# General Topics > General Discussion & News > Press / News Items >  UK Press: Why we shouldn't eat frogs' legs

## aramcheck

Guardian.co.uk, Friday August 7th 2009: _Why we shouldn't eat frogs' legs_

Every year, the French nibble away at 4,000 tonnes of frogs' legs. But that's nothing compared with the vast number being eaten in Asia, South America and even the US. And it's pushing the world's frog population towards extinction, says Jon Henley.

In the cavernous community hall of the Vosges spa town of Vittel, a large and lugubrious man, his small, surprisingly chirpy wife, and 450 other people are sitting down to their evening meal. It's rather noisy. "Dunno why we do it, really," shouts the man, whose name is Jacky. "Don't taste of anything, do they? White. Insipid. If it wasn't for the sauce it'd be like eating some soft sort of rubber. Just the kind of food an Englishman should like, in fact. Hah."


Outside, the streets are filled with revellers. A funfair is going full swing. The restaurants along the high street are full, and queues have formed before the stands run by the local football, tennis, basketball, rugby and youth clubs.
All offer the same thing: cuisses de grenouilles à la provencale (with garlic and parsley), cuisses de grenouille à la poulette (egg and cream). Seven euros, or thereabouts, for a paper plateful, with fries. Nine with a beer or a glass of not-very-chilled riesling. The more daring are offering cuisses de grenouilles à la vosgienne, à l'andalouse, à l'ailloli. There's pizza grenouille, quiche grenouille, tourte grenouille. Omelette de grenouilles aux fines herbes. Souffle, cassolette and gratin de grenouilles.

Continued: Why We Shouldn't Eat Frog's legs

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## John Clare

I've edited your press post so that it's actually a press post instead of a link.  Please take the extra 60 seconds next time.

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## Herp News

*THE GUARDIAN* (London, UK) 07 August 09  _A short history of frog eating - How did frogs' legs become one of France's national delicacies?_ (Jon Henley)
Records show that frogs' legs were a common foodstuff in southern China as early as the first century AD. The Aztecs, too, are known to have been partial to them. But they fail to get the least mention in the extensive gastronomic literature left by the Romans, and do not crop up at all in European accounts until the 12th century, when they appear, rather oddly, in the annals of the Catholic church in (obviously) France.
During one of those all too frequent periods when monks were deemed to be growing too fat, the church authorities apparently ordered them not to eat meat on a certain number of days a year. Cunningly, the monks got frogs qualified as fish, which didn't count as meat. Religiously observant but hungry French peasants duly followed their example, and a national delicacy was born.
By the 1600s, Alexandre Dumas records in his Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine (posthumously published in 1873), an Auvergnat named Simon was to be found making "a most considerable fortune with frogs, sent to him from his region, which he fattened and then sold to the very finest restaurants in Paris, where this foodstuff was very much in fashion".
Frogs' legs were even  albeit briefly  considered a delicacy in Britain around the turn of the last century, when the renowned French chef Auguste Escoffier served up a dish he called Cuisses de Nymphe a l'Aurore, or (roughly) Thighs of the Dawn Nymphs, at a grande soirée in honour of the Prince of Wales at London's Savoy hotel in 1908.
Nymphs' Thighs became the surprise culinary hit of the season, despite the fact that the limbs concerned  which Escoffier cooked in a court-bouillon with aromatic herbs, cooled, doused with a sauce chaud-froid coloured with paprika and then decorated with taragon leaves and covered with chicken jelly  belonged to imported bullfrogs.
We Brits have long since ceased eating frogs, however, and disguise our incomprehension of those who do by poking fun at them: we have been calling the French frog-eaters (now mostly shortened to Frogs) since at least the 16th century.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandsty...gs-france-asia

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## Herp News

*PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER* (Pennsylvania) 06 August 09  _In Downingtown, generations fry up the frogs_ (Daniel Rubin)
Do the math: Ten women work four days to prepare a meal that 1,000 men eat in three hours. What does that equal?
Tradition.
Tonight is the 75th annual Amphibious Order of Frogs dinner at St. Anthony's Lodge in Downingtown's old Italian neighborhood. Tickets, which are long sold-out, cost $35 for unlimited Miller Lite and reminiscing, a feast of veal spezzato, roasted chicken, hot peppers, and salad, then the traditional fried legs of ranocchio.
"Are frog legs Italian?" I asked Laurie Mascherino Reutter, who is 90 and has been preparing or serving this giant family-style meal once a year for a half-century.
"No," she said, accenting her point with a jab of her paring knife, "frog legs are poor. We were poor."
The dinner's roots reach back to the Great Depression. In the early 1930s a group of local teenagers with such nicknames as "Barrel House" Sciaretta, "Skid" Di Berardinis, and "Kite" Di Sante used to catch frogs in the nearby Brandywine Creek. They'd shoot their prey with a .22, then cook them over a fire. "We'd even eat blackbirds if we could catch them," said Reutter, a 4-foot-6 hot shot with snow-white hair.
According to the Order's official history, the first feast took place in 1934 in the backyard of Joe and Mary Courtlessa on Church Street. It is believed that homemade jug wine flowed freely.
One year later, the crowd gathered again. And again the next year, their numbers slowly growing. Some things remained constant: The women cooked. The men ate.
By the late '30s, the dinner was a big deal and had moved to St. Anthony's, where it's been held the first Thursday in August ever since, with a pause only for World War II.
Now the event's so involved that 22 men serve on the organizing committee, most of them descendents of the founders, such as Michael Mento, director of computer operations for Crozer-Chester Medical Center, whose grandfather was Anthony "Muskie" Mento. Membership is an honor.
"Unfortunately, some of the younger generation don't want to be involved in any of it," Mento said. "Some of them want to, but they are not of good character. Just because your name ends with a vowel and your grandfather was on the committee doesn't mean you're automatically in."
Tuesday, the morning of my visit, the ladies were busy cubing 960 pounds of veal. Reutter sat between her sister, Frances Alesiani, and her granddaughter, Debbie Pierce. Everyone at the table was related in one way or another, which led to lots of conversational shorthand and knowing laughter.
A noose with her name on it hung above Reutter's head. "She yells," explained her friend Josie Girafalco, 83. When Reutter becomes too bossy, someone lowers the noose. Sometimes Reutter gets the message.
Girafalco must have her moments, too. A second noose hung over her head.
They'd been at it since Monday morning at 7. Their work wasn't to stop until midnight tonight. The last task is cooking the star attractions.
This year's frogs came from China. The Brandywine has long stopped producing sufficient numbers for the dinner. The ladies will prepare more than 6,400 of the delicacies - salting them, dusting them in flour flecked with white pepper, then dipping them in egg batter and finishing them with bread crumbs. Their last dive is into the deep fryer.
It does no good to ask why the women do all this work for the men. They've probably been spoiling them all their lives, suggested a friend of mine, who knows.
"They're good to us," Reutter explained. There are other benefits. The ladies love the camaraderie of the four-day run-up, the hearty lunches, the impromptu sing-alongs to "Sweet Caroline" and "Blue Suede Shoes" on the portable stereo.
And they get paid, though determining the amount was beyond my skill set.
"We would do this for nothing," says Rose Ciarlone, sitting down to a little feast of sausage and broccoli rabe.
Josie Girafalco looked at the younger woman and shook her head. "Who would do this for nothing?"
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/local...the_frogs.html

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