Why We Eat Stinky Food

Work has been killing my enthusiasm for writing.

Outward Bound Camp, somewhere in Czech

I was told to bring a lunch for the bus because it was going to take five hours to get to the camp. We were headed in the vicinity of Brno, a city of approximately 300,000 in the south eastern half of Czech. I'm choosing to call the country Czech, for the same reason I call Canada "Canada" and not "The Dominion of..." Unlike the name Canada, which implies the supremacy of Upper and Lower Canada in the confederation of my beloved country, the name Czech favors neither the Bohemians, Moravians nor the Silesians. Forget Belgium as a precedent for the dissolution of Canada, "The Velvet Divorce" of 1993 was a bloodless, and, by all accounts, amicable schism: Slovakia achieved self-determination and Czech kept the flag. I'm not advocating dissolution of the Dominion, but we might as well have it on the table during the upcoming election. With just under 10,000,000 sq km we've got a long way to go before we Balkanize the Great White North. Somewhere between 500 to 1000 Slovenias, Montenegros or Kosovos could fit into Canada. In fact, only PEI comes even close to Balkan stature as far as land mass is concerned. And we should let them keep the bridge. But seriously, Canada, with nearly 50% of its citizenry claiming neither British, French nor indigenous ancestry, seems to lack the nationalistic inertia necessary for dissolution. We'd be better fretting over the ascent of Sharia law or Eschatological Christian Literalism than separation. French Quebec and English Canada seem to be missing the direction in which Canada is headed...again.

If not for 9000 km of separation, my colleagues would have suspected my lunch had been so expertly packed by my dear mother, individual Tupperware containers filled with paprika salami, olives, cheese, cherry tomatoes and Tejföl. These foods have been the staples of my time here, that and beer from Plsen, the home of the pilsener brewing process. Whereas Magyar has a glut of vowels, Czech seems to work fine without them, thank you very much. Tejföl is a remarkable dairy concoction, coming in a variety of fat contents up to and including 20%. Being mass-challenged (some might say skinny, I prefer wiry) I opt for the full-blown 20% variety. Why I'm so taken by Tejföl is that the taste of it is ever so slightly offensive, offensive in a kimchi, Limburger cheese or durian way. Speaking personally, I've never tried any of these foods, but two of the three have been described to me, Limburger cheese as "toe-jam" and durian as a "pissy, shitty diaper". Perhaps it would carry more weight if a more liberally minded state had done so, but Singapore bans durian from its transit system. These unlikely sources of gastronomical pleasure beg the question: what's up with the obsession with stinky food? I detect a further, more expansive blog emerging, so I'll get back on topic, but think about it: you too have a stinky food that brings you delight. Let me finish this thread with the following: perhaps beyond sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umame there is a sixth flavor, skank?

As I polished off a 175 g container of Tejföl for dessert, somewhere on the road to Czech, around Brataslava, it occurred to me that I was getting a little too fond of the skanky flavor and smell and that, perhaps, even someone of my metabolism is better off without 35 g of dairy fat at the end of an otherwise "heart-smart" meal. You see, I am getting obsessed with my mortality.

In the end, I've temporarily sworn off my daily container of Tejföl, maybe permanently. I have a pretty good suspicion that it's the latter outcome. I'll miss you Tejföl. By the way, "tej" (pron. "tay") is Magyar for "milk", and though Hungarian have virtually no cognates with English, I'm confident you'll figure out the second half of Tejföl.

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