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So I recently got interested in trying food that sounds completely gross for those who don't eat it. I'm willing to give any food a shot, and am always interested in trying new things, so I've ventured out to my local supermarket to try new foods.

The first was "head cheese." If you don't know what head cheese is, it's where they take either a cow or pig head and boil it so all the meaty bits are removed from the head. They then take that and let it sit in its own gelatin. The result is then pressed and it's usually sold in slices at any decent butcher block.

I bought half a pound, and it really wasn't all that bad. The meat tastes like meat, and the gelatin it's set in was a lot tougher than your usual Jell-O. It wasn't the greatest sandwich meat I've ever had, but I didn't find anything too objectionable about it. In fact, if anything, it was sort of bland. Put it on a sandwich with some mustard, though, and it was kind of tasty. I think I sold myself short buying the prepackaged stuff. My co-worker was telling me about his cousin who makes the stuff and mixes it with all sort of spices. That sounded really good, much better than the bland stuff I ate.

The second thing I tried was "pickled pig's feet." It is exactly what it sounds like. Basically, they take pig's feet and then cook them in vinegar and pickling spices. The feet are then stored in vinegar, available to eat at any time. You might find them in bars, and if you live in the American South, you can see them sold in any convenience store right next to the beef jerky.

I bought some jarred from the local supermarket. They really weren't too bad. As far as the taste is concerned, they reminded me of salt and vinegar potato chips, which I love. The difference is that you are basically eating pig skin, which wasn't nearly as gelatinous as I was expecting. I was hoping there would have been more actual meat on the feet, but it was basically just scrounging for bits of skin; a straight shot of vinegar.

I can picture myself eating a pickled pig's foot if I was six beers in or so.

It really makes me salivate for pickled pork, which I think can be amazing. I love corned beef, so I'm wondering how good pickled pork would taste.

So I think I'm going to keep trying weird foods. If you have any suggestions, let me know and I'll give it a shot. If you have any stories about trying stuff like this, post them!

Oh, this might make you laugh, too. (Or gross you out.)

I was at a seafood buffet here in Phoenix, and they had chicken feet available. I figured, why not?

The chicken foot I grabbed was breaded and deep fried. What you are supposed to do, is eat the skin off the chicken foot. It may seem weird, but if you like deep fried chicken skin (I love it), that's all it is. No meat, just the skin.

I didn't know that at the time, so what I did was just pop the entire foot in my mouth and start chewing. Basically, I was eating chicken bones. If that sounds terrible to you, it was. Possibly one of the worst things I've ever eaten, because I was chewing on chicken bones.

I think you should try chicken feet, it's chicken skin, which is great. But don't do what I did, which was pretty stupid. I felt like an idiot later when I found out how I was supposed to eat it. (To be fair, I was an idiot.)

Try a South Africa delicacy known as a 'smiley' ~ one of these:  :teddyr:

A cooked sheep's head with the eyes still in the skull ~ those two you eat first.*

* So that what you eat is not watching you eat it.  :buggedout: :buggedout:

That was in a James Bond flick, 'Octop***y' ( I always thought they should have followed up with "Octotwat, the sequel that's not equal", but, I digress).

I was stationed in Texas twice and never got around to trying rattlesnake. I am disappoint.

Currently looking for a good old-fashioned catfish house, with no luck.

I have tried rattlesnake, way back when I first visited Arizona as a kid and went to the Rawhide ranch. I now live in Arizona, and could go there at any time.

From what I remember, rattlesnake tastes exactly like chicken, a bonier version of chicken.

In rural Franconia here in Germany some people still slaughter pigs at their very own home twice a year, spring and autumn. They usually hire a butcher to do the "dirty work" as in turning the pig into sausage. The pig is bought and killed in the courtyard. A rather nasty custom is to hang the pig by its hind legs and slitting the throat, catching the blood with a bucket. Warm fresh pig's blood is considered a delicacy and is eaten like soup. They say its the best part when home-slaughtering a pig.
I tried some once but yeah, not my kind of food. It was warm and salty. I spat mine out.

"My brother makes head cheese! It-it's reaaal good!"

(http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l79/RCMerchant/protectedimage.jpg)

My grandfather ate pig's feet alla time....I didn't care for it.

