I don’t eat escargot. I never have and probably never will.

When I was young my family gathered at my grandmother’s small apartment in the Bronx in New York every Sunday for dinner. My Italian grandmother would cook in her old fashioned kitchen for all my aunts, uncles and cousins every Sunday - it was a ritual.

I remember one Sunday well. I walked into the kitchen as Grandma was at the stove cooking. She had a big iron pot on the stove and a large wooden spoon in her hand. She was whacking the pot with that big old wooden spoon. I was curious so I walked over to the stove and saw these small, what looked like black bugs, trying to climb out of the pot. As they climbed out grandma whacked them back in.

I became sick. I was so nervous that I would have to eat them, these bugs that were alive, that I became nauseous.

During dinner that Sunday my whole family sat down and ate Grandma’s spaghetti with escargot - not me, I ate the bread.