[ethnicity] the extremes of the food spectrum

Ethnicity is an interesting concept. Seems to me it's more of a sliding scale than a finite division - more like one of those colour spectra you get in net programmes where there is a circle of varying colours but all tend to the same colour towards the middle, whereas at the extremities they are very pronounced indeed.

You can apply this to accents. My accent is a mix of ethnicities but tends to the centre, not being extreme one way or the other, whereas my father's was distinctly Yorkshire and never changed over the years.

Similar thing with food tastes. Most of us have international tastes but when we get into the extremes of each country, it takes some getting used to. Escargots spring to mind, as do Australian witchety grubs. The British aren't exempt from extremities when you find the following atrocities being eaten:

1. Black pudding - sausage made by cooking blood with a filler until it is thick enough to congeal when cooled.

2. White pudding - similar to black pudding, but does not include blood. Consequently, it consists of pork meat and fat, suet, bread, and oatmeal formed into the shape of a large sausage.

3. Haggis - sheep's 'pluck' (heart, liver and lungs), minced with onion, oatmeal, suet, spices, and salt, mixed with stock, and traditionally boiled in the animal's stomach for approximately three hours.

4. Whitebait - Whitebait are tender and edible. The entire fish is eaten including head, fins and gut but typically each 'bait' is only 25-50 mm in length and about 3 mm in cross section.

The nauseating part of the last one is that you eat the head 'n all. Ugggh! Other things to gag on are oysters, calamari and all other slimy or offal type foods.

Hope you're not reading this around dinner time.