November 15, 2019 • 36 mins
Humans have been cooking and eating snails as sustenance for at least 30,000 years, but it’s often considered a delicacy today. Anney and Lauren explore the history and slimy science of escargot.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hello, and welcome to save your protection of I Heartradio
and staff media. I'm Any and I'm Lauren Vogelbaum. And
today we're talking about s cargo and snail eating in general,
and we are thrilled to do so. If you couldn't tell,
I am so excited. Snails are so weird and cool
and cute and tasty. Yeah, surprisingly present in our pop culture.
(00:29):
He was thinking about, especially in children's stuff. I guess,
but carry the snail. Whatever that snail is from, I wanna.
I guess he was a snail bunches of snails. Yes, yes,
I had scargo for the first time when I was
in high school and my older brother wanted to go
to this newly opened French restaurant for his birthday. And
as I've said several times on the show, I grew
(00:51):
up in a very small town. This was exciting news totally.
He ordered some s cargo for the table, despite my
dad's flat bewilderment that anyone would want to eat snails
and at that price exactly. That's really what got him.
I think he refused to try them, but everyone else
enjoyed them. And I mean they're drowning in butter. And garlic,
(01:14):
or at least these particular iterations and a lot of
iterations I have are yes, that is the I think
that's the only way I've ever eaten them, like in
garlic butter, perhaps more garlic butter than snail right by weight, right,
Um yeah, yeah, we we uh down at Disney. We've
had snails a couple of times. Yeah. So the first
(01:34):
time we went to Disney Food and Wine, we got
an es Cargo croissant at France and Epcot at France,
we got it at France, we did um. Yeah. And
when we were at Bell's Castle for dinner because Annie
makes reservations like that, um, we had an escargo appetizer
so taste. Oh it was so good. I'm so glad
(01:56):
you reminded me of that. That was only months ago
me or months ago. Um. And right before we started
recording this, I was looking up a board game I
used to play called Snail's Pace Race, and through that
I discovered that snail racing is a real thing. It's
a humorous event featuring two or more snails. That race
of primarily in the UK, and I think the first
(02:20):
year took place was in London. The first official competition.
It's called the Guinness gastro Pod Championship. Guinness Gastropod Championship. Yes,
and it was commentated on by a horse racing fellow,
like a guy who commented on horse races, John mcker
(02:40):
Rick mccurriic. Sorry miss pronouncing that, but he started the
race with ready steady. And I just found this like
right before we started recording, and I'm so bummed. I'm
glad I found it. But the whole world awaits yeah, world, Well,
I'm looking forward to the rest of your afternoon for you, Annie,
(03:00):
thank you, thank you. But this this episode is loosely
inspired by our cinnamon rourle episode because they are sometimes
called cinnamon snails, and that makes about as much sense
as any other topic we choose in the relationship or
lack thereof between. But I guess this brings us to
our question escargo What are they? Well? Escargo is the
(03:29):
French term for cooked snails, and it's one of those
words that sort of like beef that the English language
has just widely adopted to mean the cooked version of
that thing. Right, Um, A few species of snail are eaten.
There's a corn new asper, some otherwise known as the
brown garden snail or the common European snail or uh
in French, the petit gree or a little gray um.
(03:50):
There's another species called Helix licorum, which is also sometimes
sold as petit gree anyway. Um. Then there's also the
Elix palmattia, which is also called the Burgundy snail or
Roman snail. All of these are land snails land snails.
Some giant land snails like the size of your palm,
(04:10):
are also eaten in parts of Africa, and a few
species of marine snails are commonly eaten in Southeast Asia
and up into China and Japan, also around Greece and Italy. Right.
All of these, though, are members of the class gas Troopoto,
which are invertebrates, including those slugs which do not grow shells,
and snales which do. The part of snails that's commonly
(04:32):
visible outside the shell is called the head foot because
there's a head and there's a foot, but there's not
really like a boundary between them, so it's just the
head foot um. It's muscily on one end and has
sensory tentacles on the other end. Um Land snails have
a mucous coat to keep their bodies moist and then
hidden inside the shell. Snails have what's called a visceral
(04:55):
hump what um, which is the part of their body
that contains most of their idle organs um. Generally, snales
are prepared whole, so if you're eating, when you're eating
all of that, you're getting the visual hump in there.
You are hum. Also in the gastropod class are abalone
and conk, So if you've had those, congrats, you're eating stale. Bet.
(05:17):
Some people like, that's fine, you're good. Yeah, they're delicious. Yeah,
you wouldn't be good if you eat some types of snails.
All sales are edible. No, don't just go eating snails,
willy nilly, check it first, um get you know, like
read a guide on how to prepare them, because you
don't want to eat them just out of the wild,
because they could have some toxins or stuff in them
(05:38):
or parasites. So yeah, read a guide. When I was little,
four years old, my my older brother did dare me
to eat a slug. I did eat it for fifty
cents because that's all you know when you're a kid,
that that means a lot. Hey, that's a lot. Of money. Right, Uh,
and be you're still here so I did? Fine, Yeah,
(06:01):
I'm fine. But for anybody listening, perhaps don't take that
dare from your older brother. Um. Eating snails is most
common in France, Unit Kingdom, Spain, Grease, Italy, into a
lesser extent other parts of Europe. People in these areas
not only enjoy them while dining out, they make them
themselves while dining in the traditional French preparation involves parsley, butter, garlic,
(06:23):
and other seasonings, and they are served in shell. They
are often quite expensive, are relatively expensive, I suppose if
you're comparing like apptisers of a similar size. Sure, in
places like Grease or Italy, snails might be incorporated into
pasta sauces, which to me sounds amazing. Oh I know right, Um.
Over in Asia, they seem to be most popular in Vietnam,
But yeah, there are recipes and menu items from all
(06:45):
over that incorporate snails boiled or grilled in shell or
out in a sweet or spicy chili sauces and curries
or other stews and black bean sauce. They're also super
popular in Nigeria. Um cooked into a stew with hot
peppers and onions and tomatoes, and it's hard to find
them fresh in the United States. Um. Most are imported
from Europe Asia, candor frozen. Like I'm not sure if
(07:07):
I've ever had them fresh. Yeah, um, but when I
have had them, they've reminded me of calamari or um.
Now that I think about, it's sort of like a
like a springy cheese curd, just smooth and kind of
chewy tender. Yeah yeah, um, and yeah, I always had
them in garlic butter. I have never really caught much
of a flavor of snail due to garlic butter. Right, texture, texture, right,
(07:31):
But but apparently they can taste a little like vegetal
and briny when they're fresh. Yeah. I'm really excited now
that we've done this research because I've never had them,
not at like a French restaurant. Right. Yeah, I want
every preparation of snail possibly available. I'm curious if we
went to Beaver Highway or something and restaurants over there,
if they have these preparations of snails, like Asian preparations
(07:55):
or whatever, not French preparations. Yeah, apparently we just need
to go to Vietnam. Oh Okay, Okay, done, I'm convinced.
You've convinced me, and it was snails that did it,
among other things snails heck um and okay, can I
can I do a snail aside about how amazing these
(08:16):
creatures are. Yes, before we get to the part where
people have been eating them for a long time and
this is a little bit gnarly, I'm sorry, they're so
weird and great. Um. So I'm gonna be brief, but
but if any of the following strikes your interest, definitely
go looking for the podcast episodes that um Stuff to
blow your mind have done on slugs and snails. Okay.
