So I thought I'd subject you guys to a meme thingie going around. The Omnivore's 100. It's a list of foods. Bold the ones you've eaten. Since I talk about food here a lot, I'll throw in some comments for - hopefully - entertainment. I'm a lot less picky than I have a reputation for, I'll say that.
1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare - beef sashimi, same diff
5. Crocodile - gator count?
6. Black pudding - I've had a Filipino equivalent with blood as the main ingredient. It, ah, did not agree with me. Though it tasted all right. The first time.
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht - Ick. Double, triple ick. Even sour cream doesn't save it.
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari - I don't eat tentacles
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi - a dry N Indian curry
15. Hot dog from a street cart - I prefer them at ball games
16. Epoisses - German cow's milk cheese; I've had a lot of Amish hand-made cheeses, so I may have had something similar and not known it
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes - plum wine from Amish country, yum
19. Steamed pork buns - known as manapua in Hawaii
20. Pistachio ice cream - butter pecan is better
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries - I'm allergic
23. Foie gras - kind of bland, really
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese - unfortunately
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper - no, and you can't make me
27. Dulce de leche - this is a latino milk-based caramel; FOOD OF THE GODS
28. Oysters - allergic, yay
29. Baklava - best when homemade by someone other than me
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas - once; these are movie snacks in Hawaii
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl - still allergic, yay
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut - don't like it, but I've eaten it; come on, growing up in Amish country?
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar - uh, ick
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O - during college part one
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail - oxtail soup; not bad
41. Curried goat - does curried kangaroo count?
42. Whole insects - FUCK no
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more - eh, it's booze
46. Fugu - none for me thanks, I like breathing
47. Chicken tikka masala - or at least, something like it, a chicken curry; very good
48. Eel - once, during a drunken trip to a sushi bar where Asian friends made fun of me until I ate everything
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut - not my favorite kind
50. Sea urchin - see above, about drunken visit to sushi bar
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi - in better bento boxes
53. Abalone - not sure, but I seriously doubt it, because the tab at the sushi bar was never too high and this stuff's expensive
54. Paneer - no, but it looks like something I'd like
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal - believe it or not, no
56. Spaetzle - more food of the gods!
57. Dirty gin martini - I prefer vodka martinis, but any port in a storm
58. Beer above 8% ABV - I've known a few home-brewers in my day
59. Poutine - not TRUE poutine made in actual Canada, but I've had the same unholy combo of ingredients mixed together before; that stuff is evil
60. Carob chips - GIVE ME REAL CHOCOLATE OR GIVE ME DEATH!
61. S’mores - d'you know, most of the folks I knew in Hawaii didn't know what s'mores were, and hadn't had them?
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin - yup, worked, too
64. Currywurst - that's just wrong
65. Durian - one bite; it's like congealed moose snot, only not as good
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis - no, but I'd like to try it
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho - salsa you eat with a spoon
72. Caviar and blini - just the blinis; yum
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill - not that I'm aware of, but knowing my family...
76. Baijiu - the smell alone gives me a headache
77. Hostess Fruit Pie - the pudding pies are better, though
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini - and many related drinks
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict - let's just say the richness doesn't agree with me and leave it at that, hmmm?
83. Pocky - POCKY!!! Chocolate koalas are better, but... POCKY!!
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant - good grief no
85. Kobe beef - I've had the American version, but not true kobe beef. You can't GET true kobe beef in the US, thanks to the asshole beef farmers and their lobbyists making it illeal to import.
86. Hare
87. Goulash - this is a famine dish for me; I've gotta be really hungry
88. Flowers - I prefer to make tea from them
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam - spam musubi, the totally wrong food of Hawaii...
92. Soft shell crab - still allergic, thank the gods
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish - I do not get the hype
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor - still allergic, woohoo!
98. Polenta - yet again I do not get the hype
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee - my lifetime coffee intake is half a cup, one night when I was sick and had to stay awake. Can't stand any of it.
100. Snake
There you go, total excitement, I'm sure. You probably got the idea I'm allergic to shellfish. Only thing I miss are scallops. Definitions of the more obscure of those foods available here. Considering I have a rep as a picky eater and I think tex-mex exotic, I'm amazed at how many of those foods I've tried. Granted, I didn't like many of them, but still. Guess it's from hanging out with people who ate the stuff; when we lived in Hawaii the husbeast often went out to get manapua every Sunday morning.
Anyone wanna get me started on a food topic? I got nothing else to talk about.
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10 comments:
That list is actually quite interesting, unfortunately there are way too many things on it that either I have never eaten or have no idea what they are, although I think I have done all of the shellfish except abalone, I do love my shellfish!
A food topic for discussion (hopefully one you haven't done before, sorry forgot to check the archives two kids are eating breakfast and the baby is scooting around on the floor eating god knows what!) Chocolate-what types/brands you have had, which are the best and why, and what have you made from it and what came out best/worst?
Does abalone qualify as shellfish? Because Sean avoids that too, with his shellfish allergy.
