My mother is fascinated with what people eat when they go out for dinner and she has strong opinions about those things. Hamburgers, cheeseburgers, french fries, macaroni and cheese - these are all things to admire and applaud.
This fried green tomato I ordered last summer was approved by her but with reservation because it cost more than $5.
After going for dinner with friends she will expect me to call her on the way home so I can inform her of my dinner choices. If she approves things go fairly smoothly on the call. If she does not, they take a turn.
A few years ago I informed her 3 friends and I shared seared Octopus for an appetizer. I didn’t get much further than that for quite a while. Betty immediately started yelling “Blech” into the phone. She actually used that word. “Blech! Why in God’s name would you eat that?? ”
I calmly replied I had no choice, the others wanted it because they were all out of human toe knuckles.
My mom’s not the most adventurous when it comes to food.
When she finally calmed down after the octopus, I told her that I tried my friend Jenny’s rabbit entree. Betty’s blech was immediately elevated to animated barfing sounds.
Now I know rabbit isn’t super-common among those of us raised on white bread and canned peas, but it isn’t that crazy, is it? To be perfectly honest with you it was very tender and really did taste like chicken. But for some reason it was less enjoyable than eating chicken. Mainly because it was a bunny. Mainly because it felt like I was eating my cat.
Maybe I'm my mother.
Really rabbit is nothing. It's common. At least compared to what a friend of mine told me he ate a few weeks ago. Porcupine. He ate porcupine. Remarkable, when you consider this same fellow squinches his face up at vegetables or takeout Chinese food. The thought of it makes him queazy. But Moose? Bring it on. Porcupine … lemme at it. Apparently it tastes like pork incidentally, which makes it one of the most appropriately named foods on earth.
So as we move into the weekend when most of us have more time to focus on food, I have a question for you. Out of curiosity what’s the most adventurous thing you’ve ever eaten?
To get the ball rolling here … my entry: barnacles.
Yes, they are the things you scrape off the bottom of a boat. They look like ugly, angry little penises. I tried them in Portugal because a waiter asked me if I'd like to try them.
So, even if it’s a can of ravioli that was expired by 2 years I want to hear about the most adventurous thing you've eaten is.
I am curious and a little nervous to hear your responses.
Maybe Betty will even chime in with a response of a Yum or a Yuck.
Cow udder. It was awful!
Raccoon on a pizza. Yuck. Greasy and gamey
“filet surprise” at my wedding in France. The surprise was that it was kangaroo. Bad omen for the (soon-to-fail) marriage and no one ate it after the “surprise” got out (including me!).
Boiled tripe (cow stomach). Rude, rubbery. Never again.
We misheard a waiter at a dim sum restaurant, and ended up with whole chicken feet. We passed one around the table, and everyone took a nibble. It was ... tendony!
I tried making broth with chicken feet once. They leave the nails on. *shudders* They looked like monkey paws. It was a horrible ordeal. The broth was good, but the making of it, I can not tell you how much gagging and near vomiting there was every time I had to see a "paw." Uch! With gut issues broth is supposed to be good for me, and chicken feet are supposed to be great for making it, but IF I ever attempt to use them again (I really do hate the thought of parts going to waste that can be used) I may try cutting off the toenails first so they maybe won't look like monkey paws. But I really don't know if I can stomach trying that again. It took some years of passing by them at the grocery before I finally got a pack into the cart (& without barfing!) Lol.
I can't top any of the food items folks list here, though I have enjoyed Thai, Ethiopian, Indian and a number of other "ethnic" restaurants. But the most AWFUL thing I have ever put in my mouth was an alcoholic beverage. I was a college student with practically no money. A group of friends wanted to make Tequila Sunrises. Unfortunately, they sent me to shop. I got Donald Duck canned orange juice, which was probably the worst mistake. I also picked the rock bottom priced tequila. I also got a little bottle of cranberry juice, which was actually the only thing that tasted good as I mixed them up. Oh, my word, they were so TERRIBLE that it took me many years to be coaxed into trying a much better quality tequila.
NEVER mix a drink with canned orange juice!