(08:40):
In fact one, snails will eat pretty much anything um,
depending on the species like each other counts. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
some snails are not all herbivores um. But when it
comes to the species that humans eat, especially in s
cargo um, the preferred diet is going to be like
grains and greens and soil, because you've got to get
a lot of minerals, including alum to build up these
(09:00):
shells UM. When they're farmed are collected, they're given a
special non dirt diet for their final week or so
to um to purge them of any soil or other
stuff that humans wouldn't want to eat that's still in
their digestive tract, similar to how oysters are treated. Um.
Washington Post reported that sometimes chefs special order snails fed
with things like mint during their purge to give them
(09:23):
that flavor. We have to talk about snail reproduction, okay,
So snails are hermaphrodites, meaning that they each have both
male and female reproductive organs. In order to reproduce, they
have sex with a partner in mating sequences that last
four to twelve hours during which each partner can inseminate,
(09:44):
and each can be inseminated and involved in this process
in many land snail species anyway, are what's called love darts.
These are spears of calcium carbonate or kitan that a
snail will poke out of its body and an attempt
to stab its partner with, and it's coated in like
a hormone mucus, and if it lands correctly and its partner,
(10:04):
it will increase its partner's chances of inseeven nation romantic.
I know, Oh yeah, there's too much about snail sex
to really get into here, but you totally look up
this stuff to blow your Mind episodes. UM, there's My
Slimy Valentine, the Slug Life from UM, Weird Wonders of
(10:25):
House Gastropata from and an interview with a marine biologist
from nineteen when I was first getting to know Robert Um.
He and Julie did that Valentine's episode and Robert hand
drew this set of slug Valentine's with crayon and they're wonderful.
I'll see if I can find them to post on
social Yeah, I'm pretty sure I edited that one when
(10:48):
I was editor of that show, UM, and it was wonderful.
And also I believe I read somewhere that the love
darts is where like cupids, arrow comes from the inspiration
and for keep it and keep itsarrow. That might just
be wishful thinking of someone, so some interesting person's part,
but I did read that in at least two places,
(11:10):
So that is that is just something. It is something, UM.
And if all of that hasn't weirded you out enough,
you can also buy and eat snail caviar love it.
Apparently it's going to earth be in like sweet like carrots.
Maybe that's what I've seen it compared with snail caviare
is not a thing I've ever considered. Nope, until this
(11:33):
very moment. So this is the first time experiencing right now.
All right, what about nutrition? Uh, snails alone once you
know before the butter thing, um, are pretty good for you. Um,
They're a great source of protein, low and fat. What
is in there is like good fats. They're high in
micronutrients like vitamin E, magnesium and iron, lots of vimins
(11:55):
and minerals in there. Um. Yeah, they're they're being investigated
for more widespread use. Is inexpensive and readily available and
nutritious protein, and developing countries that can be more environmentally
friendly than larger animals like pigs and cattle and even chicken. Yeah,
going on for the snail, there is and literally there's
a lot going on globally. Billions of snails are eaten
(12:17):
each year, an annual thirty thousand metric tons in France alone.
That's sixty six million pounds or approximately a billion of
the critters, assuming that they're each about an ounce. According
to a report by NPR, the French delicacy of Burgundy
snails Escorto de bocan no longer come from Burgundy nope. Instead,
(12:40):
they come from Hungary or somewhere else in Europe, and
probably Eastern Europe. One of them, according to one of
their interview subjects, director of the company croke borgone Um.
That company packages one thousand snails an hour, placing pre
cooked SRG into shells of the right size, and they
sell millions a year. There is an institute of German
(13:01):
snail breeding. Wow, they take it seriously. Man. My brain
kind of sluttered for a minute over that fact. They
will take you on tours of farms so that you
can see how they work. I want to go. Oh,
I hope someone who's listening has gone and can tell
us how amazing. It is an association that represents ten
(13:22):
industrial food businesses that import Burgundy snails into France makes
about eighty seven million dollars over harvesting, construction, agriculture and
other facets of industrialization majorly depleted France's wild snail population.
They're about three snail farmers in France combined. They make
(13:43):
up five percent of the market and most of the
snails they farm are two of the lesso snails. Particularree
and grow green, little gray and big gray. In about
one and forty academic papers were published about endangered snails.
They are in all kinds of trouble. There's a carnivorous
worm called the new Guinea flatworm that's hugely invasive and
(14:04):
eats snails and other soil dwelling creatures like earthworms, which uh,
you know we don't usually eat, but also really helped
like airate and fertilized soil and farms and gardens. So
it's another agricultural animal, yes, kind of. Yeah. Yeah. Snails
are also just so sensitive to issues that are affecting
all kinds of farmers, climate change and pollution and certain pesticides.
(14:29):
The US imports a decent amount of a cargo from
Europe as there are only two U s d A
certified snail farms in the United States. This is largely
because of the snails rightfully earned reputation as an invasive species.
Oh yeah, more on that in the history section. But
they will eat you out of house at home, Yeah,
they will, to the point that it is illegal on
(14:50):
a federal level to take a live snail across state lines.
Oh dear, if you have a hitchhiking snail, man's straight
to prison for me. Not that I've ever done it.
Absolutely not, not that you ever would, of course, but yeah,
(15:10):
um that first snail farm, Um, it only managed to
get started so after like three years of cutting through
red tape. And it is a three square foot greenhouse
about twenty square meters that is. And yeah, they reported
to the Washington Post that althose snails can't hear. They're
very sensitive to vibration, heat and light, and if you
stress them out, they produce so much slime as a
(15:31):
defense mechanism and it gets really gross, really fast. So
you don't want to do that. You want to keep
them chill. Yeah. Uh. Also, yeah, they have to be
super careful not to let their livestock escape into the
surrounding countryside because those buddies would wreak havoc on the
farms and vineyards. So so they surround the snails living
containers with trays of concentrated salt water so that they
(15:54):
would dive they fell into them, hypothetically, but just in case.
The greenhouse has a dead perim there twelve ft by
twelve feet, kept free of vegetation, just to be sure,
can't let those snails escape. And they may have a
hundred thousand snails in there at any given time. Wow. Yeah,
vertical vertical spacing, man, I love it. I want to
(16:17):
see the snail movie of the the attempt to escape
from this place, the Great Escape, the Great slow Escape.
Oh yeah, I think this thing has legs. It has
but one but one foot head. Oh this is so exciting.
(16:39):
I want to check out that place too. Yeah. Yes,
the whole snail tour. Absolutely. Uh. And you can mark
your gallendars for national As Cargo Day on Also, there
is a yearly festival in Spain. Uh my, my Cadalan
is probably terrible. I think it's called Del car goal um.
But it is a snail centered culinary festival and it's
(17:01):
three days of food and music and acrobats and clowns
and snail races and there's a parade and twelve tons
of snails were eaten there in twenty nineteen twenty seconds.
And I want to go so much. That sounds amazing.
