Shayne's Funny Food (blog 4)

I came home for the first time in about 2 months last weekend. Things are still the same as usual, parents, house, pet, even the neighbors. My parents also happened to have some visitors over that were from out of country, namely Europe. They were staying over at our place with my parents cooking for them. My parents made them some really great meals, dishes that I ate growing up and dishes that our guests where loving. They ask what the names of the dishes are and they involve really exotic names such as Crispy Pata, Dinu Gu An, Palya, or my personal favorite the dish called Baloot. Now don’t get me wrong, these dishes are really good and have really funny and exotic names. But I’m our guests would stop eating them once they found out what the translation actually was. Crispy pata actually translated to fried pigs leg (bone, toe and all cartiledge included). Dinu Gu An doesn’t really have a translation but it’s actually boiled pigs blood with jalapenos, chunks of meat, and chopped onions, it’s actually pretty tangy and absolutely delicious. Palya is actually sautéed bitter melon, it looks like a cucumber except more wrinkly and with smooth looking boils. Baloot? If you’ve seen an episode of Fear Factor, you’re going to realize that it’s boiled rotten chicken embryo. Just add a touch of salt and you’ve got yourself one hell of an asian delicacy. Suffice it to say, asian people give really good dishes funny names because they don’t want to freak out the other people they feed it to.