All Are Welcome Mingle #6: Exotic Foods and How to Handle Them?

Ouch... Sorry to hear that.

Margarine

why do people eat plastic???

This again? That was going around before the new millennium.

I first heard it from my brother. "Did you know that margarine is one molecule away from plastic?" Big whoop. A molecule is a pretty big difference. One ATOM separates water, which you need, from hydrogen peroxide, which will kill you if you drink it.

You know what's a lot closer to plastic than margarine? Motor oil. Ever notice your car engine getting gummed up with plastic bits? Didn't think so.

Woodworm or a mollusk living inside the branches of mangrove trees. I did not like it.

I also tried ostrich meat and I liked it.

Fried grasshoppers also taste good.

Balut is my favorite.

huhu grubs taste like peanut butter apparently

I like mash potatoes even though its really baby food.

I think the weirdest food my cousin bought back from her junk food expedition to the USA was crackers that were shaped like Goldfish, (looked like dry catfood) and those coloured fruit loops that were full of sugar that US children ate for breakfast.

Seriously!! Right!?

I was told once that if you were to put a pound of butter and a pound of margarine in the trunk of your car and leave it there for a year... in the tub that once had a pound of butter... you'd have nothing. But in the tub that once had margarine, you'd have a pound of margarine.
IDK?

Tips on how to handle exotic food

If you go somewhere and they have cooked and prepared for you, taste a little bit and then hide it in your napkin (or bring tissues) if you dont like it. Its not a good look to vomit it in front of your hosts.

The other thing is to bring and or pig or cat with you which you can feed under the table, or, say you would like a doggie bag to take home for your pets, other family members etc.

Eat your food with thanksgiving, even if it might taste terrible (like in hospital ) because its freely offered to you.

The other thing is say a prayer before you eat, and the best excuse can only be I am full and a loud burp to show you are. Some foods can only go down with a sugary drink or alcohol, so you can forget youve eaten it, or drowned in special sauces.

I can tell you from experience. The butter tub would be a curdled mess of spoiled milk residue. The margarine tub would be a curdled mess of vegetable oil residue. Both would stink to high heavens long before the year was out.

Where, in theory, would this pound of butter go in a year? Are they saying it would evaporate? Because it doesn't. If you leave a pound of butter out in the hot sun, or rather in a hot car trunk, you will probably wish it would evaporate.

If its bland, add salt and pepper, or, for the spicy amongst us, bring emergency chili peppers to liven up any dish.

a lot of british people simply add sugar...to everything. I was looking in baking sections of cookbooks and its like a cup or even 2 cups of sugar to all cakes, loaves, slices, biscuits. Honestly, who can eat a whole cup of sugar?! You will die if you ate it straight like that but disguised in other food, its aparently acceptable.

Blue milk

I have also seen milk flavoured milk.

IDK? Maybe you're right. Evaporation is one thing... decay is another. I wouldn't be surprised if milk solids decayed into nothingness... but I'm no scientist.

But the tub of margarine would, in essence, still be the same as when it started, no?
No so for the butter.

Coca cola when it had cocaine in it.
Nowdays you can get zero sugar coca cola but I am not sure what chemicals they have put in it. Not sure if it qualifies as food, but there is a drink I think called Gatorade, and its not made from alligators but is either bright blue or green and looks like something you would wash the car with.

No it would definitely not be the same. It would smell like really old oil, just like any other vegetable oil based food, or a bottle of oil, in the same environment.

I don't know where you're getting your facts, but if you test them you are in for a big surprise.

milk either goes to yoghurt or turns into cheese if sitting long enough
Butter will melt into oil

Margarine I have no idea. I think maybe you could use it as lubricant for your car, again, like the coca cola and gatorade to wash your windows.

DDDAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am never trying ANY of this stuff you people have described in here. Holy moly crapoly.

"Oh try it, it's good!" Nooooooooooooooooopppppe!!!!