And snail festival. Oh the timing, by the way, on
(17:24):
both of those, the Nationalist Cargo Day and this fest
is not a coincidence. Um. Snails are sometimes harvested in
early summer after they lay their eggs, so that's one
of the like Prime snail harvest times. Well, we are
looking for our next destination and we have some months
to plans. If anyone has ever been to this or
(17:47):
any other snail related festival, let us know. This is
extremely important information to my life. It is, it is.
Oh anyway, um, we do have some history for you.
But first we're going to take a quick break for
a word from ore sponsor. And we're back. Thank you sponsoring, Yes,
(18:17):
thank you. We're back after more discussion off air about
snail sex. And you know, Lauren, I think you've got
me beat in the interesting facts for the episode. I
you know, I did a lot of readings. Yeah, yeah,
I hope that a lot of people ask you what
you were reading and you you happily explained to them.
(18:39):
I think that there's going to be some really good
posts on Twitter later today. So after this comes out,
you know, just go back, go back, check those all
of the illustrations. Illustrations. Yeah, this is this is a
well reased arched territory. I will have you know, I'm
(19:02):
not the only person who's really fascinated by snail and
slug reproduction. If I find out that you've got multiple
pseudonyms and all of this research is just you. I
won't tell anybody, but I'm starting to have some suspicions,
is all I'm saying. Well, anyway, anyway, they are a
(19:23):
food podcast. We are, so I guess, I guess let's
talk about the food portion. I do love how often
we have to remind ourselves and others this is a
food podcast. But that is in fact how we are
classified on most podcasting apparatus apparatti, sometimes even as cooking.
And I'm like, oh no, no, do not take this
(19:44):
isn't certainly not a cooking podcast. No, but if that's
how we get higher in apples, I'll algorithm. I'm into it. Yeah,
what cooking. That's a great plan. It is alright, Well
anyway again, side a side a second anyway, Um, Snails
have been on humanity's menu for at long time. Historians
(20:06):
believe that our prehistoric ancestors counted land snails as part
of their diet. Ancient Romans consumed snails, even farming them
to stay up to date, up to date, current with demand.
But yet it goes back way further than that. Yeah,
it does. Evidence indicates folks in what is now Tanzania
have been eating land snails for thirty one thousand years.
(20:29):
People were eating land snails thirty thousand years ago in
the Mediterranean, new research suggests snail research. The researchers examined
snail shells from human dwellings in Spain and learned about
how snails were prepared during that time. The ideal snail
was a year or so old and cooked over pine
and juniper coal embers for around seven minutes and sounds
(20:51):
love ancient snail recipe m. The study found that a
different method was used in what is now Algeria. They
would place the snails between two heated stone layers and
a hearthpit and boil them. Yeah, and this discovery contradicts
long held beliefs that the diets of early Homo sapiens
were narrow, a contradiction that other recent research supports the
(21:12):
diets of Homo sapiens were far more married than we'd
previously thought. Fascinating And oh no, they used the BP
time designation. I'm sorry before physics for physics first mentioned
in our Rise episode, still gives me anxiety dreams, Oh
oh oh, I love it, but it's just you want
(21:34):
to get things right, and another layer of thinking about
again food podcast. I thought there's something written about snails
in their shells, and time is a spiral and lots
of inspiration for art, absolutely yes, And speaking of inspiration,
(21:57):
are about plenty of the elder. He wrote about snail
farming taking place in Italy as early as fifty C.
The Italian man plenty sighted fluvious Harpanus fed his snails
meat and wine, which is indicative of how highly they
were regarded. Damn snail, Yeah, get in things. I don't
get either of those things. As early as two see,
(22:22):
Greek author Gallin wrote, all the Greeks eat snails every day. Yeah. Yeah.
For early Greeks, peasants were primarily the ones consuming snails.
They were fairly easy to catch and to cook. M
I've never really tried to catch a snail. Yeah, they
don't put up a whole lot of because you see
(22:43):
one and then you pick it up. That's it. The
chase is over after it barely begun. It's finding them
as the key guys. Yeah, all right. Vo Hong Lean,
author of Rice and Back Get A History of Food
in Vietnam, posits that people were eating sales in Vietnam
long before the wrench were albeit freshwater snails um, for
(23:03):
those that could not afford to eat a farm animal
or you know, things that took more resources. I suppose
snails were cheap and easy. They were, and are boiled
with lemon grass and then dipped in a sauce. Snails
were viewed as an acceptable food during lent, and monks
kept gardens of them for that purpose. But later, during
the Middle Ages, the Capital c Church considered eating snails
(23:26):
on green only the starving ate them, and for a
while the practice of eating snails almost died out in Europe.
They were still eaten by poor folks, though, and they
would become posh again in the seventeen and eighteen hundreds
in some parts of Europe, I think, maybe particularly in Austria,
where yeah, nobles might have had dedicated snail farms on
their estates pretty pretty often. Um and they were thought
(23:48):
to be yep, an aphrodisiac and a promoter of male
ver reality. So that's however many topics we've done, minus
one for aphrodisiac and then lettuce u not an approdisiac.
The only thing so far we'll find another one one
of these days, I'm sure. Children in Victorian Arab Bristol
(24:11):
were sometimes told that eating snails was good for their health.
It was a commonly held belief in that area at
the time that eating snails could cure tuberculosis. Eating snails
was a common enough practice that they sometimes were called wallfish,
wall fish, wallfish. Okay, that's a that's another pretty good fact,
like fish that you can find climbing up a wall.
(24:34):
What's the etymology. I love this. I know it's a
wall Fishshi blues. I'm sure that's how. It was exactly
exactly that escargo de Bourgoten we mentioned earlier, that was
popularized in the Burgundy region, possibly by French wine cellars.
In the nineteenth century. In a French writer and sociolite
(24:55):
Helene von Zoelen purportedly became the first female competitor and
an international car racing in the Paris Amsterdam Paris trail Um,
and her pseudonym was the snail Yeah. Her husband, who
was president of the Automobile Club de France, also raced
under the name escargo that is so sweet Cuties. Sources
(25:21):
seemed to indicate that snails for eating made it to
California by the eighteen fifties. Soon after farmers in California
were selling snails next to the air crops of fruit
and vegetables. The reason that European garden snails are common
throughout America is that scargo snails like these escaped from
farms and reproduced everywhere. That is probably the kind of snail.
(25:44):
If you've ever seen a snail in America out in
the wild, that's probably what it is brought in for
escargo first love it um. So yeah, those farmers might
not have been like raising those snails. They were selling
on purpose, but just making the best of of a slimy,
slimy situation. And that is not the only invasive edible
snail to plague California. Later on in the eight hundreds,
(26:07):
a freshwater snail species called the Chinese mystery snail or
the black snail, came into Asian markets in San Francisco
and escaped into local waterways, where it competes with the
local wildlife for resources, and its shells can clog pipes.
