If you are going to drink a pint of sick..don't sip at it...

Recently, as many will know, I had the mixed fortune to visit Lithuania, I alluded to this in a recent post. I made a passing reference at the time to poor smelling ham and I think it is a story which is worth expanding on.

My friends and I, as part of our cultural education process were 'touring' outlying areas of Vilnius, the capital of this once proud socialist republik in order to experience the real Lithuania. Well actually we were trying to reach the famous 'revolving restaurant' but, after walking towards it for the best part of an hour and a half, during which time it had failed to get any nearer we had given up and were marooned, spitting feathers in no-wheres-ville.

Boy, did it get real.

We alighted on a bar cafe situated in a non de-script street surrounded by post war Russian architecture (future generations may one day describe the Soviet planners as gifted, until that point I will describe them as twats). The bar itself had a cosy feel, consisting of two appropriately darkened rooms, one contained a series of wooden dining booths in which locals (old vacant looking folk with poor skin) were chomping merrily away on various stews and meats and the other was what I would call a standard (if small) bar area with a, wait for it, a bar, and a couple of sets of bistro stylie chairs and tables.

We settled in the bar area and were promptly issued menus by what we took to be the landlady. She was middle aged but had a shy beauty to her clearly hardened by years of potatoes and guard duty.

We decided on beers and after a brief discussion, during which time I was shouted down three times, resolved to order some beer snacks. Now, in Lithuania, most menus have a helpful little section entitled 'beer snacks' to aid this process. The menu was written in 'foreign' but contained a little summary of the produce, the first line summary simply read ' Goat' , this snack was discarded as suspicious, the next line read 'Withered Meat', this was clearly a helpful warning that was not wasted on the group and this too was discarded. The third line read 'ham', a safe haven? We thought so and ordered a plate to go with the brews.

The plate of ham arrived looking for all the world like a little Tapas style parma ham nibble, a quick slug of beer later and I tried a piece. Error. I have a pretty cast iron stomach and despite swallowing as quickly as possible was close to inverting my stomach onto the table, another friend (one who can eat an Aussie meat pie without flinching) nibbled at a piece before declaring the plate of special food 'minging'. By this point the incredible smell of the Ham had impacted on the group in general, we decided two things; 1. The Ham was not fit for Western Humans, 2. That we should spoof to see who should eat at least two pieces. (for those not familiar with great game spoof, I refer you here).

10 Min's later and we had a loser (a Welshman - no relevance, just for information) . Once the loser had 'won', several members of the group took the opportunity to announce that had they lost, they was no way on Gods earth that they would have eaten the ham....our victim however was made on sterner stuff, dragging the evil smelling plate of old pork towards him he startled us all by proclaiming-

"Gentlemen. If you are going to drink a pint of sick...don't sip at it..." At this, with quite a flourish, a delectable morsel of rancid squealer was plucked from the plate and thrown into his mouth.

There was a pause.

There was a startled expression on our losers face.

There was a retching sound followed by a general panic (had I had access to a personal rape alarm I would have sounded it), our man leaped from the table and quickly located the toilet, mercifully situated not 3 yards to his rear, diving through the door we were then treated to about two minutes worth of loud vomiting noise which filled the establishment.

When our man had recovered himself (we had not and were still suffering 'belly' laughs, as was the landlady) he returned to the table, sadly for him, and joyously for us, the ham remained, one sniff as he sat down was all it took to send him spinning back to the bowl for another round of pro-active body cleansing.

Strong stuff that ham, we were unable to discover its true nature, although it did have a 2mm film of 'mingishness' around the outside of each slice which the landlady (who incidentally ate all the remaining ham with something approaching relish when we returned the plate) described as 'spice', I would describe it simply as 'off'.

Later that day, in another bar, a waitress walking past our table inadvertently caused another major incident when a member of the group caught a whiff of the 'ham' she was carrying, harrowed by the earlier experience and yet being one who had never even tasted the ham, he was forced to bolt to the toilet, the toilet had an odd low door frame, designed I think for dwarfs, and he suffered a nasty head wound on entry before he threw his ring up in disgust.

If anyone can shed any light on the origin or method of production of this Baltic 'ham' I would be extremely grateful.