Best Food You've Never Tried: Elephant Foot

"Elephant Foot"

I am here to announce that there is nothing I have tasted that is quite as delicious as a steaming plate of elephant foot in black bean sauce. A generous plateful of it, in boneless slices with deep brown savory gravy, and you'll swear you'll never go back to chicken again.

It's delicate and tender. The grain of the foot carries the sauce well and absorbs flavor. There's not a tough bit or piece of gristle or nastly cartilage to be found in well prepared elephant's foot. And when you're finished, you feel really comfortably satisfied, not just because you ate well, but because not a single elephant fell for your meal. And that's good karma.

Elephant's foot is a plant that tickles my soul. I've had it in some Chinese food, in Maryland, but have not been able to find it since moving south, which is is a double bummer since it's yumbalina AND it is supahhh fun to say "I just had some elephant foot in black bean sauce" and stump those who don't know about it.

That said, we have a pretty diverse natural food store in our area.  I go in there and I meander down aisle by aisle for HOURS. While I can't get elephant's foot, there's a myriad of options for organic and veg and even humane certified meats.
Supplements and infusions aplenty. Those exotic juices and obscene looking vegetables might not be doing a blessed thing for you healthwise, but they're sure fun to try.

Who knew you could buy little balls of tea that, as you pour the steaming water over, they actually BLOOM into a beautiful flower right in your cup?!
The deli is always full of beautiful and exotic veg and non veg selections. The bulk foods are lovely and well stocked.
My only complaint is that consumption of healthy, sustainable foods should not have to make to refinance your house. I could practically buy a 20 crops of elephant's foot in Nigeria for what it costs to find a pound of it here.

And so - It's back to Walmart for me. Processed crap. Even the vegetarian food is pressed and battered to the point I cannot imagine it ever once belonged to the plant family.

 Prepare for political statement: Junk crap food is so readily available and cheap here in the US that *nowhere else in the world* will you find destitute, poor people who are clinically obsese. The truly poor of other nations are ravaged, and skinny.
I wonder if you offered a hungry person from a second or third world nation some yoghurt, how many would shy away, because they have a 'lactose thing'...
or a 'gluten thing'...
or a peanut allergy?

For we who eat so much meat, it would be a lovely experiment to try new foods such as the elephant's foot.

And who says you can't have a little fun freaking people out at first?

See why it's called Elephant's Foot?

   



This is Elephant's Foot. YUM!!