Snails are sneakier than I thought. I know, right, They
just get into places. Okay, another movie idea, What if
(26:28):
there's a movie like them, you know, with a big ants,
but with a big snail and it's set in San Francisco. Yeah,
that's all I've got. No, I like it. Yeah, let's
work on this, run with it. And yes, snails are
not without diseases. Um, and so the US has regulations
(26:50):
in place about the safe foraging, farming, handling, and selling
of snails for consumption. And going back to that Bristol thing,
a newspaper article from two just gribes a lecture given
by an Anglican vicar in which he claims that Bristols
pores would eat snails off the wall. That's perhaps, Oh okay,
it's all coming back, it's all making sense. In the
(27:11):
same area, in a corner reported that the death of
a local man was not due to the fact he'd
eating snails the previous day as a lot of Well,
I'm glad that he figured that one out. Twenty century
author Patricia high Smith, who wrote The Talented Mr Ripley,
Two Faces of January and Carol, among other things, allegedly
(27:34):
kept snails as pets and once brought one hundred snails
and her purse to a party so she'd have something
to talk to. A hundred in her purse and her
purse at a party. Sure, yeah, I suppose also not
(27:55):
go to the party, stay home with your sales. But
if you're trying to get out there hundred snails though, right, this, this,
this is what's upsetting or this is what's like incredible
to me about the situation. Not that a woman would
bring snails to a party because they would be a
better conversation partner than the other people there feel that,
(28:16):
But a hundred I'm like that's overkill. Yeah, then you're
just stressing yourself out the snails, or maybe it was
so the snails could talk to oh never never guess not.
In response to de guying snail populations, France enacted a
law in nineteen seventy nine that placed restrictions on commercial
collection of wild snails. This led to an increased dependence
(28:38):
of the French on foreign imports of edible snails. A
handful of snail farmers came together in twenty thirteen to
petition that packages of snails indicate where they came from.
The concerns in this petition made it up to the
French Parliament. It got all the way to the French Parliament.
In the end, this labeling was deemed optional. So you know,
(29:00):
snails from prey its or what have you. Yeah, well,
a lot to be said about the world of snails.
There is, there is. It's all delightful and strange. Yeah,
I know, and I feel like there's so many things
we could talk about, even even more details. Oh yeah, yeah,
(29:20):
this is this is kind of focusing in on a
particular yeah, region and dish. But I want to do
I just want to do the Snail Show from now on.
Snail Show. Yeah. I like that snail stuff inside the
Snail Show, Laura vocal love it. News updates on snail
(29:45):
coverage and snail sex that you could ever want, updates
you'd get on your phone, right. I think we have
a lot of ideas in here that could be do
expounded upon absolutely and become works of art themselves. Yeah,
for further development you know, into it. Well, um, I
(30:11):
guess that's all we have to say about snails today today. Uh,
we do have a little bit more for you, um.
But first we've got one more quick break forward from
our sponsor and we're back. Thank you sponsored, Yes, thank you,
(30:31):
and we're back with may oh Slow. We already did
this spiral for the cinnamon role. We did, we did. Um,
I want you guys to know that Annie did some
some really useful um tentacle hands at the end of
(30:57):
at the end of that for for the ey stocks,
very visually representative on this our audio medium. I think
it communicates. I think you can hear it. Maybe that's
just in my head, but it helps my process, my
artistic process. There you go, that's the important part. Thank you,
(31:19):
Brian wrote, I graduated from Georgia Tech go jackets in
and moved to Illinois and then Massachusetts after that. But
I loved my time in Atlanta. I feel like I'm
listening to old friends from the past when I get
a new episode, especially now that you're working in a
building I remember on Pond stillly On first, I'm a
bit embarrassed to admit that one of my children, like Annie,
(31:39):
had their first New York City pizza at a Sabarrow.
One of them is allergic to peanuts, so we have
to be careful about where we eat, usually sticking to
national chains that we know are likely to take allergen
awareness seriously. So when we got to n y C
just before lunchtime in August and went looking for food,
the first safe thing we found was a Sabarrow it
(31:59):
wouldn't have been first choice, but I have to say
it was by far the best Barrow pizza I have
ever had. There you go. I don't know if they
feel like they have to up their game in New
York or if the crowds a block from Times Square
means they sell enough pizza that it's always fresh. Either way,
it was a decent lunch. Second, I'm glad to hear
(32:19):
that let Us Surprise You is still open. I have
to disagree with laurence lack of enthusiasm for it to
be fair. I wasn't there for the salad. As a
hungry college student at the time, all you can eat
soup and muffins were just the thing. I have fond
memories of ending up uncomfortably stuff because I couldn't stop
(32:40):
myself from eating just one more chocolate chip muffin. But
the real point of this message is to share a
story from several years ago in The Boston Globe. When
I first read this article about Mike Ducacus's habit of
saving turkey carcasses to make soup, he immediately became my hero.
My family has always had a similar tradition of using
Thanksgiving leftovers for everything we can think of, including soup.
(33:03):
It's still my goal to make the gravy last as
long as the meat, so I can finish up the
last of it with one final hot jerky and gravy sandwich.
Oh yeah, sounds good. And I always make a batch
of soup from the carcass. It used to annoy my
wife that it took up a bunch of space in
the freezer, but the peanut allergic daughter loves it, and
we know it's safe, and so she has to let
(33:25):
She stopped complaining when I showed her the follow up article.
He got do carcus seven turkey carcasses the year that
article was published. Compared to that, one batch of soup
in the freezer doesn't seem so bad. Oh my gosh, well,
duly noted. I guess I know. I have a lot
of ideas. Also, I have an update, probably not sad,
(33:46):
but maybe I believe the sabar on Times Square. Yes,
I didn't make a note of it either way. The
last time that I was there, I was there a
few weeks ago. I think it was really recent. Oh no,
or maybe they just announced their closing and they haven't
closed yet. I heard it through some circles. Well, we
(34:10):
hardly knew me farewell. I'm glad to borrow on Yeah,
Atlanta high fives. Um Esther wrote, I just listened to
the Turnip and Onion episodes back to back, and it
put me in the mood for some roasted root vegetables.
I couldn't find turnip at my local store, so I
had to settle for beats, which, once cut, stay in
my cutting board, hands and everything else they touch. The
(34:32):
last veggie I cut up was the onion. While chopping,
I thought about the chemical reactions you explained in the
Onion episode. I found it fascinating. When I removed one
half of the onion from my cutting board, I realized
that the onion juice had taken the majority of the
beat stain out of the cutting board. I have no
idea if there's any signs behind this, but it sure
worked better than don dish soap. I even rubbed it
on my hands to get the bright pink color off.
(34:53):
I just had to share I've never heard this, but
that's great. So so this is like a multi step
press us. I'm envisioning, like like onion, to get the
beat off, and then like coffee grounds to get the
onion smell off. Oh yeah, yeah, Oh man, that's so cool.
We've got a lot of people write in about Onion
(35:14):
doing some pretty neat things and and I, as someone
who has had this beat problem before, I'm very interested
to know that's the case. Yeah. Yeah, there's maybe follow
up Onion Science episode and follow up Onion Science, or
we'll visited it in the beat episode. Oh there you go.
(35:36):
Many options available for us, indeed, and if you would
like to contact us like these two listeners did and
thank you, there are many options available to you as well,
and one of them is email. You can email us
at hello at savor pod dot com. We're also on
social media. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook, and
Instagram at savor pod. We do hope to hear from you.
Savor is production of I Heart Radio and Stuff Media.
(35:58):
For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, you can at
the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows. Thank you, as always to our
super producers Dylan Facin and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you
for listening, and we hope that lots more good things
are coming your way.
