Virgin Food Experiences: The first time you ever had...

[Abbynormalguy]

First time I had fish- 19 yrs.

I’ve dabbled with cooking here and there, so I’ve developed a taste for different spices and stuff like that. My father was still recovering from a quadruple bypass earlier in the year, so fish was high on the menu (high protien and low fat/cholesterol, etc.) He baked an orange roughy with a sprinkling of lemon. Not bad.
The next week, being the adventerous type I am (I’ll try just about anything twice), I took a fillet of orange roughy and got a collection of herbs from the garden…oregano, parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme (remember me to one who lives there…), bread crumbs, Valley Lemons, basil and some other random herbs in the garden. I kinda dashed it over the fish, let it marinate for 30 min. and baked in the oven till flaky…delish…and still the only fish I’ll eat (except for lox and gefilte fish, but they don’t count)

[The_MacDairmuid]

First time I ever had crab:

A friend and I were embroiled in a year-long trip around America. Three-and-a-half months after leaving L.A. we finally reached Titusville on the eastern coast of Floridhole. The night before, our neighbor campers told us there was a space shuttle launch scheduled for this night. We decided it was worth watching so we high-tailed it from Ocala to Titusville to grab a stretch of sand from which to watch the launch.

On the way into Titusville, Chris noticed a roadside vendor selling live crab. I’d never had crab before but he recommended it and as he was the gourmet and chef on the trip I decided to give it a go. We bought a couple crabs each and went on to find our spot.

You need to know now how we were traveling. We had gutted an '83 Chevy Bonaventure 6.7L Diesel van and converted it into our motor home. With 10 feet of interior behind the front seats, we’d built beds onto the sides with a small (1 foot?) walkway between them. Between the beds and the front seats we had an in-cabinet sink on one side, and an in-cabinet stove on the other. Quarters were very tight but we got along… and after 54 weeks of this, we are still friends.

So dinnertime rolled around and Chris boiled up a pot of water, then dropped the crabs in when the water was ready. One of the crabs decided that he did not want to be boiled that night and jumped up, throwing the lid off the pan and scampered off the stove onto the floor and then made haste toward the open doors at the back of the van.

Chris was on it immediately. He grabbed up his tongs from the counter next to the stove and pursued the crab down the walkway between our beds, cursing and gesticulating the whole time, and just catching the crab before it made it to the outside.

He turned around, crab frimly grasped in tongs, to see my face torn between two entirely different expressions. I was aghast that my dinner had just attempted to escape from the pot! I was also barely containing my laughter that Chris had just brought to mind the scene from “The Little Mermaid” (Disney version) in which the French Chef chases Ariel’s crab-friend around the kitchen.

So we go the little guy back in the pot with the rest of the crabs and he calmed down after that, largely because he couldn’t budge the diving weights that Chris placed on the pot’s lid.

Dinner was excellent, and so was the space shuttle launch at ~4:30 AM.

[Odinoneeye]

When I was young, we always went a certain Chinese restaurant. We went there because they had spaghetti on the menu. That way, my brother and I could order that while my parents had Chinese food.

One day, I was about 8 or 9, I was at my neighbors and they kept insisting I try egg fu young. I loved it and from that day forward have never been afraid to try new things. Of course, sometimes I wished I hadn’t.

The first time I tried venison, I had to spit it out. Now I’m up to trying it 4 times, each times I’m told that whoever made it for me didn’t know how to make it. Guess what, it all tastes nasty.

I spend a couple weeks in a small village in Tanzania about 13 years ago. One night, I wasn’t with the main group for dinner and when I got there, they kept telling me how wonderful these greens were. I took one bite and spit them out. They were incredibly bitter. We ended up having them several times during that trip, but I didn’t touch them again.

[curly_chick]

*Originally posted by Lynn Bodoni *
**I’d never eaten a pomegranate. THAT was an experience. We had no idea how to cut it open, or whether to eat the seeds. But we decided that we’d eat the pulp and spit the seeds, and even though it’s messy, we now have pomegranates somewhat regularly.
**

You spit the seeds out of a pomegranate? That must be a very messy carry on, indeed.
When we were little, our granny used to give me and my brother half a pomegranate each and a pin to pick out the fruit to eat. She was a canny old bird as it must have kept us quiet for hours - it takes a hell of a lot of time and concentration to eat a pomegranate that way!!
I eat pomegranates whenever they are in season and just scoff the little jewels down, seeds and all. Delicious.

I had dragon fruit for the first time this weekend, in what was called an exotic fruit platter. I had previously eaten all of the other things on the plate, but I had never even heard of dragon fruti before, let alone seen one. It was very odd looking - those of you who know what they are, maybe you can tell me what country it comes from? Red skin and white flesh, all flecked with tiny black seeds, no segments or pith discernible, although that could be due to the way it was prepared I suppose, and it was raw, I’d say.
I quite liked it, although I can’t really tell you what it tastes like. Dragon, maybe?!

[spogga]

Escargot, how the hell anyone can eat SNAILS is beyond me.

The first time I tried I bit into the sod and this stuff spurted into my mouth and immediately I thought of the slime trail a slug leaves. Up came the snail, 4 or 5 glasses of red wine and whatever else was, up to that point, being cheerfully digested in my stomach.
If there is a world record for distance barfing then I hold it, my effort must have shot at least 6 feet before being stopped by the restaurant window ::splatter::
Passers by must have thought some mad axe killer was rampaging inside the place.

WHELKS.

Have you ever tried eating a whelk?
It is like chewing a ear [Tyson?]
You just can’t break the bloody thing down into pieces small enough to swallow.
I recommend you pass on both snails and whelks, they belong to the same union.