Dinner, where is thy sting?

[emad]

Dinner, where is thy sting? By Gideon Long

LONDON (Reuters) - A handful of hardy souls will descend on a quiet English village this weekend to stuff their mouths full of stinging nettles in a bizarre competition which started as an argument in a pub.

Combatants will gather at The Bottle Inn in Marshwood, southwest England, Saturday night to take part in the 9th annual World Nettle Eating Championship.

It is a mouth-watering prospect.

Competitors must pluck and eat as many leaves as they can from the feathery, stinging plants in the space of one hour. Their achievement is measured in feet and inches -- the combined length of the bare stems they discard.

"You have to adopt the correct technique to stand any chance of winning," said Shane Pym, landlord of the Bottle Inn. www.thebottleinn.co.uk.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050617/od_nm/britain_nettles_dc;_ylt=Au2TBY8jjvV9HR2g0gjHPXLtiBIF;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

[sui generis]

1. who here has been stung by stinging nettles?

They're all over Europe - it's a fact of growing up there - I think my brother and sister and I collectively had several square miles of rashes growing up.

[tjwmason]

3. A million times

As a young-boy about the only two plants I could recognise were nettles and dock-leaves (which ease the sting of a nettle).

[sui generis]

4. isn't it funny that

recognizing them usually takes place shortly after having run through a stand of them!

I grew up in Germany - inevitably zigging to avoid a raspberry bramble in the forest came at the price of zagging through a patch of nettles. I can't say how many games of tag resulted in a soapy bath and a hot oatmeal scrubbing.

Rolling down the hill outside my grandparents house, we came home covered with slug guts and nettles and thousands of little white blisters, which oddly never kept us from repeating the experience as often as possible. At the beginning of summer it was always worse; by the end of summer your body "erases" the stings a lot faster.

Slug guts! Yuck.

[Mizmoon]

5. I've never experienced them

I can't say I feel deprived either :)

[mike_c]

2. wow-- maybe ferret legging is real after all....

eom