Summary Of A Rat In My Soup

Grocery shopping is a family tradition every weekend. At the market, we read the labels: pig liver, pig heart, pig blood, pig ears, pig knuckles, and the list goes on. Then, my family stops by the prepared meals aisle. There, I notice the listings of fried pig skin, and see an entire pig hanging on the steel hook. I ask my mother, “How can there be so many options for choosing meat?” She explains that when she was young and food was scarce, the Chinese believed in the saying, “Anything that walks, swims, crawls, or flies with its back to heaven is edible”. On that note, “A Rat in My Soup” describes Peter Hessler’s experience of eating a rat. The entire rat is cooked to create zero waste similar to eating roadkill. Samantha Larson’s “Eating

Similarly, Hessler is told that “when you mix them together, there are all kinds of health benefits” and this is when the waiter suggested a dish involving cat, snake, and chicken (256). When cooking soup, anything can be thrown in the pot. It begins with the bones of the animals that are boiled for a very long time on medium heat creating a pure bone marrow broth. The broth in my culture’s chicken noodle soup helps cure a cold. Chinese people believe in drinking soup before eating for good digestion. I enjoy the smooth feeling of warm broth down my throat which improved my appetite, similarly like drinking cold lemonade on a hot day. As the bones continue to cook, my mother would add ingredients into the pot like pig blood and chicken hearts for more health benefits such as improving blood flow. I eat the brain of fish because my mother told me it would make me smarter. I eat the eyes of fish because my mother told me it would improve my eyesight. Chinese people cook and eat everything from all different types of meats and seafood in order to amplify all the various health benefits in one