Chickens Feet and Pig Knuckles

The Chinese cuisine is....different... to say the least. Back in the USA I'm a big fan of Applebee's, Pizza Ranch, and McDonalds. Needless to say, I had to make a big change in my diet when I came here. I have been adapting quite well and have only had two times so far (in two months) where I have felt sick from the food. I'm open to trying new things, but will not go as far as eating chickens feet or pig knuckle.

My first experience with seeing someone eat chicken feet was on a Saturday during lunch. A bunch of co-workers and I went to our normal place to eat lunch and the place we eat serves all sorts of food. I can get a hotdog or breakfast sandwich type deal if I want, but I normally go for Chinese food. I can not remember what I ordered that day, but one of my co-workers just had a hankering for chicken feet. They were served in a soup type dish and looked absolutely disgusting to me. They were fully equipped with toenails and all. The meat must have been tough and chewy as he really had to work hard to get the meat off the skinny bones. I had a really hard time finishing my lunch that day, and am almost getting sick thinking about it...time to move on.

Pig knuckle seems like a fairly common piece of meat to have in soup type dish as well. It is essentially the entire lower part of a pig leg with hooves still attached. It looks like a terribly gristle filled piece of meat and appears unpleasant to try and eat as well. I don't know what it is about me, but I just don't want to be eating the meat off of the same appendage the animal spent its entire life walking around, pounding the ground with.

I've gotten a bit better about not being surprised as much by food and I don't flinch quite as much when duck soup gets brought to a table; (Duck soup = entire cooked duck, head and all, in a soup.) The local people here are fantastic about dealing with bones in their food and can put a whole, bone filled piece of meat in their mouth, mash it around, and spit out the bones picked clean. It is also proper here to spit out bones right on the table and should never be placed back on your plate, nor should you waste the time to gracefully spit it in to a napkin and casually hide beside your plate. I normally stray away from stuff that has bones in it because it is very hard for me to chew the meat off of the bones without seeming to waste a bunch of meat.

Maybe being able to pick meat off the bones in my mouth will come with time as an added accomplishment to me eating Chinese food, but I'm satisfied with meeting my first goal here: mastering chopsticks.