As far as eyeballs-years ago I went to a mexican party where they had a goats head. My freind Juan told me the eyes were the best part. He  scooped one out and ate it. I was hammered on El Presidente-so I tried it too. I puked.  :bluesad:

Here in Minnesota pickled herring seems to be popular.  I tried it once - it was cold, wet, slimy, and salty.  Never tried it again.  Thank god I'm not Norwegian, those folks get stuck eating lutefisk and lefsa for Christmas   :bluesad:

I'm okay with trying unusual foods, don't really have a weak stomach for it. However, some of that stuff sounds like something somebody ate on a dare. "Here. Try this. It's a delicacy."

I love trying different foods.  When I was in China a couple years ago, they had seahorse on the menu in one of the restaurants we went to.  I wanted to try it, but the locals said it wasn't very good and no one else at the table wanted it, so I ended up not getting it.  Maybe someday . . .

OMG you guys, now I feel ill :buggedout:.   But I'm vegan so there's no surprises there.  Still, when I did eat meat, I never ate any of that stuff and I never would.

My tastes are very basic, food is just fuel so being adventurous is just.not.on.

I'm pretty sure you would like another SA delicacy, known as 'pap' [pronounced 'pup']. No, there are no small dogs in it.  :buggedout: :wink:

It is white maize meal porridge cooked to a stiff consistency, so stiff in fact that you are actually supposed to eat it with your fingers. Sauce all over it and it is a good, filling meal which everyone can eat.  :thumbup:

Okay, Trevor, just for you, I'll try it  :twirl:

Oh, yes. Pickled herring, lutefisk, and lefsa. I grew up in a Norwegian community in Washington State, so I know those three well. Pickled herring. I've had it. It's not one of my favorites, but it's not bad. Lefsa. It goes down better than pickled herring, but it's dry, so you have to drink something along with it. Lutefisk. Even a hungry dog will turn up its nose at lutefisk, but it's a delicacy among Norwegian-Americans. I don't know whether that speaks better of the dog or the Norwegian-Americans.

I'm the opposite. I'm BORED with food almost, I need something new. This is, as far as I'm concerned, the sole reason for space exploration: The search for new and exciting plants and animals to kill, harvest, and eat.

Sounds a bit like polenta.

I've gone out of my way to try a few delicacies over the years. Escargot, various game meats, etc.

The one food I love that people turn their noses up at is haggis. Fantastic stuff, but the organ meats and the sheep's stomach put people off. It's not just stuffed in a stomach straight out of the animal though. It's prepared just like any natural sausage casing. Really, that's all haggis is - a big sausage. And you don't even eat the stomach. You cook the haggis in the casing, and then remove it before serving. It's actually very delicious and rich and flavourful. Outside of Scottish festivals and annual Burns suppers, haggis is kind of hard to come by in these parts, so I figured out how to make it myself. Unfortunately, my wife doesn't like it, mostly because of the liver component, and my daughter has gotten old enough to be grossed out by the ingredients in spite of actually liking the taste when she was a toddler.

Tarantula tastes like crabs, surprisingly. :bouncegiggle:
I tried Colorado Oysters, but i got grossed out as to what it is.... (http://www.websmileys.com/sm/obscene/eck16.gif)

Calm down and have some Lamb Fries. 

My husband LOVES this gross stuff!  He's bought a whole goat head and made goats head soup - and he agrees the eyes are the best.  He acts like a kid in a candy store every time the Chinese Buffet has fish heads, which he also says the eyes are the best part.  He loves head cheese, pigs feet and snouts and ears and whatever pig parts they'll pickle and throw in a jar.  He's always telling me about the deliciousness of bone marrow, and gnaws and sucks on bones.  He'll eat intestines, brains, livers, tongues, blood, and hooves, but he refuses to eat balls and bugs.

I won't touch that stuff and he's not allowed to bring it in the house.

Speaking of bugs, it's interesting that we find some kinds of arthropods disgusting, but can't seem to get enough of others. Crab, lobster, shrimp - they're essentially big, crawly water bugs. People think nothing of plopping a whole lobster on their plate, with all the buggy parts intact and the guts still in it. If I could afford it, I'd do that all the time. We'd turn up our noses at eating a big spider, but we have a blind spot where seafood is concerned. We even call them shellfish, as though they were closer to a fish than a bug.

