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Not Lamb Brain Fritters

To find a solution I needed to get my creative on

By Colleen Millsteed Published 2 years ago Updated 2 years ago 5 min read
Top Story - May 2022
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Image courtesy of Pixabay

Hello Mum,

As May is the month of Mother’s Day, Vocal has a new challenge for writers to conquer. It asks that we write you an open letter and confess to something we never planned to tell you and that got me thinking.

There’s much I could confess but for this exercise I’m going to reminisce about dinner — dinner as we knew it when I was young.

We lived in Lake Grace at the time and I was in my teens. Those in between years where I was not a child but I also was not an adult either — gosh we used to fight back then and one thing we constantly fought over was dinner.

Dinner was not a meal I looked forward to because it was usually some innovative concoction that I’m sure we, as humans, should not be eating.

I know there wasn’t a lot of money around back then, so you had to get creative when it came to feeding the tribe, but there was a reason the butcher in Lake Grace was practically giving away the parts of the animals that we consistently consumed.

Offal — those parts of an animal that most people steer clear of. Yes, I know some of those parts are considered a luxury today, but back then they were the poor man’s food.

There were meals, such as tripe — which thankfully you coveted for yourself, no complaint from me there. Steak and kidney pie — where I struck gold if I found a tiny bite of steak in my portion. Roasted ox heart and tongue.

Don’t get me started on the stewed rabbit — this was so tough I could barely swallow it and I’d still be at the dining table at midnight, as you insisted I could not go to bed until my plate was empty. To this day I refuse to eat stewed anything — actually that’s not quite true, I love stewed apples.

Then there was lambs fry and bacon — okay, this is the exception to the rule, as I love this one.

But the absolute horror of the dinner menu belongs, without fail, to lamb brains. Who in their right mind ever looked inside a lamb’s skull and decided that the slimy pink thing inside, that looks like congested earth worms all packed tightly together, would make a delicious meal?

Especially if they were made into fritters, seriously who? I have every intention of putting a contract out for his demise if I ever discover, who that bright spark happened to be!

Lamb brain fritters, round lumps of covered slime with such an unexplainable texture, that it is impossible to describe to anyone that has never had the joy of experiencing it.

Which, dear mother, I believe would be more than 99% of the population of this world.

Lamb brain fritters should never have been invented and once they were, they should have instantly been lauded as illegal, even outlawed, they are truly that disgusting!

So here is where my confession comes in, because seriously I could not eat those slimy suckers, no matter how much you insisted.

I can hear your mind ticking over there Mum, as you begin to wonder what it was I did with those disgusting round objects, you served up to me on a consistent basis.

Did I feed it slyly to the dog, hiding under the table waiting for just such a meal? No because we didn’t have a dog!

Oh, my life would have been simpler if we had a dog.

No dog, but we did have a pet kangaroo. Yes mother dear, I did attempt to feed Skippy this meal, but he smartly turned his nose up to it too. In fact he preferred Dad’s $50 note that was left on the coffee table, over that lamb brain fritter. Smart boy, although he almost got served up as kangaroo stew after that incident. Dad was just livid.

So what did I do with your disgusting lamb brain fritters?

Getting rid of those fritters, in such a way that it convinced you I had eaten them, was no mean feat. I had to be extremely creative.

So here’s what I did, right under your nose, and you never did cotton onto my deviousness, thankfully!

I would slyly move piece after piece of the fritters under the table, then I’d lift my heel from out of my shoe, pushing the pieces inside, before slipping my heal back in on top of your lamb brain fritters.

This would take me the entire meal time to calmly and quietly move every last piece of fritter from my dinner plate to both of my shoes, knowing I could be caught at any time — but in this instant, I was prepared to endeavour your wrath if I was ever caught.

I seriously could not eat that disgusting meal.

After dinner I would tell you I was going to go for a walk to help my body digest my dinner and off I would go.

I would gingerly walk out the back door, hoping and praying no one would ask why my shoes were squelching as if they were full of mud. Oh, they were full of something much worse than mud!

We lived across the road from the kindergarten and next to that was a vacant block. That was my destination and that vacant block become the home to the gross contents of my shoes, time and time again.

You never had any idea that I was not digesting that poison but you did often comment on the fact that in your eyes, I had the worst case of stinky feet and shoes that you’d ever come across.

Sorry Mum, but while you insisted on serving me lamb brain fritters, my annoying foot odour was always going to be a part of the deal.

Would I have ever confessed if Vocal didn’t raise the bar on their challenge? Never mother dear, never!

Your daughter,

Colleen

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About the Creator

Colleen Millsteed

My first love is poetry — it’s like a desperate need to write, to free up space in my mind, to escape the constant noise in my head. Most of the time the poems write themselves — I’m just the conduit holding the metaphorical pen.

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Comments (2)

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  • John Evaabout a year ago

    Comedic writing is hard, especially personal memoir-y type stuff. You crush it though!

  • Jack Nanuq2 years ago

    You, my dear, are a problem solver. BRAVO

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