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Italian was entertaining a Malaysian-Chinese businessman in Rome after a strenuous working day. He ordered penne al formaggio, a macaroni dish with a creamy blue cheese sauce. When the food arrived, the Chinese sniffed, looked around the room and said, "There's a terrible stench somewhere around here."

A Norwegian couple arrived in Singapore to live for a few years. Every Singaporean they met asked them if they'd had ever tasted a local fruit called durian. They tried to order it as part of a fruit plate in the restaurant. The waiter stared aghast and said, "Durian is only served here as a pudding."

They tried to buy one at the market, but it was always sold out. So finally at 8:30 one morning the young Norwegian lady found a shopkeeper with some left, who gave her a nice ripe one. She put the durian in the car with the other groceries. On the way home a powerful smell of rotten onions came from the back seat. At home after ripping open all the grocery bags she found it was the durian.

The fruit had a thick and thorny shell like a coconut and had to be broken open. Inside the grayish pink pulp had a slimy texture. Thinking the shopkeeper had cheated her, she went next door to ask her Singaporean friend. The lady laughed and said, "No, that's just the way it smells." Then she cut apiece off and gave it to the Norwegian woman, who tasted it and said, "The taste is different, but it's sort of delicate and sweet." The neighbor woman laughed and said, "Now you 're a true Singaporean."

Foods are often fashion items. Nouvelle cuisine was the rage for over a decade. Black-colored food was fashion in the US in 1989. In New York, black pasta and black rice were appearing on menus of fancy restaurants next to the traditional black mushrooms and truffles. Pasta and rice were colored black by the addition of ink from squid and cuttlefish, or with black olive paste.

Singaporeans, however, have always eaten black chicken. The bird cooks for hours in special herbs for its nutritional and medicinal benefits. Pregnant women commonly eat this delicacy.

Religious laws affect the kinds of food we eat. In India, Hindus never touch beef. Thin, half starving cows wander the streets and go back to their homes at night. Outside of India one hears the complaint that "If there are so many people starving there why don't they kill those cows and eat the beef?"

But as Dubois points out in Hindu Manners and Customs, it is not that simple. True, cows are treated as sacred animals, and often referred

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