Noted, lol. No Donald Duck orange juice. ~ karen!
Rocky mountain oysters. Which are NOT oysters at all! Instead, as I'm sure everyone knows, are bull testicles. As the child of a cowboy, ours were always freshly harvested. (Dad brought them home in a bread sack.) My mother always breaded and fried them. It's fried, how bad can it be? They are actually pretty tasty!
Where I come from, the similar dish is called Lamb Fries. Same basic thing, and I don't think they always come from sheep, either!
The name definitely makes them sound more appealing than "oysters". I bet they are tasty!
I feel like they would have an icky spongey texture. Like liver! ~ karen
Honestly, they do look like sponges after you skin them!
No, I don't think everyone knows that. Lol & ew, lol.
So, I’m not picky. I mean, I couldn’t survive an episode of Fear Factor but I’ve tried gator tail (tasted like swamp), cricket-flour cookies (pretty good), octopus (delicious but can’t do it now that I know how incredibly intelligent they are), and pickled cow tongue (yum).
My friend, Ken, though, is not an adventurous eater at all. At all. He must’ve pissed off the food gods, though, because he had the worst luck when eating out. We lived in San Francisco, famous for having enough restaurants to seat the entire city at the same time. When deciding where to eat my roommates and I would play the “Yellow Pages Game.” Yes, this was back in the days of dinosaurs and phone books. We’d open the phone book to a random page in the Restaurants section, and someone with closed eyes would point to a random restaurant, where we each ordered at random. Maybe we should have called this the “Rando Game.” Except that sounds slightly shady, doesn’t it?
With all this randomness doing on, you’d think we’d all get things we loved and things we hated, but you’d be wrong. The rest of us almost always enjoyed our dinners, but poor Ken somehow always ended up with the most awful food imaginable. It got to the point that he quit trying to choose and just told the servers to bring him their favorites. This worked somewhat well, at least for awhile.
We’d tried Ethiopian, Nicaraguan, Persian, lots of different types of Asian restaurants, and so many other wonderful food adventures, but it was the Brazilian place that ended the game. The waiter only spoke Portuguese, so Ken couldn’t ask for a recommendation and had to revert to random menu-pointing. He was delighted to be served a large bowl with a mound of delicious-smelling boiled vegetables in broth. Thinking his food curse had finally been lifted, he dug in, delighted to discover that the vegetables tasted as good as they smelled.
After several bites, though, his fork got stuck in… something. He scraped off enough vegetables to reveal and enormous eyeball staring back at him. We, his loving roommates, having been slightly disappointed that he apparently hadn’t been served something awful, made merry. Very, very merry. Then Ken discovered that there was something else lurking under those deceptively innocent vegetables. Something large, and blue, and bumpy. A large, blue, bumpy, cow tongue. The whole thing. Boiled in its delightful entirety, taste buds and all. Cuddled up next to a couple more eyeballs, staring balefully at we stared back, aghast. All merriment ceased, and so did the game.
The moral of the story? Don’t go to Brazilian restaurants with guys named Ken unless you can watch Fear Factor without gagging.
That is one of the most hilarious stories I have read in far too long! Thank you for making my Monday morning! So did the food curse ever lift for poor Ken?
I have no idea, as after that we stuck to Chinese and Italian. I think we were all afraid that he might actually get something worse…
Bobcat tenderloin. Not bad, just gamey. And goat, grilled. Pretty good.
Skate wing. I thought it would be flaky like a fish since it’s a sea creature. Nope, it had the texture of striated muscle, very taste, too!
Snake shish kebabs 😮
So what were the barnacles like anyway? Would you eat them again? They look disgusting.
I honestly can't remember what they tasted like so I Googled it! They apparently tasted similar to mussels or lobster. I remember they weren't bad tasting, they were offensive for other reasons. ~ karen!
I've had bison, and rabbit (you're right, it's like chicken but weird), but probably the oddest was alligator. Alligator tasted to me like fishy chicken. It wasn't bad, but I wouldn't order it again.
No, no, of course it wasn't bad. Understood. Fishy chicken sounds delightful. ~ karen!
