Posted on 02/14/2005 1:52:23 PM PST by Guillermo
SPAN class=headline>Truffle Kerfuffle
Chinese "pig-snout" fungi are flooding gourmet-food markets, and the French are not amused
The locals of Hama village know what to do with a fat, smelly truffle. For centuries, if the village pigs in this remote corner of China's Yunnan province were acting a little less amorous than normal, the farmers fed a shovelful of truffles to the creatures in order to guarantee a future litter of piglets. Then, a few years ago, a strange tale wended its way through this hamlet so disconnected from modern China that Cultural Revolution slogans from three decades ago are still inscribed on the village's mud-brick walls: foreigners, for some mysterious reason, were willing to pay exorbitant prices for what the locals dismissively call pig-snout fungus. "When we first asked the people in the countryside whether they had any truffles, they were shocked we wanted to buy them," recalls Wu Jianming, chairman of Kunming Rare Truffle Co, the province's largest truffle exporter. "An hour later, they brought us a whole bagful and still couldn't believe that foreigners wanted to eat what they usually fed to their pigs."
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
!
Ping for later.
First the Amies and Aussies take over their wine business, now the Chinese take over their truffles. If we can get another country to jack up their smelly chesse production, another to entirely stop bathing and a third to surrender to anyone better armed than your average stone age hunter, and there won't be anything truly french left!
France is getting globalizowned.
Them things are worth a fortune. There's a couple different types of mushrooms up here Seattle way that got people out in the woods WITH GUNS collecting them.
I could probably grow something between my toes that would let me retire a wealthy man...
Why did the admin take this off news?
It's hard to imagine that the French crave "delicacies" that even the Chinese will shun.
France has formed the National Unlawful Truffle Societe..NUTS to you..
It's a general trend. Most Chinese people are doing the best they can to embrace capitalism (despite the machinations of their dictatorial government). Meanwhile, the french are dashing pell mell into socialism as fast as they can convince the rest of the E.U. to fund it. Go figure.
We got truffles!
Right here in River City!
With a capital "T,"
And that rhymes with "P,"
And that stands for Périgord!
Sometimes it gets so serious around here, a person might commit hari-kari.
But nothing would convince me to eat a mushroom that didn't come off a supermarket shelf. That's pretty risky.
(Tune in next week for another edition of "Mixed Metaphor and Bad Pun Theater".)
I tend to stick to the canned ones myself.. LOLOL!! You never know what those mushrooms are up to after the sun goes down, ya know?? LOLOL!!
Yes, we HAVE to keep our sense of humor, without it, we'd be Democrats.. /meow!
Ha, good point Willie!
Imagine, they eat escargot too, which is essentially a slug with a shell.
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