Ooh, the vodkamelon thing reminded me … I’ve also had a drink made of pureed beets, grape Kool-Aid, and vodka. Not recommended.
I’ve been to the Lucas (that’s the Company) plant in Monterrey. My company makes some stuff that helps their packaging machines run. They make this product called Skwinkles (look for it on www.lucasworld.com) that is like mango licorice with a powder on it, and the powder is simultaneously spicy and sweet and sour and salty. It’s the same powder in your Gusano (which I’ve had). They call the powder “Acidto” and you can actually but little cans of it. I have one here at my place, actually.
Anyway, having been in the room where these things are made, the air THICK with Acidito powder, I can assure you that if Saddam wants chemical weapons, he can order them from a certain Mexican candy plant.
this is what I am cooking today! you are on pojnt too, beef stew except soupier 
Weirdest thing was Chillied Crushed Beetles in Thailand made from freshly caught beetles in the jungle. Was so wickedly hot and spicy that I couldn’t really describe the taste - but I remember the texture well.
Crunchy. Very crunchy.
Slightly more conventional but visually weird -
I had rabbit at my soon-to-be-in-laws on my first visit. Both rabbits escaped from the bag and were hopping around the veranda and we had to help recapture them before we could eat them. All through dinner, my friend and I kept twitching our noses at each other and wondering which of us was eating Flopsy.
Same visit - we had octopus pizza. Nothing wrong with octopus… except this was just a pizza with a very big octopus sitting whole in the middle of it.
My dad used to cook ox-tongue. Delicious, but he made no attempt to disguise the fact that is was ox tongue. Imagine a HUGE tongue on a plate with peas and carrots.
I have had escargot many times - but in Malta they have what look like common or garden snails with cocktail sticks on little plates at the bar to be eaten like olives. Again, no attempt to disguise their essential snail nature.
I visit my relatives in Mexico quite often and as a result of this I’ve been introduced to some “food” that’s normally quite rare in my Canadian diet. Let’s see…there’s been:
-raw pigskin
-fried pigskin (I was tricked into thinking it was a potato chip)
-mole
-pounds upon pounds of Habanero peppers (hottest legal peppers in the world)
-chicken feet
-there’s more but my ability to block out disturbing memories has prevented me from sharing them
I hunted and ate squirrel about 15 years ago (it has very recently become quite fashionable here) on a ‘survival week’ with some friends. It was OK; sort of like rabbit with (seriously) a slightly nutty flavour.
Since then I’ve gone out of my way to try new foods, but nothing terribly weird, I’m afraid; I want food that’s novel and nice.
Snake. Caught it and cooked it myself too…it’d been mozzing around our campsite and being a venomous Brown, I decided it needed dealing with.
It was very tasty, hate to say it but a cross between chicken and veal, but as tough as old boot leather (literally). Perhaps I should have tenderised it first?
The worst weird food I’ve ingested was Sea Urchin…but I think it might have gone bad. If they all taste like that, I’ll never try it again.
I had to go to a Chiu Chao restaurant in Hong Kong at a business dinner with my Chiu Chao boss. Into fish head soup that was boiling on the tabel we dipped:[ul][li]Duck feet[]Duck intestine[]Live crab (they took the lid off it at the table and we hoiked out bits of it with our chopsticks while it was still wriggling)Eggs with legs[/ul]I kept on burping up the fertilized eggs for months afterwards. It tasted like really strong egg yolk, but with the texture of steak. :eek:[/li]
Also in Hong Kong I ate sea urchin, “the five treasures” - one of which was steamed pig stomach lining (quite nice while I thought it was some kind of weird vegetable), sea slug, sea cucumber, chicken feet, in 'nam I had snake (boring) and in Thailand, I tried roast bees. A friend of mine in China was served braised donkey dick.
