No. 14, March 20, 2009

Take it easy on the tomalley

Yesterday Health Canada issued an advisory warning us about eating tomalley.
In case it has slipped your mind, tomalley is the liver and pancreas of the lobster, a soft greyish-green substance found when the crustacean’s body is cracked open.
The reason we have to be concerned about eating it? Paralytic shellfish poison.
Apparently a very small number of lobsters harvested during the late fall-early winter 2008 lobster fishing season may have levels of paralytic shellfish poison in the tomalley that could represent a health risk to consumers. Lobsters currently available on the market are likely to have been harvested during this fishing season.
There have been no confirmed cases of paralytic shellfish poisoning from consuming lobster tomalley. Good thing too, for while mild exposure produces a tingling sensation or numbness of the lips shortly after eating, larger doses can lead to headaches, dizziness and nausea, muscular paralysis, respiratory difficulty, choking and even death.
The good news is that we don’t have to give up eating tomalley entirely. Health Canada says that, except for children, we can as much as the amount from one cooked lobster per day.
You wouldn’t think that would be too much of a hardship, except perhaps for some Nova Scotia fisherman who is accustomed to spreading the tomalley from three or four lobsters on toast for breakfast.
It could be that if you are dining on lobsters with someone who doesn’t like it, you might be tempted to say, “Oh, I’ll have yours then,” thus putting yourself over the limit.
I confess that I’ve never been that partial to tomalley, although I usually wind up eating it out of principlewhen I'm having a lobster. I prefer the coral, the red roe of the hen or female lobster, which is not found, for obvious reasons, in the cock, the male.
Tomalley is often said to be “considered a delicacy,” but it could be one of those situations where that is simply because there is little of it.
It’s perhaps a similar case to that of those giant sea turtles –now endangered -- that the elite of the 18^th and 19^th centuries were inordinately fond of eating. Particularly esteemed as delicacies were calipash and calipee, gelatinous substances found nest to the upper and lower shell, respectively.
Were those “gelatinous substances” really so tasty? Hard to say, but I don’t expect to ever find out.

No. 13, March 6, 2009

Backpack in the LRT station

As I was passing through the central LRT station one morning last week I noticed a big blue backpack propped up against the wall, unattended.
That gave me a bit of pause.

The bomb in a bag or package is a terrorist staple, of course, and
mass transportation systems can be a major target, as attacks in
London, Madrid and Tokyo have shown. Transit riders in big cities such
as London are commonly warned to be on the lookout for suspicious
packages and the like.

Fortunately, Edmonton has been unaffected by the ideology of violent
jihad that produced the London Underground bombing and the Madrid
train bombings, not to speak of the 9-11 destruction of the World
Trade Center and a host of lesser outrages. The chances that we will
be in the future seem remote.

In our fair city, the risk of getting of getting blown up in the LRT
is likely quite a bit smaller than being hit by a stray bullet in a
drug gang shooting or stabbed by a random sociopath. Far less than
that of being killed by some driver running a red light.

Some version of this was going through my mind while I walked past the
backpack. Still, it could have contained a bomb. It?s not only
jihadists that plant them, after all. It doesn?t even have to be an
organized group.

?Mad Bomber? George Metesky terrorized New York City in the 1950s. He
planted more than 30 time bombs in public places, injuring 15 people,
because of anger and resentment over a workplace injury. We?ve got
plenty of that around here.

I wondered if I should alert some authority. Phone 911? Contact
Edmonton Transit security? Would the matter be taken seriously or
would I just be wasting my time?

I?d just gotten to this point when somebody went over and grabbed the
backpack. He looked a little shifty so it may not actually have been
his, but it ceased being my concern.

The bomb in the backpack scenario probably presented itself more
readily to my mind because of the Khan al Khalili bombing in Cairo the
previous weekend. A young French tourist was killed and 24 other
people were injured in an explosion in this historic bazaar area,
where my wife and I had spent several pleasant hours last summer.

According to Al-Ahram Weekly, the blast was caused by a homemade bomb
weighing up to 1.5 kilos and containing metal, stones and gunpowder
that had been left under a bench. The detonator was a washing machine
timer.

The Egyptian police arrested a few people but don?t seem to have any
real idea of who did the bombing. Nobody has claimed responsibility,
however there a variety of conspiracy theories are apparently making
the rounds in Cairo.

Commented an Egyptian friend: ?Truly painful to see the violence and
loss of innocent lives. Violence definitely has a louder voice than
peace, and this is the real fight.?