Strictly Nonkosher

The family in which I grew up was nominally Jewish, and while we never kept Kosher, many people in our community did, and the dietary rules influenced what my mother prepared. We seldom ate pork, for example. Even now, I seldom foods like ham, if there’s an alternate.  In China, I eat almost anything I am offered, though I did decline dog meat the other day.  Eating dog seems too much like cannibalism.  

Yesterday, at a dinner held in my honor, I was offered a spicy dish containing a spiky together with vegetables. The texture was odd, but it tasted pretty good. I also noticed a jelly-like substance I could not identify. It wasn’t bad.

“Want to know what it is?” asked Daniel Zhang. He was grinning.

I figured it was something weird.  It was: pig stomach with pig blood.

I can’t think of any food les kosher than pig blood. In the Bible, the ingestion of animal blood was forbidden from the time of Noah and reaffirmed in the Book of Acts. I started laughing.

I am happy to report that I’m none the worse for violating this tribal taboo.