The above image is a picture of Turbatrix aceti, or vinegar eels as they're more commonly known. These little worms feed off mother of vinegar, a combination of celulose and bacteria which develops in fermenting alchol (e.g. what happens if you leave that bottle of wine out too long...). I found out about them a couple of weeks ago when I was going to make mango glazed salmon for some friends. "What's that got to do with vinegar worms," you ask? Well the recipe (delicious, btw), called for rice vinegar. Like I have rice vinegar! (Ok, it's not that unusual of an ingredient, especially if you're one of the people who looked the recipe up. After all, I did have star of anise...) So I did some research to see if I could substitute some balsamic vinegar instead (I could!) and somehow came across some sites about culturing vinegar eels. "What the heck are vinegar eels?" methinks. Turns out they're these non-parasitic worms that just love the bacteria in vinegar. They're not likely to be in anything we eat as the vinegar sold in stores is pasteurized, but people do culture them. "Why would they do something so gross?!" Simple: fry (a.k.a. baby fish), apparently, love them. The thing is, I really don't think that they are sooo very repulsive. Weird yes; they give me a bit of the heebie-jeebies I'll admit, but, even more than that, I'm simply in awe of how much life there is. Everywhere, anywhere: your guts, your eyelashes, within the walls of your house, the soil, the sea, everywhere there's all this stuff just teeming. We're surrounded in this beautiful, intricate, and yes, sometimes deadly, web of cohabitation. But the thing that I just love is how I don't mind a teaspoon or two of vinegar added to my fish, but I wouldn't want to swig the stuff, yet here are these little creatures who just thrive off of it, and they just happen to be the favorite snack of the fish I dined on. I don't think I'll ever look at the fridge the same way again.
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