at DAY’s END by katie davis walker illustrated by rebecca bowen
One Bite to the Bon Vie
I
f you can stomach it, let us momentarily consider the hagfish. Our primeval cousin wins no prizes for beauty. The hagfish looks like a miniature version of the giant carnivorous worm that terrorized Kevin Bacon in the 1990 campy classic, “Tremors.” Unlike those desert-dwelling beasts, the hagfish lives in the ocean, a bottom feeder of the deepest degree. Taxonomically speaking, the scaleless, soft-skinned hagfish is a fellow member of our phylum, Chordata. While our fishy predecessor grew fins, and eventually, legs, and wandered out of the ocean to coin the word “omnivore,” resulting in such famous eaters as Paula Deen and Anthony Bourdain, the stomachless hagfish remained in a cloud of his own slime, 1,000 meters below the surface of the water.
We went on to discover the bounty of Eden – those crisp, sweet, forbidden apples – while the hagfish blindly scavenged on dead and dying fish. The Romans experimented with milk curdled in animal skins, resulting in some of the first cheeses, as the hagfish literally tucked into some offal, absorbing nutrients through his skin. Unlike the vertebrate members of Chordata, the hagfish has no taste buds. He doesn’t know what he’s missing. If a hagfish could taste a plump, buttery scallop, or wrap his horizontally-articulating jaws around a bite of fresh tuna sashimi, yesterday’s meal of rotten fish would pile up on the ocean floor.
Tastes change.
For now, the hagfish is condemned to the same meal, over, and over. Evolution has left him stuck in a briny flavor timewarp. He eats what is in front of him. In the era of the ubiquitous Big Mac, it is easy to eat like a hagfish. For some diners, the comfort of the familiar, and ease of prep, trump exploration of new flavors. I was once a shy eater, sticking with tried-and-true chicken fingers and fries, or the ease of a sodium-laden frozen pot pie. But seriously, what part of a chicken has fingers? My taste evolution began with cheese. My Papa’s pimento cheese, to be precise. When I was a kid, I turned up my nose at the savory spread. To be fair, pimento cheese is not an attractive food. One day, when I was a teenager, I was visiting my maternal grandparents and Papa was snacking on pimento cheese and crackers. “Katie Kat, you want some pimento cheese?” At that moment, no, I did not want any weird-looking cheese with chunky bits of red junk, but more so, I did not want to disappoint my Papa. Hesitantly, I put a smidge on a cracker. The cheddary bite of Papa’s pimento cheese, with a hint of tangy Worchestershire sauce, the sting of garlic, and bright, sweet pops of red pimento immediately won me over. lake oconee living 83