Borscht is divine, in my view. Unless of course you eat it on a Ukrainian train and you find massive bits of gristle and a toenail in it, as happened to a friend of mine.
I have to defend currywurst. :) although it is definitely one of those foods that has to be done right or it is just nasty. Basically, IMHO, it must be eaten at a food stand in Berlin - any food stand will do. They use less tomato product and more seasoning than other areas. It used to be my comfort food, before I moved back to the US.
Ahhhh poutine. Yum (best served from a chip truck in french speaking Ontario).
How did you get close enough to durian to actually try it?
chaperoning youth choirs broadens one's culinary horizons -- gotta set an example for the kids so they don't rudely refuse something their hosts have prepared, etc. i probably haven't tried quite as many of the things on the list, but here are my favorite and un-favorite food memories from choir tours:
dulce de leche/doce de leite -- food of the gods indeed. it's not the only reason i'd like to live in brasil awhile, but it's one of them! also guarana, both the juice and the pop (stimulant similar to coffee, flavor something like ginger ale but less bite). and churros (filled with doce de leite). and churrasco (brazilian bbq -- no sauce, but any kind of meat you can imagine, rotisserie-cooked and brought around on skewers by waiters who carve off slices for you until you beg for mercy. a vegan's nightmare. luckily, i'm not a vegan.) cashews and the fruit that they are the seed of, and the juice -- all yum-o. and having a drink in the bar where antonio carlos "tom" jobim wrote "girl from ipanema" -- priceless!
hong kong -- a noodle restaurant suggested by the hotel porter -- huge bowls of broth, noodles, veggies and meat. spaghetti and garlic bread in the spacious apt of a teacher at the american school in hk while we watched the 2002 world cup and cheered for brasil. green-tea icecream in the mcdonald's, and japanese candies at the subway newsstand.
taiwan -- deciding that fried jellyfish was about as easy to eat as rubber bands, and about as tasty, while trying not to offend our government hosts.
also, explaining to our hosts at a research center that served us a 10-course lunch that the food was great but american kids are not used to eating much at lunch because they are lucky to have 20 minutes to wolf it down.
jamaica -- its national dish, ackee and saltfish comes in second to fried jellyfish as the thing i'm least likely to eat again. but curried goat, i loved! also patties and ting (grapefruit soft drink). fried plantains? meh
when i FINALLY get to retire, i'm going to visit my bro and sil in hawaii, and i'm going to spend 3 or 4 weeks going to language school in mexico and living w/a host family, and i think both will intrigue my taste buds as well as my brain.
Considering that I consider myself a very boring eater, I've eaten or tried a lot of that list.
Of course, I have a husband who is a cook and likes to try stuff. A Polish-Irish guy who like to cook Viet Namese and Thai, yay!
Black pudding is close enough to Polish blood sausage that I can say both Yeah and Ick.
We shop at the Nguyen Market. Durian sitting in their cooler really doesn't smell that bad - I've always wondered why not.
Fun list--I've tried a surprising number of those things... but I have a story for you that you might enjoy.
Imagine it's 1990--The Little Mermaid is out, and even us college kids have seen it.
Mate and I and a couple of friends save our money for MONTHS to go see Les Mis on stage in San Francisco, and we decide to stop and eat. One of the guys in our group is obscenely rich--we don't know this, he's dating one of the people we work with. He doesn't realize that we're all working students who both pay rent AND tuition, and we're dumb enough to let him pick the restaurant. He picks this 'eclectic eatery' that serves OBSCENELY priced shit on brown paper towels with mis-matched silverware. We're all starving, but poor, so we end up picking the cheapest things on the menu we can afford--namely, appetizers.
I go for the soft-shell crab and lemon grass shrimp. I am horrified to realize that some chefs really enjoy it when their food STILL LOOKS LIKE THE THING IT USED TO BE. I swear to god that crab was two bubbles of grease from waving it's little claw and winking at me, and the shrimp still had eyes and antennaes and probably swam through the saucepan.
"Oh gees..." I wailed, looking at that little shellfish, "I'm eating SEBASTIAN!!!"
Mate, without missing a beat, popped a shrimp in his mouth and added, "And his hot crust-a-cean band!"
It's a good thing the play was awesome, because we never saw those people again.
Black pudding, in a fried (yes fried) English breakfast is a thing of beauty (and your heart will not love it at all, all that fat and salt...) have once a year treat... and apparently the ones made in the North of England taste different to those made anywhere else...
Haggis? you want me to... erm enable you.. a haggis? If they're not available in the US? I'll warn you, once you've had one... you'll want more!
One of my husband's favorite things is kishka, Polish blood sausage. It smells awful when it's cooking, being mostly blood and oats and other grains. Lots of Polish food is peasant food and quite unhealthy but really yummy. Not the kishka. Give me a good babka anyday and pierogies. I love pierogies. I am a picky eater and don't like strange foods. I am branching out as I get older but I am still not what I would consider adventurous where my food is concerned. Weak stomach.
Fascinating list! And love your comments. What an adventurous omnivore you are!
Does it count if you ate an insect by accident? Or if it's camoflaged in chocolate and you didn't know till later?
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