Mind you, fish is another one. We can eat this scaly, slimy, bulgy-eyed thing with no legs, and love it, but you'd have a hard time getting many people to take a bite of snake or lizard.

I don't think my husband would have a problem eating a giant spider.  He just wouldn't eat stuff like worms and roaches.. you know the tiny stuff.  I wouldn't eat a giant spider because I know they'd be watching and waiting for an excuse to eat me.

Good Lord!!!  Your husband would be (or be related to ) Andrew Zimmerman, would he?

I was hungry until I read this, and I'm totally in agreeance with you, Paquita. Keep that stuff out of the house! More power to you for telling him.

Give me a big old steak or a burger, and some A-1 or some Heinz ketchup and a load of fries any day of the week.

Well, according to biology, crabs and spiders are related, in the arachnid family.  The only difference is that crabs cannot walk forward as a spider can, thus their sideways gait.

If I am recalling correctly, spiders are cephalopod arachnids (soft shelled) and crabs are arthropod arachnids (hard shelled).   

Ever seen those "bird eater" tarantulas that get to be 8 or 9 inches long with legs around 5 inches long? Good God, they didn't have to make em' that big!   :buggedout:

 I was thinking the same thing. I wonder what happened in the past that made eating any kind of reptile, except turtles I guess, taboo in Western culture. Some folks eat 'em like candy, I bet!

Both are of phylum Arthropoda (joint-legged, segmented-body invertebrates).
Spiders are class Arachnida, of subphylum Chelicerata; crabs are subphylum Crustacea.  So they are related at the phylum level.

Cephalopods are "head-foot" creatures such as squid and octopus (and a class of the phylum mollusca)

Gotcha.  I was thinking arthropod meant "hard shelled" because of the word arthro, or was that athero, meaning "hardened" such as atherosclerosis means hardened arteries, the word hardened being the key dynamic?    Thanks for clearing that up though.

Question though: If Cephalopods are "head-foot" creatures (as is naturally apparent in squid and octopi,)  would they not be related to spiders on one level?

The reason I ask, is that recently there was supposed to have been a squid discovered
to have jointed legs much like a spider. I was wondering how that would be classified in regards to spiders having the same.

Okay, how about a milder suggestion? Durian. I've heard it's delicious if you can get past the smell.

"Arthro" refers to joints.  "Pod" refers to foot (understood to be leg).  Hence: jointed-foot.
"Athero" pertains to arteries.  "Sclerosis" means a thickening or hardening of a body part.  Hence: a disease of hardening of the arteries.


Cephalopods are
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Mollusca
Class: Cephalopoda

Arachnids (spiders) are
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Subphylum: Chelicerata
Class: Arachnida
 
- so they are completely different phyla;  it takes more than a superficial physical resemblance to establish relationship.  If there is a 'new' cephalopod with a resemblance to spiders, its name may reflect that resemblance by calling it a 'spider-like' (or Arthropod-like) squid (in the proper language, of course)
 

Gotcha,' and again my thanks. If I stick around you long enough I'll be a biologist in no time!   :bouncegiggle:   Cheers!

Bone marrow is excellent though mostly I eat chicken marrow.  It is spongy and has little flavor but high in quite a few nutrients.  If that bothers anyone, I also enjoy the cartilage on chicken legs.  Organs I am good with livers and hearts.  Hearts are odd as they are all muscle and are not good for long cooking.  Hooves most people eat as they are boiled down to produce gelatin.  (They aren't alone in that but are a constituent.)  Tongues are quite good when cooked slowly with spices and oils served on tortillias they are awesome and very much beefy or flavored like the creature they come from in origin.  Sorry didn't mean to pick on you Paquita but you brought up some things I thought I would touch on in the topic. 

Other things that wouldn't bother me are insects (I'm not a fan of grubs and pupas though would draw a line there).  I'm good with reptiles having eaten turtles and the like plus living in OK we have similar local rattlesnake festivals.  Frog is also quite good.  I'm actually not adverse to the idea of trying much.  Things are odd and often times it is our mind rather then the food itself.  As the old saying goes "Tell me what you eat and I will tell you where you are from."   Ironically, I'm from the southern US and while some of these things are common I'm surprised as a dessert they haven't just cut out the middle man and just served a bowl of sugar. 

I recommend alligator tail, it tastes like a cross between chicken and pork chops.

