Strange Things You Eat

[Gordy]

Tinned peaches.
Will probably end up making me diabetic.

 

[JuniperBug]

I'm a really picky eater but not in an interesting way. I like repetition, bland stuff, bread, etc.

But this is related...

I have a few minor allergies so there are often foods around that I like or want but can't eat without taking an antihistamine pill.

So I'll often just intensely smell these foods ( I have a really sensitive and strong sense of smell ) in place of eating them and it quells the urge to eat it. Red wine, lemon bars, lavender cake, cedar salmon...

It's a trick I got from an unhealthy dieting (read: not eating) phase of my life but that's in the past. Now I find it a very satisfying tool to use so I can still enjoy food that I can't (or even just don't want to) eat.

I also smell every new food before I decide to eat it or not.

 

[AsheSkyler]

I've employed the smell trick a time or two when I needed to eat something I didn't want to. I used to do something similar during my teen years with the cooking channel. I'd fix a sandwich or something simple to satisfy nutritional needs, and then watch the gourmet stuff. Made that same sandwich taste wildly different each time.

Lately I've been gnawing on a rather weird dish this past week. My husband has slowly converted me to hot wings. Took a while to get used to that weird sour taste. In a fit of brilliance (or insanity) while eating some of his hot wing chicken nuggets, I decided to put them in a tortilla with some of that jellied cranberry sauce. Talk about weird cravings.

Tonight I've just got chicken in my custom spicy chicken sauce with the tortilla and cranberry sauce. Only downside is I buy those itty-bitty ones, so it takes three tortillas to make a meal.

 

[JuniperBug]

Everyone made fun of me for boiling lettuce. But that's how I was raised! My dad "cooked" every meal by putting instant noodles in a pot with water and putting an assortment of random vegetables in it. Lettuce was always the thing that came last. I never ate anything raw. I only started doing that once I was living on my own; and it took quite some time to adjust to. It was a cultural thing, I suppose.

That said, my culture is known for eating all sorts of weird / uncomfortable things, but I spared myself from all of that by being vegetarian.

What is your culture? I live in Taiwan and that sounds like Hot Pot which is super common.

 

[hiraeth]

JuniperBug haha, my dad is Chinese. He wasn't trying to make hot pot, he was just lazy.

Taiwan is very cool! I would love to visit some time.

 

[Cerulean]

It's a trick I got from an unhealthy dieting (read: not eating) phase of my life but that's in the past. Now I find it a very satisfying tool to use so I can still enjoy food that I can't (or even just don't want to) eat.

I also smell every new food before I decide to eat it or not.

I do this too. It's really handy in determing if I want to eat something, and if not, what it would taste like if I did.

 

[Ackman12]

Charred hot dogs or bratwursts. I like my burgers to have a hint of pink. I also like spicy foods, but I'm too chicken to try ghost peppers.

 

[Slothra]

Ketchup sandwiches.

When I was growing up, really young (7-ish) and impressionable, I was reading a series of books called Hank the Cowdog. They mentioned ketchup sandwiches. I tried one. It was way better than I expected, and it never really stopped being a thing.

I also have a habit of microwaving orange juice.

 

[Cosmophylla]

So I'll often just intensely smell these foods ( I have a really sensitive and strong sense of smell ) in place of eating them and it quells the urge to eat it. Red wine, lemon bars, lavender cake, cedar salmon...

It's a trick I got from an unhealthy dieting (read: not eating) phase of my life but that's in the past. Now I find it a very satisfying tool to use so I can still enjoy food that I can't (or even just don't want to) eat.

This is what I do with coffee, which I can't drink these days. I loooooooove the smell of black coffee.

 

[Cosmophylla]

Ketchup sandwiches.

I used to love these when I was a kid! brings back memories! I have no idea where I got the idea from, but I was a pretty fussy kid.

 

[clg114]

Ketchup sandwiches.

