Escargots

For the uninitiated, "escargots" is French for snails. 

Quite a delicacy, with butter and garlic. 

We have them in our California garden. The photo shows one (of many today) climbing the outside of a small planter).

I DON'T eat them, but the lizards like them as do the crows. And I will admit to having escargots many years ago in a couple of classy French restaurants. They were quite good. And I recall seeing them on the menu of a number of Michelin-starred places we saw in our trips to Paris. 

Here's a recipe.

But I'm not sure they are the same as the critters crawling around my Southern California garden!

And now that I see them creeping about I know I don't want to think about devouring them.

It's sorta like eating a pet chicken or rabbit. 

I remember having dinner with my daughter, who was at USC in LA, a few years ago at a great outdoor eatery in Marina del Ray - the food and the weather were sublime, but the snails crawling all over the plants adjoining the table were a bit off-putting, and they kept getting closer to the table as we ate. We had a good laugh but it was an invasion that for us Easterners was a bit over-the-top.

Snails seems to be another one of the hazards of gardening here in Southern California - they crawl all over the place, and nibble on lots of plants (i.e., devour them). They are easy to relocate, fortunately (pick them up and throw them), but they are a nuisance. Gardening shops sell stuff that supposedly keeps them away. 

Somehow it's now hard to equate this gardening nuisance with a French delicacy. Go figure.