Hello, and welcome to save your protection of I Heartradio
and staff media. I'm Any and I'm Lauren Vogelbaum. And
today we're talking about s cargo and snail eating in general,
and we are thrilled to do so. If you couldn't tell,
I am so excited. Snails are so weird and cool
and cute and tasty. Yeah, surprisingly present in our pop culture.
(00:29):
He was thinking about, especially in children's stuff. I guess,
but carry the snail. Whatever that snail is from, I wanna.
I guess he was a snail bunches of snails. Yes, yes,
I had scargo for the first time when I was
in high school and my older brother wanted to go
to this newly opened French restaurant for his birthday. And
as I've said several times on the show, I grew
(00:51):
up in a very small town. This was exciting news totally.
He ordered some s cargo for the table, despite my
dad's flat bewilderment that anyone would want to eat snails
and at that price exactly. That's really what got him.
I think he refused to try them, but everyone else
enjoyed them. And I mean they're drowning in butter. And garlic,
(01:14):
or at least these particular iterations and a lot of
iterations I have are yes, that is the I think
that's the only way I've ever eaten them, like in
garlic butter, perhaps more garlic butter than snail right by weight, right,
Um yeah, yeah, we we uh down at Disney. We've
had snails a couple of times. Yeah. So the first
(01:34):
time we went to Disney Food and Wine, we got
an es Cargo croissant at France and Epcot at France,
we got it at France, we did um. Yeah. And
when we were at Bell's Castle for dinner because Annie
makes reservations like that, um, we had an escargo appetizer
so taste. Oh it was so good. I'm so glad
(01:56):
you reminded me of that. That was only months ago
me or months ago. Um. And right before we started
recording this, I was looking up a board game I
used to play called Snail's Pace Race, and through that
I discovered that snail racing is a real thing. It's
a humorous event featuring two or more snails. That race
of primarily in the UK, and I think the first
(02:20):
year took place was in London. The first official competition.
It's called the Guinness gastro Pod Championship. Guinness Gastropod Championship. Yes,
and it was commentated on by a horse racing fellow,
like a guy who commented on horse races, John mcker
(02:40):
Rick mccurriic. Sorry miss pronouncing that, but he started the
race with ready steady. And I just found this like
right before we started recording, and I'm so bummed. I'm
glad I found it. But the whole world awaits yeah, world, Well,
I'm looking forward to the rest of your afternoon for you, Annie,
(03:00):
thank you, thank you. But this this episode is loosely
inspired by our cinnamon rourle episode because they are sometimes
called cinnamon snails, and that makes about as much sense
as any other topic we choose in the relationship or
lack thereof between. But I guess this brings us to
our question escargo What are they? Well? Escargo is the
(03:29):
French term for cooked snails, and it's one of those
words that sort of like beef that the English language
has just widely adopted to mean the cooked version of
that thing. Right, Um, A few species of snail are eaten.
There's a corn new asper, some otherwise known as the
brown garden snail or the common European snail or uh
in French, the petit gree or a little gray um.
(03:50):
There's another species called Helix licorum, which is also sometimes
sold as petit gree anyway. Um. Then there's also the
Elix palmattia, which is also called the Burgundy snail or
Roman snail. All of these are land snails land snails.
Some giant land snails like the size of your palm,
(04:10):
are also eaten in parts of Africa, and a few
species of marine snails are commonly eaten in Southeast Asia
and up into China and Japan, also around Greece and Italy. Right.
All of these, though, are members of the class gas Troopoto,
which are invertebrates, including those slugs which do not grow shells,
and snales which do. The part of snails that's commonly
(04:32):
visible outside the shell is called the head foot because
there's a head and there's a foot, but there's not
really like a boundary between them, so it's just the
head foot um. It's muscily on one end and has
sensory tentacles on the other end. Um Land snails have
a mucous coat to keep their bodies moist and then
hidden inside the shell. Snails have what's called a visceral
(04:55):
hump what um, which is the part of their body
that contains most of their idle organs um. Generally, snales
are prepared whole, so if you're eating, when you're eating
all of that, you're getting the visual hump in there.
You are hum. Also in the gastropod class are abalone
and conk, So if you've had those, congrats, you're eating stale. Bet.
(05:17):
Some people like, that's fine, you're good. Yeah, they're delicious. Yeah,
you wouldn't be good if you eat some types of snails.
All sales are edible. No, don't just go eating snails,
willy nilly, check it first, um get you know, like
read a guide on how to prepare them, because you
don't want to eat them just out of the wild,
because they could have some toxins or stuff in them
(05:38):
or parasites. So yeah, read a guide. When I was little,
four years old, my my older brother did dare me
to eat a slug. I did eat it for fifty
cents because that's all you know when you're a kid,
that that means a lot. Hey, that's a lot. Of money. Right, Uh,
and be you're still here so I did? Fine, Yeah,
(06:01):
I'm fine. But for anybody listening, perhaps don't take that
dare from your older brother. Um. Eating snails is most
common in France, Unit Kingdom, Spain, Grease, Italy, into a
lesser extent other parts of Europe. People in these areas
not only enjoy them while dining out, they make them
themselves while dining in the traditional French preparation involves parsley, butter, garlic,
(06:23):
and other seasonings, and they are served in shell. They
are often quite expensive, are relatively expensive, I suppose if
you're comparing like apptisers of a similar size. Sure, in
places like Grease or Italy, snails might be incorporated into
pasta sauces, which to me sounds amazing. Oh I know right, Um.
Over in Asia, they seem to be most popular in Vietnam,
But yeah, there are recipes and menu items from all
(06:45):
over that incorporate snails boiled or grilled in shell or
out in a sweet or spicy chili sauces and curries
or other stews and black bean sauce. They're also super
popular in Nigeria. Um cooked into a stew with hot
peppers and onions and tomatoes, and it's hard to find
them fresh in the United States. Um. Most are imported
from Europe Asia, candor frozen. Like I'm not sure if
(07:07):
I've ever had them fresh. Yeah, um, but when I
have had them, they've reminded me of calamari or um.
Now that I think about, it's sort of like a
like a springy cheese curd, just smooth and kind of
chewy tender. Yeah yeah, um, and yeah, I always had
them in garlic butter. I have never really caught much
of a flavor of snail due to garlic butter. Right, texture, texture, right,
(07:31):
But but apparently they can taste a little like vegetal
and briny when they're fresh. Yeah. I'm really excited now
that we've done this research because I've never had them,
not at like a French restaurant. Right. Yeah, I want
every preparation of snail possibly available. I'm curious if we
went to Beaver Highway or something and restaurants over there,
if they have these preparations of snails, like Asian preparations
(07:55):
or whatever, not French preparations. Yeah, apparently we just need
to go to Vietnam. Oh Okay, Okay, done, I'm convinced.
You've convinced me, and it was snails that did it,
among other things snails heck um and okay, can I
can I do a snail aside about how amazing these
(08:16):
creatures are. Yes, before we get to the part where
people have been eating them for a long time and
this is a little bit gnarly, I'm sorry, they're so
weird and great. Um. So I'm gonna be brief, but
but if any of the following strikes your interest, definitely
go looking for the podcast episodes that um Stuff to
blow your mind have done on slugs and snails. Okay.
