Rocket Surgeon: A person with less-than-stellar aptitude. A mixture of "rocket scientist" and "brain surgeon" This phrase describes a person who is neither.




Sunday, November 29, 2009

Fiesta Time

I help teach English as a Second Language one night a week at my church. I figure if God has blessed me with a gift of teaching, then I should use it.  So I try. 

The students in the class are adult learners, with a huge amount of courage. My heart goes out to them because I know what a great challenge this is, and that they are doing it to better their lives and the lives of their families.

For our Thanksgiving holiday celebration, we had a fiesta!  

Everyone brought a dish. 

A potluck if you will. 

As the students meandered in, bearing their platters, bowls, and such, they brought great joy and smiles with them.  In the Hispanic culture, food is a big deal.  They find it insulting if you do not accept food that they offer.  Keep in mind, this is not Tex-Mex, like I'm accustomed to, this is good home-cooked, authentic Mexican food.   I try to stay away from Menudo or anything that may be made from bovine intestines.

As the plates were uncovered, revealing an assortment of great smelling foods, I could pick out a few familiar items.  Among the recognizable were Chile Rellanos, rice, enchiladas, and fajitas.  I gravitated towards those. 

One of the students wanted me to try her dish.  A fajita-type thing-a-majigie.  With her hand gestures, thick accent, and broken English,  she explained to me to begin with a corn tortilla, put a lot of beef on it, add a little cabbage, and a little cilantro, and a little caliente sauce. 

I finished filling my plate and sat down to eat.  Everything was good, but the fajita dish was my favorite.  I nibbled on the other things, but hoovered the fajita. 

When the meal was finished, and we were cleaning up, another teacher was talking to the fajita cook. 

That's when I discovered, (gulp), that it wasn't beef after all, (big gulp), that the delicious, succulent, tender meat that I piled onto my tortilla, and ate with great enthusiasm, was after all, (gulp),






tongue.


Tongue.


TONGUE!!


Just in case you didn't catch all that. 


I ate tongue!





And I loved it!



Will I do it again? 



Not on your life.

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