It's a trap!
If you listened to This American Life over the weekend — theme:
doppelgangers— you heard the somewhat amazing story (
act one) that details the very real, if unsubstantiated, possibility of pork bungs being used as a substitute for calamari. To wit, from the TAL precis:
A while ago, a farmer walked through a pork processing plant in Oklahoma with a friend who managed it. He came across boxes stacked on the floor with labels that said "artificial calamari." So he asked his friend "What’s artificial calamari?" "Bung," his friend replied. "Hog rectum." Have you or I eaten bung dressed up as seafood?
Of course, by "dressed up," they mean "breaded and fried," and there is a great line in the piece about how the deep fryer is the great American equalizer. While I'm sure there are those of you Bitesters who find both options equally tempting/revolting, the real zinger in the story is that in a blind taste test, people couldn't really tell which was which.
