It’s interesting that you specifically mentioned an alien watching the process. To someone that had no knowledge of our Earthly culture(s) or eating habits the process of making cheese (or specifically veined cheese) might not be inherently gross. Said aliens might consider the fact that we grow a lot of our food in the dirt so disgusting that they might decide to move their telescopes somewhere else so they can stop vomiting in their mouths a little bit. WE tend to consider cheese gross when we really sit and think about the process that’s involved in making it just the way you did, but some alien race might not have any problem drinking moldy curdled inter-species milk…well, I guess ours doesn’t either, but you know what I mean. A lot of things aren’t that pleasant when you break them down. There’s a reason you can’t get a tour of the Jell-O factory.
I had bees’ vomit on toast for breakfast this morning. Very tasty.
How about force-feeding geese to produce foie gras?
I’m told that if you see how Vegemite is made you’ll probably never eat it again. Something to do with shovelling left-over waste out of beer barrels. I don’t want to know more because I love the stuff.
How about collecting the feces of a cat-like mammal, washing out the undigested plant seeds, and then using an extract of those seeds as a wakeup drink.
Actually, they often mix the ground flesh from one dumb beast with belly fat taken fromm another dumb beast. Some places mix the ground muscle tissue from multiple dead beasts together.
And don’t forget all the seeds, leaves, and other material gathered from random plants.
And it’s all served up on a bun made from the stored growth supply intended for seedlings, mixed with more of that gland secretion and allowed to gestate an airborne microscoping life form, simply for the purpose of aerating the mixture. Then baked.
Someone recently looked at the things that go into making a cheeseburger, and concluded that it definitely was a product of Modern Civilization – there’s no nway you could have gathered all the components, fresh, in one place at one time without modern transporation and food storage capabilities.
The oddest Asian treats always seem to have “aphrodisiac” qualities, don’t they?
No wonder such a percentage of the Earth’s population is on that continent; those folks’ll eat damned near anything, if they think it’ll get them in the mood.