I consider my overdue library fines to be 'charitable contributions'.

[apple_pathways]

Oops, forgot to go to the library this morning! Well, there's always tomorrow. It's back to work today! And to entertain myself until I leave (and distract me from the mounting snow storm...), here's a food meme I came across awhile ago and never got around to!

# Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
# Bold all the items you've eaten.
# Cross out any items that you would never consider eating (or eating again)


1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile (Croc, no; Alligator, yes!)
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle (Only as Black truffle oil.)
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar (I've had them separately, but not together; still counting it!)
37. Clotted cream tea (Definitely on my TO TRY list!)
38. Vodka jelly (I had no idea what this was until I googled it! Americans: we call this a Jell-o shot. And I had one just this weekend, actually!)
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth $120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi (I can't remember if I've had this or not! I've had a lot of Japanese pickled things.)
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin {I thought I hadn't had this, as it's a type of clay; then I read it's the active ingredient in Kaopectate (a diarrhea medicine), which I have had!}
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frog’s Legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake (All four! Carbs + sugar FTW!)
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost or brunost
75. Roadkill (I've eaten squirrel, but it was shot by my brother and not run over, so doesn't count.)
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake



So I didn't cross anything out, because really: there's not much I'm not willing to try at least once. I considered crossing out the Big Mac meal, because I find them vile and haven't eaten one since I first tasted it maybe 15 years ago, but it's not that I won't eat it; I'd just prefer not to. I also wasn't a great fan of raw sea urchin when I tried it, but I've been told so many times since that I'm crazy and so I'm convinced to give it another try.

So, anything I've eaten you'd like to ask me about? What have I not eaten that I should go right out and procure tomorrow? LET'S TALK ABOUT FOOD! :D

Comments

[ladybracknell.livejournal.com]

I'm veggie and allergic to, like, everything, but I have eaten a whole Scotch Bonnet chilli and as long as you don't crack a seed they're fine. I recommend a party setting and a tequila chaser :D.

[apple-pathways.livejournal.com]

I'd actually never heard of a Scotch Bonnet chili pepper before! It looks like a habanero, which I've tried. I wonder: is it hotter?

Tequila chaser is a good idea, though. ;)

[ladybracknell.livejournal.com]

Is it just a different name for the same thing..?

[hrymfaxe.livejournal.com]

It's the same family - and depending on the chili the Scotch Bonnet can be both significantly milder or a hell of a lot hotter than the habanero. They have the Scotch Bonnet here in Burkina and I once cut one up in my ignorance and pretty much had to sit with an icepack on my hands for 6 hours...

[ladybracknell.livejournal.com]

I put olive oil on my fingerss before I chop them up - that seems to help. I haven't had a case of OMG RUBBED MY EYE WITH CHILLI FINGERS since I started doing that, lol.

[hrymfaxe.livejournal.com]

That is a really clever idea. Chili fingers in the eye is the worst. One time I had managed to get some chili on my contact lenses taking them out, and when I put them in the next morning... OMG. I almost couldn't even open my eye enough to get it out again!

[apple-pathways.livejournal.com]

Chili pepper pro tip: milk soothes the burning! Milk contains casein, which surrounds and washes away the capsaicin from chili peppers. I was so glad to find that tip, as I've always getting the oils on me when I cook chilis! (I have a pretty shallow learning curve, I guess. :P)

[hrymfaxe.livejournal.com]

Oh also? Gjetost/brunost. Been there and am never ever going back. ;)

[ladylovelace.livejournal.com]

If you can ever afford to/get lucky enough to show up somewhere where the hosts can afford to, KOBE BEEF. Seriously.

Also clotted cream tea. You can actually make your own clotted cream with regular thickened cream, a ceramic bowl, an oven, and a little patience.

Oh, and, curried goat is potentially amazing if you like curries. You can actually still taste the goat through even the really hot end of the curry scale.

[apple-pathways.livejournal.com]

I love curry, and I would most definitely eat curried goat; it's just not readily available, ya know? :P

I've come close to buying clotted cream from the grocery store before, but always found a reason to put it back. One of these days I'm going to host a cream tea, and try all the English goodies I've always wanted to get my hands on.