But the worst, worst, worst thing I ever heard of was from a friend of mine who was working in Beijing three years ago. He made friends with a number of Chinese colleagues, and after a few weeks of getting on well with him, they decided to honour him by taking him to a “special” restaurant. They all sat around a circular table which had a hatch in the middle. Under the table was a lit barbecue. After they’d finished their starter dishes, a waiter came over, removed the hatch from the centre of the table, and put a live, trussed-up monkey on the barbecue. My friend tells me the monkey thrashed around, looking into their faces and screaming like a child as it burned to death in front of them. When, after about ten minutes, it had finally reached unconsciousness, the waiter came back and lopped the top off the monkey’s skull with a chopper, and with steam rising out of its brain, they all dug into the head with their chopsticks and picked out pieces.:mad:
Jetgirl, Where you in Jacksonville Fl? I lived there near a place called Clarks Fish camp , that I believe had Kangaroo.
jjim, that would have to win the award for the most barbaric culinary practice. While I had heard of instances when the monkey was actually alive when it’s skull was removed and the brain eaten, your description of the poor critters death really brought home to me just how inhuman we ‘humans’ can be. There are some things that defy justification, and IMHO, this is one of them.
And no, I am not a bleeding-heart vegan, and DO enjoy eating meat, and I realise that the breeding of animals for the table often involves pain and suffering of the animal involved. I am undoubtedly a hypocrite, for I have immersed crabs in boiling water while alive and I guess there is technically no difference between them. But there is just something inherently evil about what you described above. 
Totally agree. There’s a massive difference in consciousness between a crustacean and a primate, which I think alleviates some of the “hypocrisy”.
I’d heard about this practice, but dismissed it as UL until I heard it first-hand. He was very, very disturbed by the incident. I asked him if he ate any - he said he did, “just to be polite”.
Whale blubber In Anchorage. some Aleute friends gave me a postage-size chunk. It tasted salty-n-rubbery(suprise,suprise)…
Horse, the other red meat.
I was a little disturbed the first time I was offered pigeon. Coming from up North, pigeons tend to be regarded as vermin. Down here, however, some people keep them in coops and eat them. I thought it tasted pretty gross, but then I’ve never liked anything with a gamey flavor.
There are people here in Lousiana (I’m not one of them) who eat nutria rats. The state government encourages people to hunt and eat them to help keep the population down.
Then, of course, there’s crawfish (crayfish to Yankees). I’m not sure how unusual that is considering some of the other responses in this thread, but I’m pretty sure the stuff isn’t widely available outside of Lousiana and China. It’s similar to shrimp in many ways. Personally I prefer the taste of shrimp, but I do enjoy crawfish, especially in an etoufee.
I was going to say semen but then someone would say breast milk but then I could say i’ve had breast milk too and I didn’t eat either, so what am I saying.
anyways…
weird would be:
crocodile- but it was in pasta dish and tasted like chicken to me
escargot- it was in butter but I swallowed it and closed my eyes
Among the food items I’ve eaten that you may find weird:
whole roasted sparrow (head, eyes, bones, and all)
a wide variety of raw meats, including: chicken “sashimi” (breast and gizzard), venison, whale, beef (steak and liver), and horse
uni (sea urchin roe)
octopus (raw and cooked)
squid in many varieties
jellyfish
unshelled shrimp
menudo, chitterlings, and various other beef/pork intestine dishes
raw salted fish guts
a whole range of North American game animals, including: wild duck and goose, deer, elk, moose, and squirrel
nearly every single part of cow and pig except for brains
But the hands down winner was roasted chicken beaks.
Does anyone else like li hing mui?
Bo Shin Tang.
Also known as…
Dog Soup.
Eggs wi’ Legs (Balut) -very tasty
Jellyfish - take it or leave it (leave it, probably)
Kangaroo tail stew (I shot the 'roo nyself) - beautiful
Kangaroo steak hamburger - a bit gamey.
Rabbit (shot it myself) -delish
Snake - boring
Snake’s Blood (from the same snake, and mixed with rice spirit) - nothing special
Prawn (shrimp) heads - not worth the extra effort. A bit icky.
Intestines (not sure which beast. Pig, I think) - bland flavour, awful texture
Durian - Love it, if I’m in the mood.
Blood pudding - take it or leave it.
Tongues - as above
Brawn (head cheese) - nice
Vegemite - the greatest
In Italy on Capri I tried spiny sea urchin. They steam it and you eat it by scooping out the red meat with bread. Too drunk to remember the taste.