In the never-ending quest for new and different Columbus food experiences, the Red Sox Fan and I journeyed to Dinin’ Hall today. There we found the Swoop food truck and . . . pig ears.
Crispy pig ears, to be precise, with smoky lemon tartar sauce. When I asked the food truck proprietor about that option, he stated, with admirable simplicity, that that statement described the dish as concisely and clearly as possible. Initially the RSF and I resisted the temptation to sample the sensory organ of a swine, and I got the cheeseburger and chicken sliders instead — which were fantastic. But the lure of the porcine auditory organ was too strong to resist, and we later gave in to our animal urges. (Those of you who always eat the ears of chocolate Easter rabbits first may understand the primal forces driving our decision.)
The crispy pig ears turned out to be crunchy and delicious, and a fun thing to nosh on during a conversation. Swoop — which describes itself as Columbus’ Emergency Hunger Response Team — clearly has made the short list of must-try Capital City food truck options.
The Thurber House is a real treasure in the Columbus community. Named for famous humorist and Columbusite James Thurber, it supports reading, books, and authors through a variety of speeches, readings, and other events. Last night the speaker was Steve Berry, a writer of historical thrillers, many of which feature the character Cotton Malone. Berry gave a lively talk about his latest, The King’s Deception, that theorizes that Elizabeth I of England in fact was a male, and then answered a number of questions from the audience about his books, his writing practices, and his characters. Berry was quick-witted and entertaining, and many of the people in attendance clearly were huge fans. I admired his candid recognition that he, and other writers in the same field, owe a debt of gratitude to Dan Brown and The DaVinci Code, which reinvigorated the thriller genre.
Odd to hear politicians talking about “fertility,” isn’t it? It’s a subject that makes people uncomfortable. Those of us who lived through the “population bomb” era remember the dire predictions of mass starvation, food riots, and other threats from overpopulation, so how can having large families suddenly be a good thing again? There are socioeconomic and religious and other factors at play as well. Unmarried teenagers are fertile, but we aren’t encouraging them to have babies to help the country grow. “Native-born” Americans, to use Bush’s phrase, are fertile, too — in the sense that they are physically capable of having children — but many of them have taken steps to control that fertility in order to end up with manageable families they can provide for. Those families think they are being responsible. Is Bush suggesting, instead, that they are being selfish and unpatriotic?