I need richer friends so I can get my hands on some Kobe beef!

[evilhippo.livejournal.com]

That icon! I know that book store! It is the most disorganized store I have ever been in, and last time I was in there the proprietor ignored me in favor of passing on some kind of steak-cooking tip to one of the other customers.

Which brings us neatly back to the subject at hand. I think you've probably covered more stuff in this than I have... I actually had to google way too many of these things (and some of them turned out to be things I'd had, but didn't know the real name of...) What insects have you eaten whole?

[apple-pathways.livejournal.com]

There's a book store in Ann Arbor that is just insane! Books stacked everywhere, in no particular order! Fun to dig through, but quite dusty.

I have eaten chocolate-covered crickets. They were crunchy-ish and chocolatey! Overall, not bad.

I had to google a ton of this stuff! I've eaten a lot of Indian food without remembering the name. I always ask, and I always say I'm gonna remember, then...don't. And there was this vegetarian Indian restaurant I used to frequent, where everything was cafeteria-style and you paid by the pound (i.e. they weighed your plate). They had some amazing dishes, but I can never remember the names of them!

Discovering that I've consumed kaolin (clay) was a pretty interesting revelation!

[alias-amy.livejournal.com]

I'm like you and I would try anything once, and I've had most of these things as well (although some stumped me -- epoisses?)

BTW, this year I returned a book that I had checked out from the library 17 years ago. Yes, I am that old and weird. (In my defense it was packed in a box that got stuck in limbo.)

[apple-pathways.livejournal.com]

Epoisses, I discovered, is a type of cheese. A "pungent unpasteurized cows-milk cheese", to be specific. From the pictures, it appears to have a brie-like texture. It can be hard to get your hands on unpasteurized cheese, but I'd try it in a heartbeat; I love cheese.

Good on you for returning it! I'm ashamed to admit that there's a library I can never go back to, for embarrassment of keeping their books past the five-year mark... (Oops!)

[alt_universe_me.livejournal.com]

Ha, I'm so not a foodie at all. I would definitely be crossing quite a few things off, at least the meat (I don't like a lot of meat, tbh). Mostly I consider food as fuel, so I wind up eating a lot of the same dishes for convenience. At least I'm not very picky when it comes to fruits and vegetables--there's only a couple that I won't eat!

Oh, and I have had carob chips. They're basically a healthier version of chocolate chips. They're okay.

[apple-pathways.livejournal.com]

I wish I could view food as simply fuel! But I love to cook, and I love to eat. There's a few foods I would say I don't like (raw onions and Miracle Whip being at the top of that list), but even fewer I'd say I wouldn't eat. (If it's cooked, I'll pretty much eat it, but I draw the line at the sort of raw organs people are forced to eat as part of reality game show challenges. That, and anything ALIVE--no thanks!)

[rachel2205.livejournal.com]

Squirrel! What is that like?

I love food. There's basically nothing I won't try once either.

[apple-pathways.livejournal.com]

Well, it's a cliché, but it's the closest comparison I can make: it tastes like chicken. Specifically, the dark meat parts of a chicken! But it also has the kinda gamey flavor that's hard to describe if you're not used to eating wild game...

[stick-poker.livejournal.com]

Haggis and black pudding are worth tracking down at some point. They're both quite strong tastes, so they work well as accompaniments, adding their flavour to something blander. I once had something very tasty with both of them stuffed in a chicken breast.

[apple-pathways.livejournal.com]

Haggis is something I've always wanted to try! It's a little hard to come by in Michigan, though.

Black pudding, on the other hand...I think I'd have to be fooled into believing it was something else before I tried it, as the remnants of a childhood blood phobia would most likely provide a psychological barrier to my enjoyment! As a child, my Polish grandmother tricked us into trying czernina (duck's blood soup) by telling us it was beet soup. (I think it might have ruined beets for me as well!)

[stick-poker.livejournal.com]

Ah, okay. Most people get somewhat put off by it being blood but it's one of those things that it's traditional to eat in all sorts of cultures, just because of how nutritious and therefore unwasteable it used to be. Black pudding still isn't something I'd go out of my way to get, but when it crops up in things I keep liking it.