What's the strangest thing you've ever eaten?

[DaisyKeymaster]

Here’s some weekend fun.

What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever eaten? What were the circumstances?

The survival lesson in this is that overcoming your urge to be squeamish and learning to recognize unusual things as food can really help in a desperate situation.

My answer is in the next comment.

[DaisyKeymaster]

I used to travel a lot during my misspent, pre-children youth, and I always tried whatever the local folks offered. Heck, sometimes I went out looking for weird stuff:

Cat – Mexico

Horse – Italy

Gator – Florida

Rattlesnake – New Mexico

Squirrel – Arkansas

 

• This reply was modified 1 year, 7 months ago by  Daisy.

[harmony gardnerParticipant]

Hi Daisy and all,   About 10 years ago I was working with an  NGO in Port au Prince Haiti, pretty much a shft situation on a daily basis there and this was pre earthquake.    On one of your final days there we had a meal prepared to thank us for our time there and the protien was donkey meat  shredded with some sort of sauce.  When you are working with different cultures you roll with it, it would be considered disrespectful to pass.  So, yes it didn’t taste great but the upside was fresh coconut water to wash it down.

[DaisyKeymaster]

Harmony, you bring up a very important point! You run the risk of insulting people if you won’t eat what they serve to you.

I learned the very valuable lesson of asking what the meat was AFTER I’d finished eating in Mexico. If you don’t know what it is (and don’t think too hard about it) it’s a lot easier to eat something unfamiliar. When you know, your upbringing and societal norms can make it difficult to choke down.

[Crow BarKeymaster]

Been to China, Japan, South Korea, Afghanistan and probably half a dozen other places.

I have no idea what it was, but if you are hungry enough, you will eat dang near anything.

[Anonymous]

I’ve never been out of the US and lived most of my life between Louisiana and South Carolina so I’ve eaten crawfish, you gotta suck the heads for that fat!  Snake, gator, shark, probably a frog leg or two.  Don’t think I ever had, or wish to have, squirrel.

I’ve also eaten at McDonald’s and Burger King so that is a whole mystery box there.  School lunch and canned soups.

[DaisyKeymaster]

I cackled out loud at @crazyme referencing McDonald’s and Burger King. At least with fried squirrel you know what you’re getting. 😀

[Anonymous]

LOL I’ll probably get that squirrel one day.

[Jade JasmineParticipant]

I grew up in Louisiana so frog, turtle, squirrel, rabbit, gator, catfish, white perch, crawfish, venison, wild boar, grouse, goose, duck, pheasant, quail, were on our table frequently. And being a coastal state there are a lot of fish and shellfish available all the time. Swordfish isn’t bad, sea bass is pretty good. I didn’t grow up eating exclusively the ‘big three’ (beef, pork, chicken) so these things aren’t weird to me. Its weird the rest of you haven’t ever had or don’t eat them with frequency. 😉

I think this sort of opens the door for my love of sushi and putting myself in the hands of the sushi chef. Octopus/squid, eel, a dizzying array of fish and shell fish. I think oysters are kind of weird. I eat them, but they are weird.

[namelusParticipant]

In training have eaten bugs, bird seed, dog in Korea puffer fish in Japan,  butter tea in Tibet the grossest part of that was the hair from yak was um part of the butter.

in China

fermented eggs called thousand year old eggs, chicken feet, jelly fish, and fried scorpion all tasted good except egg

Cow tripe in thailand,

 

Canada

Cof tongues in newfoundland seal liver raw inuit village. Walrus blubber and whale meat. Whale is texture of beef and has just a faint fish oder. Prairie oyster

 

For me things I eat that others think weird cow tongues and tail, bone soup as in other thread. Chicken liver hearts and gizzard same with turkey. Pig jowl bacon it’s my favorite. Used to make headcheese but now I use brains to tan.

 

 

 

[James MitchnerParticipant]

Terrapin or box turtle, whichever you would like to call it.  Pack the entire animal in mud and roast it in the hot coals of a fire for about an hour, turning with two sticks periodically.  Picky eating but the meat wasn’t bad.  Eaten crawfish I’ve caught out of a creek,  Not as large as those down south but tasty none the less.  Cooked up Timber Rattler I’ve dispatched, breaded and deep fried.  Not much meat except along both sides of the backbone.  All the rest is mostly ribs.  Then there’s ants, both red and black ants.  The trick is to bite the heads first so your tongue won’t gat bitten.  They have a burst of flavor that has a sweet intenseness to it.  Takes a lot of them, of course. Wouldn’t try it with fire ants, though!

[woodsrunnerParticipant]

The most different thing- Oryx.  You have to win a lottery to get one in White Sands (or go to Africa).

Also ate ostrich in Oklahoma but not very impressed with it.  Venison often, cow tongue once at a friends house.  I like chicken livers.  I like to try plants I haven’t tried before.  The Indians used dwarf cornel in pemmican but it tastes so bland its not worth it.  Chewing on a wintergreen leaf is good.

[OldMt WomanParticipant]

Hmm…I’ve had a lot of the lesser meats or cuts – tongue, liver, venison, elk, antelope, squirrel, rabbit [dog nailed it so we ate it]…etc.  All very good.  I’ve eaten opihi [Hawaiian shellfish] right off the rocks..good protein.  Had Filipino …um, blood sausage or something.  Didn’t ask.  I was the new person so just ate and it was fine.

LOL @ the fast food joke, CrazyMe.  Our large dog just got foamy-sick for the second time just now.  We’re calculating what she ate.  DH is terrible about spoiling her with any kind of ‘treat’.  He resorted to [ack -horrors] frozen food box of breakfast sausage/egg muffins while I was gone.  The first time dog did this foamy-upchuck was after she had a small last bite from his plate of that.  Today…she’d had that again.  No brainer to say that frozen breakfast muffins aren’t going to be daily fare for ANY of us.  Our systems are not used to that processed junk but I’m thinking they really might top the chart in “Strange”.

OldMtWoman ….ya gotta build up a tolerance for some kinds of “poison”, right?

[Author]

Posts