When I was growing up, really young (7-ish) and impressionable, I was reading a series of books called Hank the Cowdog. They mentioned ketchup sandwiches. I tried one. It was way better than I expected, and it never really stopped being a thing.

I also have a habit of microwaving orange juice.

My youngest son will eat anything if he can put ketchup on it. When he was a kid, I used to get him to eat things he did not like by pouring ketchup all over it.

 

[tree]

Cosmophylla
"I loooooooove the smell of black coffee."

Smelling coffee is good for you, researchers say.
http://www.webmd.com/brain/news/20080613/coffees-aroma-stirs-the-brain
http://www.livescience.com/2614-whiff-coffee-wake.html
http://www.themetabolicloophole.com/blog/2014/11/28/p9rmkyuryr03ndttomedausbt2fre4

 

[Cosmophylla]

Cosmophylla
"I loooooooove the smell of black coffee."

Smelling coffee is good for you, researchers say.
http://www.webmd.com/brain/news/20080613/coffees-aroma-stirs-the-brain
http://www.livescience.com/2614-whiff-coffee-wake.html
http://www.themetabolicloophole.com/blog/2014/11/28/p9rmkyuryr03ndttomedausbt2fre4

How interesting! I've noted that since having to give up caffeine that the smell of coffee, in particular, has become much more potent for me. It does correlate with these findings. Thanks for this!

 

[Jacoby]

Nothing too unusual I don't think. Sauerkraut? I dunno I think plenty of people like it.

Back when I was a kid my mom use to make me and my brotherd butter and sugar sandwiches which in retrospect the thought of makes me retch. I think she was trying to fatten us up or something, I was so skinny as a kid. If only I could be so lean now!

 

[DC1346]

Hmmmm ... well I am a chef, so I have a broad palette. As an American, I draw the line at obvious pets ... so no dogs, cats, or guinea pigs. Dogs are eaten in Southeast Asia ... particularly Korea and parts of China. Cats are also eaten. Guinea pigs are popular in South America.

I won't eat insects. I don't care whether they're coated in chocolate or not. For the longest time I wouldn't eat shrimp, lobsters, crayfish, or crabs because they had too many legs and they looked like large sea dwelling insects but as it turned out, they're quite delicious ... but I still won't eat an insect

What strange things have I eaten?

• Pig's feet (as part of a Chinese dim sum i.e. appetizer course)
• Chicken's feet (same dim sum appetizer course Their nails are clipped off and they're steamed until they're puffy and gelatinous. They're drizzled with soy sauce and sometimes sesame seed oil)
• Tongue - popular in France - usually sliced and served cold
• Caviar - the real stuff from a sturgeon caught in the black sea
• Haggis - offal cooked in a stomach lining ... think soggy meatloaf
• Ostrich stroganoff in Botswana
• Camel milk
• Roast camel (served on a bed of steamed white rice in Saudi Arabia)
• Frog legs
• Rabbit
• Elk steaks
• Venison steaks
• Buffalo steaks
• Rambutan ... not commonly found in the U.S. It's a walnut sized fruit with a red peel and yellow and red "hairs" sticking out ... you peel the fruit and there's a large pit inside covered with a white semi-translucent fruit that's quite tasty)
• Kibbis (Lebanese version of the French steak tartare ... basically raw ground beef seasoned with salt and lemon juice)
• Escargot (Snails served in the shell with an herb butter sauce)
• Emu egg (the egg I cracked open was the size of a football)
• Wild board shoulder which surprisingly enough tastes just like prime rib
• Wild duck which is not nearly as tasty as domestic duck.
• Foie gras which is a goose liver pate that's made by force feeding geese until their livers are engorged.
• Bird nest soup (The U.S. Ambassador came to our home in San Salvador and my father served Bird Nest's Soup. The ambassador loved it but asked if the name was descriptive. He hurriedly excused himself and ran for the bathroom when my father told him that the soup was flavored with sparrow spit that's secreted to hold their nests together).
• Shark fin soup made of course with the tendons from shark's fins
• Braised goat on couscous and in Morocco I was served the eyes which are apparently a delicacy
• Oxtail stew - DELICIOUS! I like mine slow cooked with potatoes, carrots, and onions in beef stock with a bay leaf, garlic, and just a touch of brown sugar.
• Fish head stew ... any chef will tell you that fish heads have lots of flavor
• Jungle jerky from a vendor in Zimbabwe ... jungle jerky is a polite term for monkey meat but I didn't realize this until I'd already taken a bite out of it. The Boer guide was amused.
• Durian a disgusting fruit that's popular in Asia. It smells like rotten cheese and tastes worse.
• Quail eggs
• Pheasant
• Thousand year old egg ... duck eggs are coated in a caustic mud and rolled in rice chaff prior to being set aside in a dry place to age for 3.5 months. The yolk becomes a dark green with a creamy texture due to the hydrogen sulfide and ammonia while the whites become a translucent brown jelly with a salty flavor. See picture below (taken from Wikipedia)

