Think vampires only exists in the fantasy world, and in movies such as Twilight and Van Helsing?Yes, I know that the title might already make some readers sick to the stomach. But I thought it will be interesting to write about, since I just came back with my family from ''yin cha'' at Diamond Bar. We ordered, or rather, my parents ordered pork blood cakes-- or puddings, or whatever it was but in that kind of shape and form. For some reason I could not even reach out and take just one piece with my chopstick. It sickened me and I could not finish my meal for the rest of the lunch period. It is rather odd because when I was little back in Taiwan, I ate pork blood cakes all the time, lingered with sweet and sour sauce. But nowadays I find it displeasing to my appetite-- not to say, disgusting, even.
Before, I only thought that people living in the Asian countries eat exotic foods such as animal blood. However, I soon discovered that Europeans stuff animal blood-- such as cow's blood, pork's blood-- into sausages. The most common blood sausage is the German Blutwurst, made from pork rind, pork blood, and stuffed with different ingredients and seasonings. Eating animal blood exists also in South America as well. In Spanish they call it the morcilla, which contains pork blood and its fat, rice, onions, and of course, salt and seasonings. Not only do blood sausages exist, but different countries create different sorts of meals ranging from soups, puddings, cakes, tofu, or cooked together with meats and vegetables. It can also be fried or eaten fresh. In China's mainland, there are blood tofu, or ''red tofu'', which are cut in bite-size rectangular pieces and cooked.
For some culture, though, consider eating animal blood as taboo food because of religious reasons, such as for the Jewish and Muslim religions. They perceive is as uncooked and explicit, so they refuse to eat. For some households, the pre-butchered and pre-packedged meats one buys in supermarket, they would open the packedge, wash the blood off the meat before preparing to cook it. But in other cultures, because food is scarce for them, they will try not to leave any parts of the animal to waste. Therefore, for most of us, where we only eat the outside-- the meaty parts of the animal; ribs, breast, thighs, they eat both the outside and the ''insides'' as well. And that ranges from the heart, intestine, and of course-- blood as well.
Now I understand where the legendary creature ''vampire'', came from; someone witnessing another human being consuming blood. Think that it turns your stomach upside down when we watch a horror movie, and the vampire sink its fangs into a human's flesh, sucking blood out from the person's neck? Well, since we humans consider ourselves as the smartest living being on earth, we find ways to make what we do more appealing to the eye: like our eating habits, for example. We don't just chop off someone's head and drain their blood onto a plate to make it a blood soup. We actually add other ingredients into it, stuff them into sausages, or make them into tofu's and cakes, so they don't appear like blood on the outside, if at all. Even so, we are still vampires. We simply just made our ways of eating manners more pleasing to ourselves, and the people around us. Imagine the world where everyone is dragging a random somebody and gnawing on their blood and all; it would be chaos.
Personally, I cannot stand just seeing this kind of food in any form. And the reason for that is because after I came to America, my living style adjusts, and so becomes the way I eat. In America, you do not find small stands or carts selling foods out on the street like in Taiwan. Here it is mostly consist of fast food hamburgers and fries, many American-style restaurants. And as time goes by I started to grow accustomed to the foods here. Next time my parents order something like that again when we go to ''yin cha'', I'll just leave go to downstairs for a breath of fresh air, or buy boba and wait until they are finished.
Citation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_as_food
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