I was in a mountain village with my wife's family. They served super hot fish. I went out for Chinese and was the only one to order one thing and the whole group ate something else. I got some serious digestive issues and had to stay close to home. But the next day I went back to the village. I decided just to eat broth and rice for the meal instead of the spicy red meat dishes. Previously, they'd served pork broth in a mug. So this day I got a mug of broth and poured it on my rice and ate it.

But I realized they were serving chicken and dog.... and this didn't take like chicken broth. So it turns out I have never eaten dog, but I kind of drank it, or ate rice that had been soaked in dog juice... or broth.

Another time I was at a Chinese restaurant with the food on a lazy susan and a little tiny plate. I saw what I thought were maybe quail legs and put one on my plate. Since it was on my plate, I ate it anyway. It tasted like chicken, but very, very tender.

Once my wife and I went to the beach in Bali. We saw what we though was a vendor probably cooking pork sate-- meat on a skewer. They smother it with some kind of sauce so you can't see the meat (balinese sauce is usually made of red pepper.) So my wife came back and said they weren't selling but they gave her a couple of sticks. I tried it and it was a kind of sweet dark meat. It turns out it was turtle. Now, the Balinese eat two kinds of turtle-- one endangered and the other not. And do you know what it tasted like..........?







Like California condor.......












Just kidding. I have never eaten California condor.

I asked some Koreans, in Korea, what to order at the Korean Chinese restaurant. One suggested Ool myun. I didn't know that ool was seafood. So I ordered it, didn't like that the shrimp in it wasn't pealed, got my hands dirty, at the soup and the noodles. When I got to the bottom, there was a snail?

Many years later, I tried some of the little snails they served at a Korean restaurant. Meh. Wasn't great. I'd rather eat something that isn't snails. I also ate squid with hot pepper sauce for breakfast soon after I moved to Korea. I was asked to join someone for breakfast.

An Australian friend of mine raised by missionaries in Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo) had stories of boar hunting, including jabbing one and killing it as it charged him with a bamboo spear. So he goes boar hunting and brings some meat back. It tasted like beef.

I have eaten water buffalo. I read water buffalo is supposed to be more tender than beef. But not the steaks I had. They must have gotten those water buffalo before they went to the retirement home. They were gristle. I've also had some water buffalo (the variety served without cooked blood) cooked with some overly bitter and spicy Indonesian peppers at my wife's family reunion. I asked if they cooked the whole thing that way. Someone said yes, but the next morning, I had a bit of tasty beef stew that someone had apparently taken from one of the buffalos. It was like beef, but with strands of flesh that were more noticeable. They are used for oxen or work animals, so that may be why.

I've also tried bison and ostrich. They taste the same to me-- like beef with almost no fat content in the meat. I'd prefer bison, though, a kosher animal more similar to a cow.

If you have eaten carp you may think of a nasty gray fish meat, but I have had a variety of giant goldfish from the Toba area in Sumatera that is some of the fluffiest tender fish that I have had.

Once I was eating some hashbrowns the maid where i lived had cooked for breakfast. My mouth was filled with a mango flavor. I felt around and pulled one of those bugs that was on the mango tree out of my mouth. I don't know what was more disturbing, the fact that I had eaten the bug or the fact that it tasted so good.

I have a Mexican friend who will go to a Chinese buffet and eat a whole plate full of crawfish. But to me they are old, nasty, and fishy tasting. I call them crawfish because I used to live in Louisiana, where they sell them fresher and they taste good, about like shrimp. My mom said they sat heavy in the stomach. I didn't notice as a child, but I haven't had a lot of them as an adult.

They boil them with a spicy hot seasoning.

I went to Bangkok for business for a few days. The last day, I just popped into a restaurant I saw and ordered some noodles. I didn't know what I had gotten. I did that in Korea once and got a savory pancake with green onions, not really what I wanted.

This time, I got some noodles, started eating them, and realized there were entrails at the bottom of my bowl. It occurred to me how foul what I was eating was and I quit.

Then I realize this was a chain I'd eaten at in Jakarta. Not only had I ordered foul entrails for dinner, but it wasn't even something unique to Thailand!

You know what a crawfish is? That's a lobster after taxes.