in the marshes at the mouth of the Guadalquivir. As for birds, they are all eaten in the south of Spain and the list includes eagles, owls and hawks. The only ones rejected are seagulls, crows and vultures, and the sacred swallow and stork.

— Gerald Brenan, South from Granada (1957)

Mr. Black, the Blood Drinker in Tangier

There was the somewhat sinister Mr. Black, whom I never met, but who, I am told, kept an outsize electric refrigerator in his sitting room, in which there was a collection of half-pint glass jars. Occasionally he would open the refrigerator door, inspect the labels on the bottles and select one. Then in front of his guests he would pour its contents into a glass and drink. A lady I know, who was present one day when he did this, innocently inquired if what he had in the glass were a combination of beet and tomato juice. "This is blood," he said. "Will you have some? It's delicious chilled, you know." The lady, who had lived in Tangier for many years, was thus determined to show no astonishment at anything, replied, "I don't think I will right now, thank you. But may I see the jar?" Mr. Black handed it to her. The label read Mohammed. "He's a Riffian boy," explained Mr. Black. "I see," she said, "and the other jars?" "Each one is from a different boy," her host explained. "I never take more than a half pint at a time from any one of them. That wouldn't do. Too debilitating for them."