eels

My friend is in London and decided he wanted to kill me…kinda lol. Well he wanted to try very strange British food either starfish pie or jellied eel and I found a place that served jellied eel and went with him on a hot Friday afternoon. We shared the meal and asked for an extremely small serving just because we didn’t know what we were getting ourselves into, I let him take a bite first and he said it wasn’t bad but I was still quite hesitant to eat it, then I just went for it. Thinking back on it the texture of the jelly was absolutely…atrocious but in the moment, I was just trying to eat it so I don’t think I really processed the each thought I had whilst there was a jellied eel in my mouth. After trying it, I agreed and thought it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be but because there was still quite a few left, I took another bite even though I truly didn’t want to. My second bite was my last bite and tried to make it easier for us by eating bread with it or diminishing the taste by drinking sprite. I was telling Isiah not to finish it because although it wasn’t bad I didn’t want him to feel like he had to finish everything but he insisted to eat a few more. We both agreed it was an experience but, one that we probably wouldn’t want to experience again…

After we had a lovely plate of haddock fish and chips ! that as helpful in losing the taste of the prison food we ate earlier, we then took a stroll around brick lane and talked for a while. We wanted to try the starfish pie but decided the jellied eels were enough for today. Isiah hadn’t had Jaffa cakes before, one of my favorite snacks to eat ever so we went to Tesco’s, bought a pack of Jaffa cakes, ordered some coffee (iced caramel latte) from a cafe called the black sheep and sat outside. He really liked them which I was glad about, we talked about how long he’d be in London for since he’s planning to travel around Europe for a while and the places he should and wants to go. After relaxing for a while, I took the train home and he took the bus. On my way home I suddenly started feeling a little bit sick and had a stomach ache and of course…it must’ve been the jellied eels. I think it's because I never eat seafood, I rarely eat fish so I guess my body wasn’t used to it so, I sat down inside the station for a while bought a bottle of water and searched on my phone on what I could do to stop his feeling. It wasn’t intense but I felt the need to throw up lol, but I didn’t.

When I got home I messaged him to see if he got home okay which, he did. After a while, my stomach pains were becoming a bit more intense, I read something online that said I should drink cold water and try not to eat anything so I did exactly that. After a while, I researched about jellied eels a bit more, I knew it was something that was popular in England during the 18th century but that was all. After a while I found it was something people who weren’t very wealthy would eat and during the time would be taken from the river thames…and the river thames isn’t very clean now so it must have been extremely dirty in the 18th century. Anyway, to stop myself from feeling more sick I just watched random videos on YouTube to distract myself but that wasn’t working so, I decided to take medicine and started feeling much better but the pain was there slightly so I stayed up until watching videos until it went away. It was 4am, I didn’t realize until I looked outside so I decided to go to sleep and woke up feeling much better. As crazy as it may seem, I do not regret trying jellied eel… to me experiences and trying new things is part of what makes life that bit more intriguing, there’s so many things that we’ve never done before when the outcome wasn’t what you expected but made for an hilarious story later in life or has impacted someone's life for the better. Even if the outcome did nothing to impact your life, the experience has happened and dwelling will not change it. This is not to say I would eat jellied eel again… but is it say, I don’t regret the experience and the memories I made with my friend that day.