Horse Ice Cream and Other Weird Food From Across the Globe

You are all to be envied. I just could NOT do a lot of the things that you've managed to swallow. Though once, at a family dinner in Portugal, I remember being confronted with baby squids and tripe stew. Man, that was rough. Yeesh.

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one of the favorite breakfast in the philippines is the the stew made of pigs blood and chopped internal organs. bbq is also very popular street food, almost all parts of the chicken is used, including the internal organs, head and foot

Gosh. Well, one can find weird stuff everywhere. In Oaxaca, Mexico, women circulate in the market with trays mounded with barbecued crickets. They're pretty tasty, but the legs and antennae get stuck between my teeth.

In Iceland, when they celebrate their Viking heritage in February (Thorblot), they eat rotted shark, dried cod, and ram's testicles. The cod wasn't bad, but the ram's testicles and rotted shark were abhorent (though friends of mine who like organ meat said the testicles weren't that bad).

In Mongolia, I had reindeer-milk tea and cheese, airag (fermented horses milk), camel-milk yogurt, and sheep's milk vodka. The reindeer-milk tea was a little gamey (but not as bad as Yak-milk tea, which I had in Tibet), but not great. All the others were just fine, and even quite tasty.

Jellied eels are both historic and iconic in England, though I've liked the eels I've had in Asia better. Wild boar and mountain frog in Thailand were tasty, though frog has a daunting number of bones.

And when I was working with Maria Kijac on her cookbook, The South American Table, I had brain tacos, which were actually really delicious, but I had psychological issues with eating brain. I guess I've read too many articles about mad cow disease.

I actually do, on the whole, try to stick to things I think won't sicken me. In the category of "fun weird," in Marrakesh, there's a great ice cream shop on the Jma al Fnaa, where you can get such flavors of ice cream as fig, cinnamon, and avocado. Yum.

Cynthia

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I was in Japan on business. We were treated to an elaborate meal to honor us, so we really did have to eat everything or our host would have lost BIG face. The sashimi came along and one of the items was a raw snail on a toothpick. In my book, that's a dead slug on a stick. Gulp, do not chew -- and follow with HUGE serving of saki.

In Hong Kong on business, similar circumstance - a plate of fried birds with their heads, fried -- all  prettily arranged around the edge of the plate. The odd little fried things with them? Monkey brains. (note: These can be discretely spat into a napkin and snuck into one's purse for later disposal.)

In Spain -- a bowl of what looked like shorter, a bit thicker, grey spaghetti strands, but was in fact cooked baby eels -- eyes and all.

~~ Contributing Editor, Mata H. also blogs right along at Time's Fool ( http://timesfool.blogspot.com )

When we were in upstate Michigan (I know, it's sooo foreign) we had a pasty which is kind of like a giant turnover with meat, potatos and gravy. We thought it was weird but we wanted to try something that was popular locally. It was good. Hard not to be be good with those ingredients.

If you go to Thunder Bay, Ontario there is a dessert called a persian ( http://www.squidoo.com/eating-in-thunder-bay ) which is kind of a cross between a fritter (no apples) and a cinnamon bun (but not really) with a big dallop of pink icing on the top. They are HUGELY popular in that region. People like to think of different ways to eat them. Some eat as is, some fry in a pan, some slice and put in a toaster.

In the opening gallery you have a picture of dragon fruit which we can get here occasionaly, haven't had in over a year. I love it. It's a beautiful fruit, a bit pricey but worth it, and a bit weird looking on the outside but the color is magnificent. When you cut it open it kind of looks like poppy seeds. Not overly flavorful but a nice change from the average fruits we get.

Moe
M.E. Wood lens ( http://www.squidoo.com/mewood ), Five Favorite Things ( http://www.plusshe.com )

Yeah, that fries with cheese curds and gravy is called poutine and it's lovely, lovely, lovely. I haven't had poutine since I left Canada seven years ago, and I would *love* to have it again.

Weirdest food? Curried cow brain. Which doesn't even qualify as all that weird, really, but it's weird to me. My husband's family loves it, along with other various curried organs like liver, stomach, heart, and so on. I'll pass.

Hmm. Or the local pizza. Here, the flavours are very much regional. They'll use chicken weiners in the place of sausage, and even use chicken weiners to stuff the crust. That was gross. Kankun, a local leafy vegetable, on a Hong Kong-named pizza was a bit odd, but overall pretty good. But then there's the biryizza, a pizza shell with toppings and rice, then folded in on itself into a dough-package. Rice on pizza? Seriously? But some people here like it.

But then, McDonals also has McRice as an option instead of french fries.

Laurie in Sri Lanka

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