(08:40):
In fact one, snails will eat pretty much anything um,
depending on the species like each other counts. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
some snails are not all herbivores um. But when it
comes to the species that humans eat, especially in s
cargo um, the preferred diet is going to be like
grains and greens and soil, because you've got to get
a lot of minerals, including alum to build up these
(09:00):
shells UM. When they're farmed are collected, they're given a
special non dirt diet for their final week or so
to um to purge them of any soil or other
stuff that humans wouldn't want to eat that's still in
their digestive tract, similar to how oysters are treated. Um.
Washington Post reported that sometimes chefs special order snails fed
with things like mint during their purge to give them
(09:23):
that flavor. We have to talk about snail reproduction, okay,
So snails are hermaphrodites, meaning that they each have both
male and female reproductive organs. In order to reproduce, they
have sex with a partner in mating sequences that last
four to twelve hours during which each partner can inseminate,
(09:44):
and each can be inseminated and involved in this process
in many land snail species anyway, are what's called love darts.
These are spears of calcium carbonate or kitan that a
snail will poke out of its body and an attempt
to stab its partner with, and it's coated in like
a hormone mucus, and if it lands correctly and its partner,
(10:04):
it will increase its partner's chances of inseeven nation romantic.
I know, Oh yeah, there's too much about snail sex
to really get into here, but you totally look up
this stuff to blow your Mind episodes. UM, there's My
Slimy Valentine, the Slug Life from UM, Weird Wonders of
(10:25):
House Gastropata from and an interview with a marine biologist
from nineteen when I was first getting to know Robert Um.
He and Julie did that Valentine's episode and Robert hand
drew this set of slug Valentine's with crayon and they're wonderful.
I'll see if I can find them to post on
social Yeah, I'm pretty sure I edited that one when
(10:48):
I was editor of that show, UM, and it was wonderful.
And also I believe I read somewhere that the love
darts is where like cupids, arrow comes from the inspiration
and for keep it and keep itsarrow. That might just
be wishful thinking of someone, so some interesting person's part,
but I did read that in at least two places,
(11:10):
So that is that is just something. It is something, UM.
And if all of that hasn't weirded you out enough,
you can also buy and eat snail caviar love it.
Apparently it's going to earth be in like sweet like carrots.
Maybe that's what I've seen it compared with snail caviare
is not a thing I've ever considered. Nope, until this
(11:33):
very moment. So this is the first time experiencing right now.
All right, what about nutrition? Uh, snails alone once you
know before the butter thing, um, are pretty good for you. Um,
They're a great source of protein, low and fat. What
is in there is like good fats. They're high in
micronutrients like vitamin E, magnesium and iron, lots of vimins
(11:55):
and minerals in there. Um. Yeah, they're they're being investigated
for more widespread use. Is inexpensive and readily available and
nutritious protein, and developing countries that can be more environmentally
friendly than larger animals like pigs and cattle and even chicken. Yeah,
going on for the snail, there is and literally there's
a lot going on globally. Billions of snails are eaten
(12:17):
each year, an annual thirty thousand metric tons in France alone.
That's sixty six million pounds or approximately a billion of
the critters, assuming that they're each about an ounce. According
to a report by NPR, the French delicacy of Burgundy
snails Escorto de bocan no longer come from Burgundy nope. Instead,
(12:40):
they come from Hungary or somewhere else in Europe, and
probably Eastern Europe. One of them, according to one of
their interview subjects, director of the company croke borgone Um.
That company packages one thousand snails an hour, placing pre
cooked SRG into shells of the right size, and they
sell millions a year. There is an institute of German
(13:01):
snail breeding. Wow, they take it seriously. Man. My brain
kind of sluttered for a minute over that fact. They
will take you on tours of farms so that you
can see how they work. I want to go. Oh,
I hope someone who's listening has gone and can tell
us how amazing. It is an association that represents ten
(13:22):
industrial food businesses that import Burgundy snails into France makes
about eighty seven million dollars over harvesting, construction, agriculture and
other facets of industrialization majorly depleted France's wild snail population.
They're about three snail farmers in France combined. They make
(13:43):
up five percent of the market and most of the
snails they farm are two of the lesso snails. Particularree
and grow green, little gray and big gray. In about
one and forty academic papers were published about endangered snails.
They are in all kinds of trouble. There's a carnivorous
worm called the new Guinea flatworm that's hugely invasive and
(14:04):
eats snails and other soil dwelling creatures like earthworms, which uh,
you know we don't usually eat, but also really helped
like airate and fertilized soil and farms and gardens. So
it's another agricultural animal, yes, kind of. Yeah. Yeah. Snails
are also just so sensitive to issues that are affecting
all kinds of farmers, climate change and pollution and certain pesticides.
(14:29):
The US imports a decent amount of a cargo from
Europe as there are only two U s d A
certified snail farms in the United States. This is largely
because of the snails rightfully earned reputation as an invasive species.
Oh yeah, more on that in the history section. But
they will eat you out of house at home, Yeah,
they will, to the point that it is illegal on
(14:50):
a federal level to take a live snail across state lines.
Oh dear, if you have a hitchhiking snail, man's straight
to prison for me. Not that I've ever done it.
Absolutely not, not that you ever would, of course, but yeah,
(15:10):
um that first snail farm, Um, it only managed to
get started so after like three years of cutting through
red tape. And it is a three square foot greenhouse
about twenty square meters that is. And yeah, they reported
to the Washington Post that althose snails can't hear. They're
very sensitive to vibration, heat and light, and if you
stress them out, they produce so much slime as a
(15:31):
defense mechanism and it gets really gross, really fast. So
you don't want to do that. You want to keep
them chill. Yeah. Uh. Also, yeah, they have to be
super careful not to let their livestock escape into the
surrounding countryside because those buddies would wreak havoc on the
farms and vineyards. So so they surround the snails living
containers with trays of concentrated salt water so that they
(15:54):
would dive they fell into them, hypothetically, but just in case.
The greenhouse has a dead perim there twelve ft by
twelve feet, kept free of vegetation, just to be sure,
can't let those snails escape. And they may have a
hundred thousand snails in there at any given time. Wow. Yeah,
vertical vertical spacing, man, I love it. I want to
(16:17):
see the snail movie of the the attempt to escape
from this place, the Great Escape, the Great slow Escape.
Oh yeah, I think this thing has legs. It has
but one but one foot head. Oh this is so exciting.
(16:39):
I want to check out that place too. Yeah. Yes,
the whole snail tour. Absolutely. Uh. And you can mark
your gallendars for national As Cargo Day on Also, there
is a yearly festival in Spain. Uh my, my Cadalan
is probably terrible. I think it's called Del car goal um.
But it is a snail centered culinary festival and it's
(17:01):
three days of food and music and acrobats and clowns
and snail races and there's a parade and twelve tons
of snails were eaten there in twenty nineteen twenty seconds.
And I want to go so much. That sounds amazing.
