What have you eaten?

nickyspaghetti · 10-03-2008, 01:13 PM

I'm one to try anything, and I've eaten everything from brains to scorpions. Is anybody else into unusual foods.
Here probably my most regular weird foods are kaszanka (a kind of blood sausage) and flaki(a kind of tripe stew) To me they are really great but I know that to many they are a little grim sounding.
What have you eaten and what would you eat?
On my list to try is witchetty grub, but I think that unless I go on a trip to Oz that it will be unfulfilled.

zenshaver · 10-03-2008, 01:43 PM

I have tried alligator in texas and frogslegs in thailand.The alligator tasted like chicken and now that I think about it so did the frogslegs.

Bruno · 10-03-2008, 01:45 PM

I am pretty conservative in what I eat because I have a number of food allergies with different effects.
This can go from 'feeling hung over next day' to 'scratching my skin till it bleeds' to 'sitting on the throne all night and feeling dead sick for a day' or if really goes bad 'rush to the ER because this can't be good'

Trial and error taught me what to avoid and what is safe. Sometimes it took a very long time to figure it out because the effects set on gradually. Various spices, herbs and mushrooms seem to be things that I am vulnerable to.

This means that on a restaurant (especially when I am travelling) I tend to only eat things I know are safe.
If I fail to do this, then it can go wrong.
I ate something with lots of green herbs in barcelona last year, and when I got back to my hotel room I felt very sick, dizzy and antsy. I felt horrible the next day.

Bruce · 10-03-2008, 02:07 PM

I've always liked oatmeal, but am not overwhelmed by macaroni and cheese.

zenshaver · 10-03-2008, 02:13 PM

Now that the wife and I are being very health conscious I eat oatmeal a lot too. No more alligator for me. Though it might actually be good for you. I never checked.I have never heard of hormone injected alligators.

Chris L · 10-03-2008, 03:55 PM

I think I'm pretty adventurous when it comes to food, but not as adventurous as you are, Nick. I lost a taste for beef about 10 years ago. Admittedly at the time, the talk of CJD turned me off, but after so long, at this point I just don't have an interest in it. Although, throw anything in a natural casing, call is sausage and I'll eat it.

It drives my wife batty, but I'm a cartilage man. At home I chew the ends off of chicken bones, rib tips, etc. I like the crunch. I grew up fishing with my Dad in Lake Superior, so we'd can lake trout and salmon. I loved eating the backbone and rib bones. Canning softens them up to an al dente texture. To my wife it's like nails on a chalkboard when she hears me eating that type of stuff. But, she hasn't kicked me out yet.

Kim Chi is really tasty stuff. Fiery spicy foods are great. Stinky cheeses, mmmmmm.

Chris L

Doc · 10-03-2008, 09:05 PM

Brother if it walks crawls or fly's I either have tried it or would not mind trying it under the right circumstances. I love watching No Reservations

gugi · 10-03-2008, 09:17 PM

I have eaten stuff like brain, tongue and some intestines and internal organs of common livestock (chicken, sheep/goat/deer, pigs, cattle), once had a soft-shell crab, but I'm still not comfortable with eating bugs, worms, snakes or dogs. Thought the oysters would be weird, but now I really like them.

superfly · 10-03-2008, 09:21 PM

I can diggest almost anything, but nothing I enjoyed more like eating a strange animal that lives in mud, and eats it's own feaces...

cheers,
Nenad

mhailey · 10-03-2008, 09:27 PM

I've eaten ants, grub worms, meal worms, crickets, grasshoppers, earth worms, an assortment of flying insetcs. All of the above were thanks to the Boy Scouts, and the older scounts paying me $5 to $10 to eat somthing.

hoglahoo · 10-03-2008, 09:39 PM

Blood soup. Nasty, not everything should be tried once

I swallowed a moth once. It slowly fluttered all the way down, ick

Chris L · 10-03-2008, 09:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mhailey

I've eaten ants, grub worms, meal worms, crickets, grasshoppers, earth worms, an assortment of flying insetcs. All of the above were thanks to the Boy Scouts, and the older scounts paying me $5 to $10 to eat somthing.

Did you eat them raw? How did they taste?

Chris L

mhailey · 10-03-2008, 10:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chris L

Did you eat them raw? How did they taste?

Chris L

The meal worms and grubs were not that big of a deal, but the grasshoppers, crickets and other insects were tough because the legs and hard parts ended up getting stuck in my teeth, and they were sour. The earthworm just tasted like slime and dirt, and I just swallowed it whole, no chewing. This was about 20 years ago, so I my memory of the exact taste is a little foggy.

I do remember one bug that really tated like tobasco sauce. I can't tell you which one it was, or if they just dunked it in tobasco sauce just be mean, but my mouth really burned.

Matt

Edit: and yes I ate them raw.

One time my mom found meal worms in the cereal that she fed me, after I ate two bowls, so I don't know if that would be considered for this thread because it was unintentional, and masked by the cereal and milk flavors.

BeBerlin · 10-04-2008, 12:21 AM

When I was young, my mother told me that English food was not meant for consumption, and she certainly had a point there. On the other hand, German food has its idiosyncrasies, too: Saumagen - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mahlzeit, Männer!

JMS · 10-04-2008, 12:32 AM

Rattle snake is pretty good, especially if you kill it yourself!
I got bit by a rattlesnake I was planning on having for dinner because I had forgotten my knife at home...but that's another story!

Nord Jim · 10-04-2008, 02:06 AM

I always thought that chicken tasted a lot like rattlesnake.

In my writer days, I got around a lot and ate a lot of interesting stuff. In Norway, I had lutefisk in Oslo (don't ask -- it's kind of like Norwegian chemical warfare), and smalehove (don't know the actual spelling, but it's a smoked sheep's head) in Voss. I ate reindeer tongues with vodka with the Sami (Laplanders) over the Russian border from Finland by the arctic circle, and muktuk with the Inuit on Baffin Island.

Oh, yeah -- and rattlesnake out in Colorado.

I might draw the line at some Icelandic stuff. They're said to have a shark dish that consists of burying the fish in the sand for a year or so, digging it up, and eating it. It's said to be rather gelatinous with a smell that would take your head off.

And haggis? What's that about?

I've always been fond of game, and as an editor, I've often found writer submissions for cooking it amusing -- why do they always want to "take the gamey flavor out" of it? If that's the case, why not buy beef or chicken? My favorites are caribou and grouse, though bear can be interesting on occasion.

Sushi? That's for sissies.

j

BeBerlin · 10-04-2008, 02:14 AM

Forget everything. Try this: SurstrÃ¶mming - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

And they say Chinese cuisine is interesting...

Chris L · 10-04-2008, 04:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BeBerlin

Forget everything. Try this: SurstrÃ¶mming - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

And they say Chinese cuisine is interesting...

I think I would try it.

Chris L

Ditch Doc · 10-04-2008, 04:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doc

Brother if it walks crawls or fly's I either have tried it or would not mind trying it under the right circumstances. I love watching No Reservations

+1

The most dangerous thing was the local water in Iraq.

nickyspaghetti · 10-05-2008, 11:40 AM

Yeah, I had an Icelandic friends at uni and he always used to joke about his 'putrid shark' although he never managed to bring any over he did bring some terrible dried white fish. When I say dry, I mean it was like eating a ball of wool - really salty and stringy and probably the most disgusting thing I have ever tried!