Monday, March 21, 2011

Number One Eggs

Funny, but just yesterday I was looking over my blog -- laughing at decade old articles, vacuuming the dead links, important stuff like that -- when I noticed the seldom used post label "gross food." I've only used the label twice, starting with a 2008 blurb about a hamburger in can.

Wow, I really should get back to writing about gross food, at least when politics and environmental catastrophes start getting me down. And then today, as if the Internet read my mind, I find this on Boing Boing:

In Dongyang, has already formed such an old custom: the street vendors who sell eggs boy or lad boiled eggs to their own people, would mention a plastic bucket to a school boy to collect the urine.

Students long ago got used to this, one to three grade boys to urinate, they will align the plastic bucket outside the classroom. School teachers, but also acquiesced in such conduct, they will always remind the children during illness in the cold to the plastic bucket can not pee. The children all came to listen.

People who are not familiar with the situation should surprise: the boy with the boy in urine egg is boiled eggs, eggs in the spring of stalls selling all over the boy Dongyang streets. The boy a fifty-one eggs more expensive than ordinary eggs, can always sell out of stock.


Just in case you think the above quote is an instance of Babblefish run amok, here is another article written in proper English.

Yes really, in China, hard boiled eggs soaked in the urine of virgin boys is considered a great delicacy. The makers of these "virgin eggs" place plastic buckets outside elementary school classrooms and boys are reminded to pee in them. The urine is used to boil the eggs which are slightly cracked so the flavor can seep in. They "have the taste of Spring," or so they say.

This is obviously a cultural difference... no wait, it's totally gross. I wonder if this concoction was the actual inspiration for Dr. Seuss.

I do not like spring eggs in piss.
I will not eat them served like this.
I will not eat them soaked in urine.
I will not eat them with Martin Van Buren.

No comments: