Funny story, we drove over Donner Pass this summer and had dinner in an Indian restaurant in Redding. My partner, who had ordered a Tandoori platter the was just a tad too generous, said to me, “help your self to this, but don’t eat my (remaining chicken) leg.”
On one mailing list many years ago, the naïve British participants in a rare fit of accidental irony, mistook “Donner Party” as a typo for “dinner party”.
So, anyone up for a bit of long pig? Conspicuously absent from my to-taste list.
I eat basically anything, although there are plenty of things I don’t go out of my way to eat.
In fact, I’ve eaten just about everything that has been posted so far- balut, living things, brains, organ meats of all kinds, rat gums, bugs…I’ve even eaten quivering blocks of boiled pork fat that could probably be called “pork jelly.” I don’t go out of my way to eat strange food, but if it’s there in front of my I’ll give it a shot.
I doubt you were born with said palate; rather I think, like me, your parents insisted that you eat a variety of foods. I thank my mum for liver, and blood pudding, and haggis, and fish, and kidneys, and beef tongue, and … well a whole lot of things that most kids weren’t exposed to.
Balut is a mostly-incubated duck fetus cooked and served in the shell, natto is fermented soybeans, hakarl is rotten shark (and also the sound people make after they eat it), surstromming is a fermented herring, casu marzu is a rotted cheese with live maggots still in it. Pork jelly is probably the least exotic of the items on the list; boil up some pig parts, skim off the fat, let the stock cool and gel, and tada, pork jelly.
As for me, I’d take a pass on the hakarl and the casu marzu for sure. I doubt I could choke down the balut. And I’m also horrified by the idea of eating anything that’s still alive. Pork jelly; eh, I’ve had aspic, same difference.
Things I’ve never tried and will refuse to unless under threat of death (possibly not even then)
Sauteed mealworms
Brains
Testicles
Pig feet
Chicken feet
Grubs
Maggot cheese
Cat poop coffee
Things that are considered to be companion a animal in American culture (dog, cat, horse and similar)
Rotted shark
Rotted duck eggs
Lutefisk
Things I’ve tried and refuse to ever put in my mouth again
Beets (taste like the hole in the ground they came out of)
Uni (sea urchin roe)
Smoked salmon (I love fresh salmon, raw salmon, cooked salmon…it’s the smoke that ruins it)
Fresh Raspberries (blech)
Did I mention beets?
Caviar (although I like most roe served in sushi restaurants)
Scallops (I’ve tried multiple times, in a variety of preparations and come to the conclusion that I just do not like them)
Oh yeah, beets are heinous
Those are real foods (well, not actually cat poop coffee, but I’m sure he meant the following):
I think it is safe to say that NOBODY here would eat either of those even for money. Also, no idea about cockroaches, but wouldn’t be surprised if they are eaten somewhere around the world.
Peaches, The most disgusting thing ever evolved. They smell like dirty sweet feet and they just taste like dirty feet. They should be illegal and should be extinct from this planet. Peach
smell literally turns my stomach, just disgusting. The texture even worse, its like moderately solid, fleshy feces, that are in some way grossly sweet. F’N nasty.
They smell bad, they taste bad. I’d rather live out the next 50 years with my head in a colostomy bag than have to smell or taste a peach (again).
Mango’s are right up there, nasty.
On the other hand I like woman that like peaches, they don’t care what it smells or tastes like, they’ll still stick it in their mouth.
A friend of mine served me a hummus dish, made the old-fashioned way, the way his Lebanese grandmother made it.
I could not eat it. In utter absolute shame and embarrassment, I had to go to the sink and spit it out. It tasted as if it had been made with sewing-machine oil, not sesame-seed oil!
Since then, I have a strong prejudice against hummus of any variety, even the bland Americanized kind. I won’t say I absolutely won’t eat it…but in practice, I never do.
As already cited, the cat poop coffee and maggot cheese are real things. I should have said cat pooped coffee though to be clear. The coffee isn’t made from the cat poop, but from the coffee beans that take a ride through the cat. And it’s not a cat, it’s a civet, which is close enough to a cat for me. I thought everyone on the Dope was familiar enough with cazu marzu and kopi luwak that I wouldn’t have to look up how to spell them.
Sorry if I confused you, though I’m fairly sure you can get some cockroach chili and the truck stop in the town I grew up in. Extra crunchy!