Christina here with this month’s ASK A WENCH. The Wenches were talking about food the other day and disagreed about the merits of fish and chips with mushy peas. That led us to discussing food likes and dislikes and it resulted in this month’s question:-
What’s the weirdest food you’ve ever eaten – or refused to eat?
Here’s what the Wenches had to say:-
Pat: I may be a picky eater (I hate potatoes and the only form I might touch is baked and soaked in sour cream, butter and chives), but I seldom refuse anything put in front of me, including haggis. I may not ever touch it again … but that wasn’t the question. So, I guess I’m not certain what qualifies as weird. I suppose, in my dull life, I’ve not really encountered weird food. I’ve tried everything from escargot to alligator to octopus. Most are simply butter and salt delivery systems and I have happily eaten them.
The one thing I will not touch, unless it’s cooked, is not weird. It’s sushi. I’m sorry, raw fish, no matter how marinated, is not going to kill the mercury and other toxins that pollute our waters. I won’t eat steak tartare for similar reasons, although it’s nasty germs that stop me there. Does raw food equal weird?
Anne: Like Pat, I will try most things, though I will balk at that Swedish rotten fish dish —surströmming. No thanks. But I’ve eaten crocodile, snails, kangaroo. I often eat octopus – pickled or cooked, and I quite like haggis. I frequently eat sashimi (Japanese raw fish) and am game for most things. But the weirdest meal I ever ate was in Greece, in Meteora many years ago. My friend and I had chosen our meals by the tried and true method of going to the restaurant kitchen and pointing at what we wanted. I pointed at a yummy looking dish that I thought would be moussaka or even a variation on lasagne. It looked delicious. When I was served, I was half right — the meat and tomato and potatoes underneath part was very nice, but the topping was not cheese sauce, as I’d expected, but a sweet custard sauce. It was very strange.
Another meal that still looms large in my mind was when I was a schoolgirl and staying at a friend’s house overnight. I was raised to be polite and to eat whatever I was offered, and generally it caused me to discover some lovely new-to-me food. But this was breakfast, on a school day. I of course was ready before everyone else, having nothing to do but wash and dress myself in my school uniform again. So the mother of the house told my friend to put the eggs on. Which she did. After three minutes she served them out into the waiting egg cups. I sat there politely waiting for the rest of the family to join me at the table, but the mother said “Don’t be so bourgeois Anne, eat up or your egg will be cold.” So I cracked open my egg, only to find it was almost completely raw! But being a polite little bourgeois girl, I assumed this was how they liked their eggs, and I managed to choke it down. Mother then joined us at table, cracked open her egg and said,” Oh my god it’s raw! Ghastly!” and collected all the eggs and put them back in the pot. Then she looked me and said, “Did you eat that? How peculiar!”
Susan: Weird food and I do not mix well, so I don’t have much to offer in that regard – allergies and sensitivities prevail in determining what I’ll willingly consume. I was the picky little kid who would only eat a little of two or three foods (maybe the body was telling me to avoid certain foods). My grandpa, a doctor, prescribed an appetite tonic because I was tiny and didn’t eat enough, but it didn’t work. So here I am, not much of a foodie nor an enthusiastic cook (in a family of great cooks with inquisitive palates). Boring, I know! I steer clear of seafood and shellfish, wheat and dairy, most nuts, red and dark meats … And all y’all mentioning octopus and other slimy things here has me bolting from the room! Although I did try a weird thing once in high school – chocolate-covered ants and crickets. The chocolate part was good … (You can buy them on Amazon!)
Mary Jo: I think of myself as a middle of the road eater, though when I read the other comments for this blog, I think maybe I’m fussier that I realized! I’m not fond of any cuisine that involves raw fish and seaweed, and I’m not fond of large chunks of meat, though I think some meat is good in various ethnic cuisines. The only edible octopus I’ve ever eaten was part of a pre-fixe meal in Buenos Aires in an excellent hotel that was open to the night air so we could see the boulevard below at night.
I did try crocodile when we stayed in a jungle-ish place in Queensland. It was so deep fried that it was hard to tell what it was, which was probably just as well.
But the worst item I could think of was immediately confirmed by the Mayhem Consultant when I asked him if he remembered the river bottom snail served to us on our cruise of the upper Amazon. There were only a couple of dozen passengers, and the ship did a good job of offering things like exotic fruit juices for breakfast, where they placed a sample of the whole fruit next to the pitcher of juice.
French snails drowned in garlic butter are quite nice, but the Amazon snail was dark and ominous and had the texture of tire rubber. As the MC said, he chewed and chewed and couldn’t make any progress on it. I quit before he did. As the dinner plates were collected, it appeared that every single plate contained a rejected rubber snail. Some things just aren’t meant to be eaten!
(Picture above is one of the excellent guides cuddling a lost baby monkey. The baby was transferred to a wildlife rescue place the next day, if I recall correctly.)
Andrea: I don’t consider myself a fussy eater. I’m fairly adventurous and willing to try new tastes, especially in other countries. (Wild boar in a small mountain town in Switzerland comes to mind.) I love sushi and most shellfish, though my usual everyday go-to choices are more along the Mediterranean diet — grains, lots of vegetables, beans and nuts. As for the creepiest thing I’ve ever eaten, I did try a very tiny morsel of sweetbreads — more of a speck than a bite — in a French restaurant, but I really couldn’t stomach the idea of it, and that was all. Snakes are another absolute no-no, not that I’ve ever been offered one, thank heavens. And when I was in Morocco, I was offered various parts of the roasting goat’s heads at a street stall — but again, no thank you. I’m not that adventurous! My proudest food accomplishment is that I have never had a McDonald’s hamburger — not ever!
Christina: I have tried some strange things over the years and although I can be picky about certain foods (can’t abide sausages or fat on meat for example!), I can be adventurous in at least having a taste of exotic dishes. The weirdest thing I’ve ever eaten is probably the same as Susan – chocolate-covered ants, which was horribly crunchy but luckily mostly tasted of chocolate. In Iceland I tried their fermented shark meat – definitely an acquired taste! And smoked whale meat in Norway ditto. In the north of Sweden people love surströmming as Anne mentioned – basically rotten herring. It is eaten with potatoes and onions, but even with those additions I found it hard to swallow. The smell is horrendous! Luckily I am from the south where we prefer our fish fresh. What would I absolutely never eat? Sheep’s eyes, pig’s trotters or tripe!
Over to you – do you have any strange food tales for us? Please share!