 

[Cosmophylla]

• Quail eggs

Yum. I used to buy these when I lived in Japan, threaded onto sticks and crumbed. Eaten with a sweet barbecue style sauce.

I also had volcanic eggs, which are regular chicken eggs boiled in volcanic mud, quite a few times. They were delicious. I suppose they were somehow infused with sulphur or something. Certainly a bit different to normal boiled eggs. Never had thousand year old eggs but you can get them in Japan.

And fish heads are very popular in Japan. Especially of larger fish in hot pots, soups, etc. We would regularly buy small fish (鯵 aji, a type of small mackerel) butterflied with head, spine and tail intact and simply grill it on both sides. Then eat it with chopsticks, head, tail and all. I never ate the eyes, though. My ex-husband (Japanese) did that for me.

Squid ink pasta and sauce are also popular but I only tried it once. I believe there is a region that has squid ink ice cream... Maybe Hokkaido? Up north somewhere. Regionally flavoured ice cream is a thing. I had sweet potato ice cream and pumpkin ice cream, that I can recall now. And in Korea I had ginseng ice cream, which was yummy. (Absolute favourite of all time is black sesame ice cream)

Also love boiled ginkgo nuts. Yummmmmmmmmmm.

 

[DC1346]

And fish heads are very popular in Japan.

 

[AsheSkyler]

When I was working at a grocery store, I heard high praises of oxtail soup and many laments that it's hard to find tails for the soup in stores.

Milk and eggs are the only animal secretion / creations I'd be comfortable consuming. Spit, mucus, urine, and other fluids I'm not keen on. Muscles and perhaps skin are the only parts I'll eat. I know there are tons of vitamin praises for liver and other innards, and marrow gets good reviews, but I'm just not comfortable munching on those parts. The closest I've come to it is when I didn't know oysters were served whole. And the time I drank a bunch of fire ants. Very, very bitter bugs, I don't recommend them. Ew.

 

[Cosmophylla]

Muscles and perhaps skin are the only parts I'll eat.

You do eat the fat on your bacon, though, right?


It's funny, I actually think that despite how weird it may seem to eat insects (which I only ever do unintentionally), it's an awful lot more natural than processed products like vegetarian meat substitutes. I'm not taking a shot at vegetarians...I used to be one. Just a good example of a highly processed "food". Margarine is another good one.

 

[Datura]

Hmm, DC1346 reminds me of one of my stranger cullinary experiences. I was at a Japanese retaraunt and out of curiosity tried the Sharkfin Jellyfish salad. It was essentially thinly sliced pieces of shark fin with jelly fish tentacles soaked in sesame oil. It was ... intersting ... but I wouldn't reccomend it. I did, however, like the way the dish caused a slight tingling sensation in my mouth that intensified as I ate.