Bizzare Foods

[roger.waite]

Marmite.

Now that is a truly bizarre and disgusting product ...

[Roy M]

In Oaxaca, the gastronomic epicenter of Mexico, you can find roasted salted grasshoppers in the marketplace. When fried up in olive oil and served in tiny corn tortillas, with a touch of salsa, they are magnificent. They also provided the Aztecs with needed iodine in their diets.

[hummingway]

I've been enjoying this thread. It's interesting what people consider weird and what people consider good. I can't say I've eaten a lot of what I'd consider weird things. The world's gotten pretty small so a lot of what might have been weird a couple of generations ago seems commonplace, snake, gator, jellyfish, urchins, sashimi, steak tartar, snails and so on. I don't see why people eat gators. I've had it a few times and it reminded me of eating mud pies when I was two. I do eat a lot of things some people don't seem interested in. Tonight for dinner I had pig kidneys. To me they are a delicacy and as a bonus where I shop locally they are very inexpensive. I've lived places where they weren't but they don't seem popular here. Don't tell anyone but tongue is the nicest part of a cow. I guess some of it's knowing how to prepare the dish correctly. Trout love grasshoppers and I love trout ergo I might like grasshoppers if I knew how to prepare them.

Oh, and for desert I'm eating (and drinking) fresh chopped pineapple soaked in an 11 year old cuban rum. Now that shouldn't be weird in anyone's book!

[muskoka]

I sat down to a lovely meal in Chongquing, China which consisted of Duck Oesophagus, Frog Skin and 1000 year old eggs. All washed down with Snake Wine.

With the exception of the duck, it wasn't half bad. But I was hungry about an hour later...

[s/v Jedi]

In Holland, raw herring and smoked eel are big hits. We also have what we call Filet Americain which is raw meat but I don't think I ever saw it in the US... raw steak tartar on a roll with chopped raw onion is a favorite too. The crocodile I had wasn't muddy at all and much like the snake (python). Ostrich is great. All this was available in a supermarket in Rotterdam.

The most disgusting things I've seen or tasted: "oil-down" in Grenada (with pig snouts floating in there), Maxwell coffee, Parmelat milk and canned soups in the US and everything listed in this thread I'll stay far away from ;-)

ciao!
Nick.

[Morganministry]

Being raised in the mountains, I've probably eaten alot of things that other people would find wierd. I've eaten alot of bear and squirrel. I've sampled porcupine and rattle snake.

While on a house build in Mexico, the family we were building for made lunch for the crew. It was chicken in some kind of sauce wrapped in a tortilla shell. It was an interesting meal. It would have been better if they had taken the bones, feet and other parts out of the mixture.

At a taco stand in Vicente Guerrero, Mexico, I noticed several locals ordering a certain type of taco. Always willing to try new foods, I asked for one. After I ate it I asked what it was. It turned out to be the meat from the face of a pig.

Oh, And I agree with an earlier post. Beef tongue sandwiches are good.

Scott