Batter fried Gator tail!!! Served in a restaurant in South Georgia near the Georgia Florida line. It was tender and delicious!
I had deep fried gator tail a couple weeks ago in Florida. It was delicious. Tasted like chicken but looks a bit like more like pork in colouring.
But fishy?
Ok, since you asked, but don't tell anyone. It was mountain lion. For explaination, I live in Montana. Especially for those of us living in the mountains outside of towns, we have more in common with residents of Alaska and the Yukon than the rest of the lower 48. We have bears, wolves, elk, moose, coyotes, wolverines and mountain lions.
As a Note to wildlife officials, I didn't shoot the mountain lion, my neighbor did. The mountain lion had been seen on more than one occasion to be observing with great interest (stalking) his girlfriend's child. He decided to avert a potentially lethal situation (lethal to child), by eliminating the threat. My neighbor is a conscientious. hunter who never takes an animal's life without a good reason and would never waste the meat. Being a good friend and neighbor he brought some of the mountain lion meat he had cooked over to share. It was a simple pan fried preparation with a lot of garlic. And it was AMAZING! Very similar to very tender, premium veal. I'd love to have it again. Mountain lion - the other white meat.
As for barnacles (and other disgusting things mentioned here) you are all very brave! As a sailor and boat owner, I applaud the consumers of barnacles. Eat more barnacles, please! And consider trying jellyfish as well.
When you are raised by a hunter, wild game was common. Finding pig ears in your bed is worse than eating them. I prefer to be a plain Jane now. And where have you been?? PS I would try barnacles
Hi Wendy! I've been here, I just haven't putting my posts on Facebook. Social media was just taking too much time. Now my house is organized I have time. ~ karen!
Jellyfish salad! Had it in Hong Kong and it was delicious! :)
Pretty sure it was canned smoked octopus at a slumber party on a dare and blind-folded. Yuck. Truthfully, I'm with Betty. I am not adventurous in my food choices, although I'll eat almost any vegetable you put in front of me. My liver and onion loving parents made me try liver once. I went from the table to the bathroom and barfed. I still get nauseous when I think of that texture, taste and smell. It's hard to forget.
I'm with you on the liver. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that canned smoked octopus is extremely daring. ~ karen!
When I went to China on my own, I went to a dim sum restaurant that sat 1000 people where I was the only westerner. Not speaking much Chinese I asked the 'cart ladies' to serve me their favorites. They laughed and said, " Not for you!" So I asked them to bring what they had served the people next to me. Some of it was undoubtedly unusual but I have no idea what it was! Ate about 80% though and didn't die.
I'm having difficulty reading through the comments. I think I'm in Betty's camp. Blech
Come now, you can't just tell us you ate barnacles without telling us *how* you ate barnacles. Were they raw? Cooked? Served with a sauce, or a squeeze of citrus? What did they taste like? I feel like there's a lot more to be learned, here.
All I can remember really is that they weren't awful. They just looked it. But it was impossible for me to get past how they looked. ~ karen!
Fried crickets in Oaxaca. Served on baby corn tortillas with mole sauce and a little cojita cheese. The crickets were a little bit spicy. They were delicious!
I have no desire to eat crickets, but if I did, that preparation sounds really good!
Fried. That's cheating! Anything fried is good. ~ karen!
I have eaten (or was tricked into eating)- and I am not kidding- frozen monkey brains. In Phuket, Thailand. I was told it was fresh guava sorbet. Now I’ve never had guava before, so what did I know? I thought I was being adventurous just for trying a new fruit. Yeah, right!!
Holy crap man. When I took a bite and realized it was more “meat-y” than “ice cream-y”…talk about BLECH! I think I still have nightmares. 🤢
As someone that doesn't eat mammals, nothing I say will shock anyone. The most adventurous for me was trying Natto, which is super common at sushi places, but I hate anything with a sticky consistency. It was sticky and smelled foul, but I still gave it a shot (hence, adenturous by my standards). Itasted like a byproduct of industrial waste, and some od thr goo stuck to my hand like the blob and I couldn't get the smell off after washing my hands 4 times. I do like octopus though. Go figure.
Sorry for typos!