So.

The other night we were at a tapas place for dinner. And as I was pondering my choices, I came upon "Calamares a la Plancha." Hmm, I thought. Despite my internal anguish about where it fits into my vegetarian hierarchy, fried calamari is yummy. Granted, in this dish it was not fried. In fact, the description read "Grilled squid in olive oil and garlic." (No, I do not have a photographic memory, just an online menu.) But I've had it grilled and mixed into my Flat Top stirfries before, too. Add to that the fact that it was one of the relatively few non-spicy tapas offered, and one of the cheapest seafoods, and I said, "Okay, I'll bite." (Bite, get it? Ha.)

Well, they brought it out. And, umm... how can I put this? Calamari is squid. The previous times I've eaten it, I've gotten to conveniently ignore this fact. Fried calamari is pretty much completely unidentifiable-- it could be any kind of long thin fried object. And little bits of it in a stirfry could be any kind of seafood or white meat, really. But when they brought it out to the table? It looked like squid.

I mean, seriously looked like squid. Like, with slippery tentacles and stuff. I kept staring at the dish and laughing for several minutes before I could start seriously contemplate actually eating the food. There were two different sizes in this dish. The bigger ones were white, with about 5 thick flat non-descript tentacles each. They really weren't too bad, especially after I cut them into bite-sized pieces so I could once again pretend I didn't know what I was eating. It was really yummy, too; nothing like squid with olive oil and garlic, huh? Oh, but the little ones... they had them facedown on the plate, and I ate the first one without flipping it over. But then I made the mistake of looking at the underside... lots of skinny little tentacles, with little suckers or feelers or something on them. Gah. I tried to eat another one, put it on the fork and lifted it to my mouth, but I just couldn't do it.

Yeah. Eating squid is creepy. I think from now on I'm going to stick to dishes where I can pretend "calamari" just means some kind of exotic fish.  ¶ 10:56 PM