On arrival in my new home, I was asked the common question of whether there was anything I didn’t eat. I typically take pride in openness of mind to many kinds of food and , trying hard to be the perfect guest, accordingly uttered that famously foolish phrase “Oh, I eat everything really”. Although at the time, I didn’t give this statement a second thought, I was soon to find out just how naive I had been.
Indeed, one sunny Saturday morning, the father announced to me that today we would be eating a particular speciality of his. “Nobody makes this as well as I do!”, he assured me. I nodded and smiled in the way you do when you are learning a language, and vaguely enquired as to what form his speciality might take. Pulpo!, he announced proudly. My Spanish vocabulary being a little poorer then than it is now, I had to ask for a translation of this new term. He smiled. “Octopus!”
Craning my head to see the minuscule kitchen, I could indeed make out the colourful cephalopod in a packet on the counter. (I later took a furtive photo when I was alone in the kitchen.)
Qué rico!
Seeing me not altogether enthralled at this gastronomic possibility, he realized that octopus was perhaps not what I was used to. Papá considered, and was struck by a further inspiration. He offered me a tin and told me I could heat it up if I didn’t like the octopus. “Tripe!”
Committed to being the perfect au pair, I had a tentacle of octopus, and made appreciating murmurs along the lines of it being the best octopus I had ever had.
