This piece was one of several submitted to a fair display from a former writers group. I interviewed friends and participants in a chat room for responses. WHAT FOOD WOULD YOU REJECT IF IT WERE THE LAST FOOD EARTH PROVIDED FOR YOUR SURVIVAL? The tentacles of our family's environmental interest reaches our dinner table in the form of salads and soups made from goodies scavenged from the land: red clover, yellow mustard blossoms, dandelion greens. Even fried battered tiger lily buds, an Oriental delicacy, are served. Family members have had various responses to each recipe. While living in Georgia my family dutifully sampled kudzu leaves sauteed in butter with onions. They only tasted it on my command. Kudzu's 350-pound roots made the plant invaluable for food in post-war Japan. Roots burrowed 20-feet deep underground were less radiation-exposed than surface-grown foods. Kudzue leaves, unable to survive cold temperatures, aren't among most northerner's worst foods. Ants and rat meat are. Jim, age 39, "couldn't handle eating bugs, especially ants." Rat meat has "no appeal at all" for Monte, 62, who "doesn't like meat" anyway. Logan, 4, won't eat possum "because they're so yucky and you get to eat their bald heads." Jared also rejects possum. His grandma "teases me that we're having pig's feet and possum grits, not a delicacy for me." The 13-year old "wouldn't eat animals like that. They are scum." Although 30-year old Sandy's taste buds reject "awful smelling liver," she'd "eat it before I'd eat chicken gizzards." Greg prefers worms to tomatoes, "the most repulsive thing to the tongue." Wierd. The 28-year old smothers all his food in ketchup! Ed, 60, won't eat cooked spinach. "I'd end up dying anyway, because i would gag on it." WHAT ABHORRANT FOOD WOULD YOU REJECT IF YOUR LIFE DEPENDED ON IT? | 
