Surrounded by farm life in an English meadow, far from the madding crowd

Someone probably told you the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is just a myth, but don’t believe everything you hear.

I know where the rainbow ends, and there’s no reason to think the pot of gold isn’t still there. I mean, no one before me dug it up, and neither did I, so assuming no one has unearthed it since I left, logic dictates it must still be there. You could go check. But the right thing would be to leave it just as it is.

My husband and I lived in northern England for a few years. When people ask where, I name the nearest recognizable town, with a population of about 75,000. But to get to our house, you had to drive through the countryside to a small village, population of about 800. A jagged spur off of that was our tiny hamlet, population: the people on our lane plus anyone who happened to be driving through.

Our house didn’t have an address, just a name: the Old Smithy. Lovingly modernized, it was once the smithy for the farm that dominated the hamlet. The farm was still there, though some buildings had been sold off, including the manor house, where a family of four lived next door to us. To the other side was the remaining farm, and by other side, I mean my kitchen shared an outer wall with the calving barn.

If it seems unlikely we actually shared the wall, you could check my pots and pans for the tiny gifts the barn mice left behind as they traversed our cupboards.

One day I opened a kitchen drawer and mentally cursed my husband for not only eating all the caramels in a bag I’d treated myself to, but leaving the wrappers in the drawer. It was only when I reached in to clear them out that I realized these were mere shreds, detritus chewed through as the mice feasted on my fancy candies.

But this isn’t a story about mice, although they sometimes did speed runs across the living room carpet. They were the purview of my husband, a farm boy himself, and he quietly did what had to be done.

This also isn’t a story about sheep, although the farm maintained a flock of them. Sometimes when I came up to our driveway, which passed through a wrought-iron gate in the stone wall in front of our house, the gate would be closed. That meant the farmer had been driving the flock down the lane — little danger of encountering any traffic — and pulled the gate closed to prevent the fuzzy-headed flock from traipsing through our garden instead of down the path.

The sheep were the best thing about living in the country, not counting the pot of gold, of course. Every spring we made a pilgrimage — more than one, truth be told — to check out the new lambs. The fields boasted dozens of them, usually in pairs. And while the mature sheep were pure white, these little ones were spotted, so they stood out in the meadows, and in the dozens of pictures we were morally obliged to take.

And no, this isn’t a story about cows either, though the farm had plenty. So many, in fact, that separate fields each hosted a class of cows, which I categorized as boy cows, mother cows with baby cows, and teenage cows. As I recall, my husband did not endorse this terminology, but he was amused enough to go along with it.

We’d stroll the lanes in the evenings to see how they were faring. The boy cows were sometimes on duty in the field where the treasure lay, staying aloof from afar; my husband suggested we’d be wise to keep our distance. Mama cows observed keenly from afar to be sure we posed no threat, but we were slow and boring, so they’d lose interest and go back to chewing their cud.

The teenage cows were the most fun. Whenever they saw us, they’d hustle over to see what was going on. We’d chat, and they seemed intrigued, maybe because they remembered we liked to pull up the tall weeds on our side of the divide and offer them across the fence. The youngsters rarely declined.

Still, the best thing about the Old Smithy was the view across the way. We faced an open field, one that dipped down to a valley, a panorama of farms and trees and stone fences. We had a front-row seat to golden sunsets, stormy skies, endless drifts of fat snowflakes, and dark, starry nights.

But when a rainstorm was fading away and the sun was just right, that’s when the secret of the dales was revealed. That’s when we saw the rainbow’s end, in the meadow just across the lane. There was no mistaking it. That was the place.

We never went to check. It was enough to know it was there.

How to Find the Pot of Gold, Assuming It’s Still Where I Left It was originally published in Globetrotters on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Here’s what it took for me to give them a try

I may not be the most adventuresome diner, but I’m culinary light-years from the meat-and-potatoes table my mother set to keep my father happy. I was much older, and they were long divorced, before I realized she was far more open to variety than our supper routine would have suggested. By then, though, I was on my own. I had no idea how much there was to learn.

Once I moved away from home and started building a social circle, dining out became a highlight on my calendar. Most of my friends were on a similar trajectory of discovery, and we learned and expanded our palates in synchronization.

In my 20s, when I lived outside Washington, D.C., I was suddenly immersed in foreign and ethnic cuisines. I still love exploring them.

In my 30s, when I lived in Greece, I added squid and octopus, preferably grilled, to my repertoire. I have qualms about octopus these days, but not because of any squeamishness.

In my 40s, as I embarked on a series of overseas assignments, I welcomed an entire range of fish beyond canned tuna. No week is complete without fish now.

And that seemed to cover the ground well enough. I accepted I just wasn’t going to acquire a taste for olives. And I decided not to expend any effort on organ meats.

The big outlier, though, was shellfish. I was happy with shrimp, delighted with scallops, and thrilled with lobster. But oysters, clams, mussels, that whole mollusk family? Nope. Not going there. And as far as I was concerned, my life was none the poorer for it.

Paella? No, thanks. Moules marinieres? Not on your life. Clam chowder? Okay, but only New England-style with plenty of cream and potatoes to drown the clams, and the fewer of them, the better.

The ick factor was strong.

My husband loved that stuff, though. One of his happiest food memories was from his first trip to France, when he sat down to a plate of coquillage, whelks and unidentifiables of graduated sizes filling the plate and sating his senses: the geometric whirl of the array, the fresh smell of the sea, the scrape of utensils digging out each morsel, the mouth-feel of the mouthful, the umami sparked by the tang of lemon.

He’d eat escargot, too. In fact, he ordered them every chance he got. When they’d arrive at the table, sizzling with butter and garlic, he never failed to solicitously invite me to share, safe in the knowledge I’d never accept. He’d have his dozen to himself, while I’d gleefully drench good bread in the aromatic pool.

But what do you know?

Not long ago, I found myself on vacation in Croatia, cruising the Dalmatian coast with a group of friends. One afternoon, a bus delivered us to a village dominated by medieval remnants and a historic port, where a small boat ferried us to a waterborne platform for an oyster and mussel tasting.

Ridiculous, right?

Of course I went along. I didn’t want to miss the experience, the sights and sounds, the company. The crisp white local wine. And at least one of our crowd counted heads to see who had no intention of ingesting the precious morsels; she was ready to relieve us of any guilt, and any spare seafood.

And here’s where I have to make a shameful confession. I’d always figured I didn’t need to eat shellfish to know they’d be tough and rubbery, and I wouldn’t like them. Over all those years of declaring I didn’t like mollusks, the fact is I’d never tried them.

So there I was, on a wooden platform on a serene Adriatic inlet, surrounded by friends and water and the means of deriving sustenance from the seas. I could continue claiming I didn’t like this food I’d never actually tasted. Or I could take advantage of a unique opportunity and give it a try.

The oyster farmer did his job. He hauled long strings of shellfish out of the crystalline waters, fresh as could be. He gave charming insight on how they grew, how long before they were fork ready (2.5 years), and how we could eat them in r-less August (oysters don’t read the calendar, they feel the water, which is fine now). No, these aren’t the pearl-generating variety. No, there’s no cocktail sauce, just a squeeze of fresh lemon. And yes, please, chew, because if you just swallow, you’ll miss the flavor, and you’ll miss the point.

After a lifetime of mindless denial, I let go.

I said yes.

A small plate bearing a pair of shucked oysters and a lemon wedge landed in front of me. I didn’t pass it to my eager friend. I spritzed the lemon, I slurped, I chewed, and I swallowed. The oyster was not small, but it was soft, tender, savory, nothing like I’d imagined. It was, in fact, delicious.

Barely a moment later, I downed the second, no longer apprehensive, but appreciative.

Then I sat back for a quick, deep think. Whyever did I wait so long?
And then, thank goodness I’d swallowed my pride, and chewed the oysters.

The next course was a breeze. A small pile of mussels, simmered in a bath of white wine, olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, and parsley, went down easy. Like the oysters, not at all rubbery, just toothsome and flavorful. When extra platters were passed down the table, I helped myself to more, and sopped up the sauce with crusty bread.

Lesson learned. We’re never too old to try something new. Who knows? I may yet make my way to sushi.

For the record, I trumpeted my revelation to my always-supportive family. Because we’re a close-knit crowd, and the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, their response was unanimous: “Yuck.” I’m confident none of them has ever tasted any mollusks either. But they’ll just have to come around in their own time, like I did.

Sizzlin’ Scorchin’ September

I Knew Oysters Were Awful Even Though I’d Never Tasted Them was originally published in the Challenged on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.