We didn’t eat fresh fish growing up. I’m not sure why. I suppose my parents didn’t care for it, or simply didn’t know how good it can be. As children, we ate millions of fish sticks (fish fingers in the UK), as well as tuna sandwiches (mine without mayo, always), or the occasional popcorn shrimp, or shrimp toast from a Chinese restaurant, as a treat. My mother loved prawn cocktails on special occasions.
My father recently told me that he had never eaten a prawn/shrimp before he met my mother. When going to her house for the first time, for dinner, my grandmother served prawn cocktails. My poor dad was nervous enough as it was. After they sat down, he looked around at the others. He waited. They waited. They were waiting for him to start first. So, he dove in.
At this point in the story, he smiled, and looked a little embarrassed. He said that he liked the cocktail sauce (a spicey mixture of tomato and horseradish), but he prawns were . . . well . . . were awful.
‘Had they gone bad?’, I asked.
‘No’. He had put the entire prawn in his mouth, complete with the tail. Then he chewed. He was too embarrassed to spit it out, so he swallowed. Then he ate another. And another. He never looked up until they were all gone.
He told me that he had never eaten anything so horrible in his entire life, but, he was in love with my mother and wanted to see her again. So he ate them all, without flinching.
Needless to say, my mother and grandparents were more than a little surprised to see their young guest chewing and swallowing his shrimp tails. But, being a polite family, they didn’t want to draw attention to him, and proceeded to eat theirs more slowly, discreetly removing the tails.
My poor dad.
He is a born Romantic.
And doesn’t like prawn cocktail to this day.
I love you, Dad.
Myrtle x
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Lemons & Parsley 