And snail festival. Oh the timing, by the way, on
(17:24):
both of those, the Nationalist Cargo Day and this fest
is not a coincidence. Um. Snails are sometimes harvested in
early summer after they lay their eggs, so that's one
of the like Prime snail harvest times. Well, we are
looking for our next destination and we have some months
to plans. If anyone has ever been to this or
(17:47):
any other snail related festival, let us know. This is
extremely important information to my life. It is, it is.
Oh anyway, um, we do have some history for you.
But first we're going to take a quick break for
a word from ore sponsor. And we're back. Thank you sponsoring, Yes,
(18:17):
thank you. We're back after more discussion off air about
snail sex. And you know, Lauren, I think you've got
me beat in the interesting facts for the episode. I
you know, I did a lot of readings. Yeah, yeah,
I hope that a lot of people ask you what
you were reading and you you happily explained to them.
(18:39):
I think that there's going to be some really good
posts on Twitter later today. So after this comes out,
you know, just go back, go back, check those all
of the illustrations. Illustrations. Yeah, this is this is a
well reased arched territory. I will have you know, I'm
(19:02):
not the only person who's really fascinated by snail and
slug reproduction. If I find out that you've got multiple
pseudonyms and all of this research is just you. I
won't tell anybody, but I'm starting to have some suspicions,
is all I'm saying. Well, anyway, anyway, they are a
(19:23):
food podcast. We are, so I guess, I guess let's
talk about the food portion. I do love how often
we have to remind ourselves and others this is a
food podcast. But that is in fact how we are
classified on most podcasting apparatus apparatti, sometimes even as cooking.
And I'm like, oh no, no, do not take this
(19:44):
isn't certainly not a cooking podcast. No, but if that's
how we get higher in apples, I'll algorithm. I'm into it. Yeah,
what cooking. That's a great plan. It is alright, Well
anyway again, side a side a second anyway, Um, Snails
have been on humanity's menu for at long time. Historians
(20:06):
believe that our prehistoric ancestors counted land snails as part
of their diet. Ancient Romans consumed snails, even farming them
to stay up to date, up to date, current with demand.
But yet it goes back way further than that. Yeah,
it does. Evidence indicates folks in what is now Tanzania
have been eating land snails for thirty one thousand years.
(20:29):
People were eating land snails thirty thousand years ago in
the Mediterranean, new research suggests snail research. The researchers examined
snail shells from human dwellings in Spain and learned about
how snails were prepared during that time. The ideal snail
was a year or so old and cooked over pine
and juniper coal embers for around seven minutes and sounds
(20:51):
love ancient snail recipe m. The study found that a
different method was used in what is now Algeria. They
would place the snails between two heated stone layers and
a hearthpit and boil them. Yeah, and this discovery contradicts
long held beliefs that the diets of early Homo sapiens
were narrow, a contradiction that other recent research supports the
(21:12):
diets of Homo sapiens were far more married than we'd
previously thought. Fascinating And oh no, they used the BP
time designation. I'm sorry before physics for physics first mentioned
in our Rise episode, still gives me anxiety dreams, Oh
oh oh, I love it, but it's just you want
(21:34):
to get things right, and another layer of thinking about
again food podcast. I thought there's something written about snails
in their shells, and time is a spiral and lots
of inspiration for art, absolutely yes, And speaking of inspiration,
(21:57):
are about plenty of the elder. He wrote about snail
farming taking place in Italy as early as fifty C.
The Italian man plenty sighted fluvious Harpanus fed his snails
meat and wine, which is indicative of how highly they
were regarded. Damn snail, Yeah, get in things. I don't
get either of those things. As early as two see,
(22:22):
Greek author Gallin wrote, all the Greeks eat snails every day. Yeah. Yeah.
For early Greeks, peasants were primarily the ones consuming snails.
They were fairly easy to catch and to cook. M
I've never really tried to catch a snail. Yeah, they
don't put up a whole lot of because you see
(22:43):
one and then you pick it up. That's it. The
chase is over after it barely begun. It's finding them
as the key guys. Yeah, all right. Vo Hong Lean,
author of Rice and Back Get A History of Food
in Vietnam, posits that people were eating sales in Vietnam
long before the wrench were albeit freshwater snails um, for
(23:03):
those that could not afford to eat a farm animal
or you know, things that took more resources. I suppose
snails were cheap and easy. They were, and are boiled
with lemon grass and then dipped in a sauce. Snails
were viewed as an acceptable food during lent, and monks
kept gardens of them for that purpose. But later, during
the Middle Ages, the Capital c Church considered eating snails
(23:26):
on green only the starving ate them, and for a
while the practice of eating snails almost died out in Europe.
They were still eaten by poor folks, though, and they
would become posh again in the seventeen and eighteen hundreds
in some parts of Europe, I think, maybe particularly in Austria,
where yeah, nobles might have had dedicated snail farms on
their estates pretty pretty often. Um and they were thought
(23:48):
to be yep, an aphrodisiac and a promoter of male
ver reality. So that's however many topics we've done, minus
one for aphrodisiac and then lettuce u not an approdisiac.
The only thing so far we'll find another one one
of these days, I'm sure. Children in Victorian Arab Bristol
(24:11):
were sometimes told that eating snails was good for their health.
It was a commonly held belief in that area at
the time that eating snails could cure tuberculosis. Eating snails
was a common enough practice that they sometimes were called wallfish,
wall fish, wallfish. Okay, that's a that's another pretty good fact,
like fish that you can find climbing up a wall.
(24:34):
What's the etymology. I love this. I know it's a
wall Fishshi blues. I'm sure that's how. It was exactly
exactly that escargo de Bourgoten we mentioned earlier, that was
popularized in the Burgundy region, possibly by French wine cellars.
In the nineteenth century. In a French writer and sociolite
(24:55):
Helene von Zoelen purportedly became the first female competitor and
an international car racing in the Paris Amsterdam Paris trail Um,
and her pseudonym was the snail Yeah. Her husband, who
was president of the Automobile Club de France, also raced
under the name escargo that is so sweet Cuties. Sources
(25:21):
seemed to indicate that snails for eating made it to
California by the eighteen fifties. Soon after farmers in California
were selling snails next to the air crops of fruit
and vegetables. The reason that European garden snails are common
throughout America is that scargo snails like these escaped from
farms and reproduced everywhere. That is probably the kind of snail.
(25:44):
If you've ever seen a snail in America out in
the wild, that's probably what it is brought in for
escargo first love it um. So yeah, those farmers might
not have been like raising those snails. They were selling
on purpose, but just making the best of of a slimy,
slimy situation. And that is not the only invasive edible
snail to plague California. Later on in the eight hundreds,
(26:07):
a freshwater snail species called the Chinese mystery snail or
the black snail, came into Asian markets in San Francisco
and escaped into local waterways, where it competes with the
local wildlife for resources, and its shells can clog pipes.
