Project Snack

Maj. Charles St.John-Smythe explores the mysterious and exotic preserved snacks from the land known as "Ni-Hon".

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The journey begins...

Not long ago, a package appeared on my doorstep. A mysterious package with strange symbols printed in red and blue. Cautiously, I brought it inside. The sender: Sabine, an old friend who travelled abroad teaching English to rustic villagers in far-away lands. The contents: mysterious food offerings from the far east, from an island known by the locals as Ni-Hon.

I am not a stranger to foreign delicacies, for in my youth, during my travels in French West Africa and during my missionary service in the Sudan, I tasted many strange and varied edibles: roasted goat eyes, fermented horse tongue, and even steaming camel toe. No, the bizarre tastes of the world are not alien to my travelled palate.

Yet here, in these strange and varied packages were things... unsettling things that made me pause in my unpacking of the box. All of these things, all of these unidentifiable things once lived and some may have breathed, unless of course they were fish, on which subject I am unclear on whether they are actually breathing if they are respirating water. But I digress.

All of these things once lived. And now, spread on my table, they invited me with their garish wrappings to sample them.

Thus began Project Snack: a personal exploration of the snacking delicacies of Ni-Hon.
 

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