I respect anyone who can face this on their plate with equanimitychownah wrote:In Isaan and in Thailand in general, eating frogs is not unusual. I have eaten it many many times prepared in different manners.......my wife cooks it herself sometimes.......there are at least two different kinds eaten where I live which can be differentiated by seeing that one kind is big and one kind is small. The small ones are typically fried whole after a rudimentary cleaning of only a small amount of internal organs most of which are left intact. They are crispy and each one is a single bite or maybe two. The big frogs are about the size of what most people consider to be a regular or large sized frog....a medium to small sized one would cover a child's palm and a big one would cover an adult's hand. They are prepared on different ways one of which is to roast it whole after a rudimentary cleaning which seems to be more thorough than what is give to the previously mentioned small frogs. So, these large frogs that are roasted are usually served whole. I have eaten them this way along with my wife and the issue of the bladder being present or not has never come up. If the bladder is intact after cleaning (maybe it is removed, I don't know) then it is likely that it's contents have been realeased although I don't know.....and then it would be washed away in the final rinse before cooking. If the urine is cooked then it probably just adds to the flavor.......you can be sure that if urine left in could squirt out and give a bad flavor then the Thai people would remove it.....Thai cooks know a lot about which internal organs are edible or not since internal organs are usually eaten if they are good......organs you have probably not thought of.......a chickens internal organs are pretty much all edible......and taste good.David N. Snyder wrote:A bhikkhu can refuse certain foods, for example those from the kinds of meat not allowable or for example, a bottle of liquor. The threefold rule does not require the monk to accept everything. Also, if food is offered at the wrong time, i.e., in the afternoon, it must also be refused.
I have often wondered about this one. AB mentions this event when the subject of eating or vegetarianism comes up. He reports that the whole frog was there in his bowl. Another monk stuck his fork into the frog and hit the bladder and urine spilled out. The other monk got disgusted and didn't eat. AB knew where the bladder was and was able to eat the frog in his bowl.mikenz66 wrote: Of courses, in some circumstances (such as those described by Ajahn Brahm in Isaan in the early 1970's) there is little choice, so eating frogs or whatever might be the only way to get enough food. However, that sort of situation is probably uncommon today.
Since the whole frog was there in the bowl (not parts), couldn't or shouldn't he have "suspected" that the animal was killed specifically for him and the other monks? After all, it is the whole animal there in the bowl. I suppose it is possible the frog died of natural causes, but knowing that meat-eating and production is common in that area, it would seem that it is likely the frogs were killed specifically for lunch dana for the bhikkhus.
Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that unless someone is an expert in frog anatomy it is unlikely that they would know if they had punctured a bladder or not and if they did it probably would not give a bad flavor to the food as if it would do this it would likely have been removed when the frog was cleaned because Thai cooks are knowledgeable in these matters and they pride themselves on their food.
And the real bottom line is that there would be no reason to think that the frogs were killed specifically for the monks in that if the season is right you go collect frogs.......then you usually cook all of the ones you have caught after giving some to family and friends if there are a lot.........and then eat them whenever it is time to eat if you are so inclined. The frogs the monks ate might have been caught and roasted the night before and the next morning there were a bunch still left so someone decided to give it to the monks at bindabat...........but I don't know for sure how it transpired......but no reason to think the frogs were killed for the monks specifically.
chownah
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metta
paul