Snails are sneakier than I thought. I know, right, They
just get into places. Okay, another movie idea, What if
(26:28):
there's a movie like them, you know, with a big ants,
but with a big snail and it's set in San Francisco. Yeah,
that's all I've got. No, I like it. Yeah, let's
work on this, run with it. And yes, snails are
not without diseases. Um, and so the US has regulations
(26:50):
in place about the safe foraging, farming, handling, and selling
of snails for consumption. And going back to that Bristol thing,
a newspaper article from two just gribes a lecture given
by an Anglican vicar in which he claims that Bristols
pores would eat snails off the wall. That's perhaps, Oh okay,
it's all coming back, it's all making sense. In the
(27:11):
same area, in a corner reported that the death of
a local man was not due to the fact he'd
eating snails the previous day as a lot of Well,
I'm glad that he figured that one out. Twenty century
author Patricia high Smith, who wrote The Talented Mr Ripley,
Two Faces of January and Carol, among other things, allegedly
(27:34):
kept snails as pets and once brought one hundred snails
and her purse to a party so she'd have something
to talk to. A hundred in her purse and her
purse at a party. Sure, yeah, I suppose also not
(27:55):
go to the party, stay home with your sales. But
if you're trying to get out there hundred snails though, right, this, this,
this is what's upsetting or this is what's like incredible
to me about the situation. Not that a woman would
bring snails to a party because they would be a
better conversation partner than the other people there feel that,
(28:16):
But a hundred I'm like that's overkill. Yeah, then you're
just stressing yourself out the snails, or maybe it was
so the snails could talk to oh never never guess not.
In response to de guying snail populations, France enacted a
law in nineteen seventy nine that placed restrictions on commercial
collection of wild snails. This led to an increased dependence
(28:38):
of the French on foreign imports of edible snails. A
handful of snail farmers came together in twenty thirteen to
petition that packages of snails indicate where they came from.
The concerns in this petition made it up to the
French Parliament. It got all the way to the French Parliament.
In the end, this labeling was deemed optional. So you know,
(29:00):
snails from prey its or what have you. Yeah, well,
a lot to be said about the world of snails.
There is, there is. It's all delightful and strange. Yeah,
I know, and I feel like there's so many things
we could talk about, even even more details. Oh yeah, yeah,
(29:20):
this is this is kind of focusing in on a
particular yeah, region and dish. But I want to do
I just want to do the Snail Show from now on.
Snail Show. Yeah. I like that snail stuff inside the
Snail Show, Laura vocal love it. News updates on snail
(29:45):
coverage and snail sex that you could ever want, updates
you'd get on your phone, right. I think we have
a lot of ideas in here that could be do
expounded upon absolutely and become works of art themselves. Yeah,
for further development you know, into it. Well, um, I
(30:11):
guess that's all we have to say about snails today today. Uh,
we do have a little bit more for you, um.
But first we've got one more quick break forward from
our sponsor and we're back. Thank you sponsored, Yes, thank you,
(30:31):
and we're back with may oh Slow. We already did
this spiral for the cinnamon role. We did, we did. Um,
I want you guys to know that Annie did some
some really useful um tentacle hands at the end of
(30:57):
at the end of that for for the ey stocks,
very visually representative on this our audio medium. I think
it communicates. I think you can hear it. Maybe that's
just in my head, but it helps my process, my
artistic process. There you go, that's the important part. Thank you,
(31:19):
Brian wrote, I graduated from Georgia Tech go jackets in
and moved to Illinois and then Massachusetts after that. But
I loved my time in Atlanta. I feel like I'm
listening to old friends from the past when I get
a new episode, especially now that you're working in a
building I remember on Pond stillly On first, I'm a
bit embarrassed to admit that one of my children, like Annie,
(31:39):
had their first New York City pizza at a Sabarrow.
One of them is allergic to peanuts, so we have
to be careful about where we eat, usually sticking to
national chains that we know are likely to take allergen
awareness seriously. So when we got to n y C
just before lunchtime in August and went looking for food,
the first safe thing we found was a Sabarrow it
(31:59):
wouldn't have been first choice, but I have to say
it was by far the best Barrow pizza I have
ever had. There you go. I don't know if they
feel like they have to up their game in New
York or if the crowds a block from Times Square
means they sell enough pizza that it's always fresh. Either way,
it was a decent lunch. Second, I'm glad to hear
(32:19):
that let Us Surprise You is still open. I have
to disagree with laurence lack of enthusiasm for it to
be fair. I wasn't there for the salad. As a
hungry college student at the time, all you can eat
soup and muffins were just the thing. I have fond
memories of ending up uncomfortably stuff because I couldn't stop
(32:40):
myself from eating just one more chocolate chip muffin. But
the real point of this message is to share a
story from several years ago in The Boston Globe. When
I first read this article about Mike Ducacus's habit of
saving turkey carcasses to make soup, he immediately became my hero.
My family has always had a similar tradition of using
Thanksgiving leftovers for everything we can think of, including soup.
(33:03):
It's still my goal to make the gravy last as
long as the meat, so I can finish up the
last of it with one final hot jerky and gravy sandwich.
Oh yeah, sounds good. And I always make a batch
of soup from the carcass. It used to annoy my
wife that it took up a bunch of space in
the freezer, but the peanut allergic daughter loves it, and
we know it's safe, and so she has to let
(33:25):
She stopped complaining when I showed her the follow up article.
He got do carcus seven turkey carcasses the year that
article was published. Compared to that, one batch of soup
in the freezer doesn't seem so bad. Oh my gosh, well,
duly noted. I guess I know. I have a lot
of ideas. Also, I have an update, probably not sad,
(33:46):
but maybe I believe the sabar on Times Square. Yes,
I didn't make a note of it either way. The
last time that I was there, I was there a
few weeks ago. I think it was really recent. Oh no,
or maybe they just announced their closing and they haven't
closed yet. I heard it through some circles. Well, we
(34:10):
hardly knew me farewell. I'm glad to borrow on Yeah,
Atlanta high fives. Um Esther wrote, I just listened to
the Turnip and Onion episodes back to back, and it
put me in the mood for some roasted root vegetables.
I couldn't find turnip at my local store, so I
had to settle for beats, which, once cut, stay in
my cutting board, hands and everything else they touch. The
(34:32):
last veggie I cut up was the onion. While chopping,
I thought about the chemical reactions you explained in the
Onion episode. I found it fascinating. When I removed one
half of the onion from my cutting board, I realized
that the onion juice had taken the majority of the
beat stain out of the cutting board. I have no
idea if there's any signs behind this, but it sure
worked better than don dish soap. I even rubbed it
on my hands to get the bright pink color off.
(34:53):
I just had to share I've never heard this, but
that's great. So so this is like a multi step
press us. I'm envisioning, like like onion, to get the
beat off, and then like coffee grounds to get the
onion smell off. Oh yeah, yeah, Oh man, that's so cool.
We've got a lot of people write in about Onion
(35:14):
doing some pretty neat things and and I, as someone
who has had this beat problem before, I'm very interested
to know that's the case. Yeah. Yeah, there's maybe follow
up Onion Science episode and follow up Onion Science, or
we'll visited it in the beat episode. Oh there you go.
(35:36):
Many options available for us, indeed, and if you would
like to contact us like these two listeners did and
thank you, there are many options available to you as well,
and one of them is email. You can email us
at hello at savor pod dot com. We're also on
social media. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook, and
Instagram at savor pod. We do hope to hear from you.
Savor is production of I Heart Radio and Stuff Media.
(35:58):
For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, you can at
the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows. Thank you, as always to our
super producers Dylan Facin and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you
for listening, and we hope that lots more good things
are coming your way.
Savor News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Lauren Vogelbaum
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