IвЂ™ve eaten things like dock, burdock, chicory, chickweed, snapper eggs, porpoise, and mountain oysters, but almost always in the line of duty-on-the-job consumption. When Sandy eats something that you donвЂ™t find at ShopRite, at least not for sale at ShopRite, he does it for the art of it-in his word, the вЂњshowвЂќ of it-while I only do it for a living. I mean, yes, when I was eight years old in the Vermont fish hatchery I used to swallow little two-inch whole trout-toss them high in the air and stagger around under them and catch them wriggling in my open mouth-but I never reached the point of eventual development implied by that early promise. I am simply not in his league, and prefer my place on the sidelines, admiring what I see. A gift of chocolate-covered ants and bees appealed to him less for the chocolate than for the вЂњchitinous crunch.вЂќ Long known in these pages as Ian, a name unfairly thought to be a sign of personal aggrandizement, he reads Leviticus for the sheer pleasure of its culinary attention to вЂњunclean creeping things.вЂќ That phrase belongs, Lord knows, to Leviticus, for it could never be from Sandy, who is incapable of writing such a description of anything, anywhere, that can qualify as protein.

He it is whose acquired tastes run to things like grasshopper juice and cricket thighs (вЂњthe feel of the cricketвЂ™s toothpicky legs between my teethвЂќ). He it was who improved his understanding of wild trout by filling his belly with brown-drake mayflies, chewing thoughtfully while they fluttered on his tongue (вЂњIf youвЂ™re into mayflies, itвЂ™s hard to eat just oneвЂќ).

In this field, Sandy is an idol-certainly my idol, probably your idol. My life list is in no way comparable to Sandy FrazierвЂ™s, and I hope that anyone reading this will not even faintly imagine that I am presuming otherwise as I go on to mention my own modest history with eccentric food.

Ralphs dutch crunch bread