I wanna try kangaroo tail and tacos made from cows head meat-- the real stuff!

Well, it's kind of what got me interested in the topic. If the world made sense, we would all be eating bugs. Pure protein and fat, and there is nothing easier to farm than insects. So much more energy efficient that growing cattle.

At the same time, cultural factors tie into it. What can be more all-American than a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? Most Europeans find that particular combination to be completely disgusting.

I'm not sure if I mentioned it here, but I ate live ants off the branch in Ecuador. They tasted like lemons.

I'm with Andrew Zimmern, what seems bizarre in one culture is de rigueur in another.

As a last aside, I tried raw oysters. Kind of like sea-flavored snot. Not bad, just sea-flavored snot.

I ate a restaurant called Rosario's (http://www.rosariossa.com/) in San Antonio, TX. I had a plate of parillas (grilled food) called "Poquito de Todo" (a little of everything). Listed on the menu as:

"A trio of grilled sweet breads, crispy tripas, chicharrones guisados, served with charro beans, guacamole, & pico de gallo & homemade tortillas."

I was under the impression that sweet breads were brains, but a Google search tells me they are the thymus and pancreas. They looked like brains. They tasted okay, but with a really fatty sort of texture. They were also pretty heavily spiced, so the flavor of it was not that overpowering.

The fried tripe was good, as were the chicharrones (fried pig skin).

Not bad at all, but none of those would probably be my "go to" food. I recommend that restaurant, though.

You were in San Antonio and didn't call me? I'm only an 1 1/2 hours away from there.  :tongueout:

Wait, you didn't take my call? Then who in the world were the people I was staying with?

I don't know, but if they didn't tie you up, smear honey on you and put you on a fire ant nest, then they couldn't have been anyone related to me...  :teddyr:

Limburger cheese.

Limburger is probably the most notorious of the "stinky cheeses." I grew up on Warner Bros. cartoons using it as the gold standard of stank. I bought some from the store the other day.

Yes, it stinks to high heaven. My brother described it as smelling the inside of a diaper. I thought it was more akin to the remnants of a foot fetishist orgy... after it had been left in the sun all day.

Anyway, I tried it on some toasted rye today. I guess the way it is usually served is on rye with an onion and some brown mustard, served with either beer or strong coffee. I just tried the rye.

The cheese itself has a very pleasing texture. It's akin to cream cheese, but a little bit firmer. The texture is actually great. When you bite into it, it's actually sort of fantastic. In fact, if you can get over the smell (which you will not be able to do), the first part of the chewing is great. But then there's this weird undercurrent that sticks around. The bacteria that make this cheese what it is are related to the very same bacteria that cause B.O., and that's what sticks around. Imagine licking the stomach of a fat man that just spent a few hours in a mosh pit. That's Limburger.

I don't know, maybe I should have tried it with the onions. I can't imagine myself seeking this out again.

Word of warning! Do not handle Limburger cheese with your hands! I have tried dousing my hands with 409 to get rid of the smell, but it lingers, it lingers...

Texture, great. Taste, not so great. Smell, I suffer...

In Germany they serve Limburger with a vinaigrette made of vinegar and oil, thin sliced onion rings and caraway seeds. Tastes great like that.

Limburger is pretty good on a sandwich with salami and onions. I'd eat it more often if not for the cost. I can get a lot of cheddar for the same price as a small package of limburger.

The funkiness can be lessened by cutting off some of the rind. I do the same thing with some kinds of brie that have a strong ammonia stink. It's mostly in the rind.

I am nowhere near as adventurous as some of you guys when it comes to food. I've had an ostrich burger and a buffalo burger, which for me is "weird."

I have also had alligator beef jerky, that was kind of odd.

I experimented with Limburger a few years ago out of curiosity and this onion/salami sandwich was suggested to me. The smell is terrible, but it was tasty. Not good enough to look for it too much or pay the high price, though.

I like anchovies on my pizza, which many find disgusting. Many pizza places don't offer anchovies any more.

Casu marzu (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maggot_cheese) is sort of the ultimate objectionable cheese - and being filled with maggots that launch themselves at you - one of the most overall objectionable things on God's Green Earth.

I'm guessing there are some vomit inducing videos on youtube showing smiling folks eating hipity hopity maggots in their cheese.

Feel free to look for them!  :smile: