Running With Quills: Susan Stumbles on the Epicurian Trail

Welcome to Running With Quills, your online newsletter designed to keep you up to date with what your favorite authors (that would be us) are doing throughout the year. Here you will find the release dates of our new books and get information about our backlists. We'll preview our cover art here long before the books hit the stores and we'll keep you informed about works-in-progress and special projects. You'll also receive advance notice of signings and appearances. From time to time we'll give you a peek at our worlds, tell you what we're reading, and introduce you to some new authors.

Thursday, September 20, 2007

Susan Stumbles on the Epicurian Trail

My belief in myself as an adventuresome eater took a hit Sunday afternoon. I always thought I was pretty open to trying new epicurian delights, to at least tasting foods from other cultures that might not strike me as very appealing. After all, I'm a guest in the country in which that food is considered a delicacy.

But then I got to talking to my friend Ritha at a get together last weekend. And it turns out that I'm way more white bread than I ever believed. What a blow to my ego.

Ritha is from Ecuador. She's lived in Seattle for probably fifteen years, but she still has family she goes home to visit on a regular basis. One of her sisters there is a travel agent. Sister's boss requested she take part in a new adventure tour so she'd be able to describe it to their clients from the strength of experience. Sister agreed and invited Ritha and one of their brothers to accompany her.

They went down a jungle river in long canoe-type boats. There were piranhas in the stiller sections of the water and caimen, which are small alligator type reptiles. Okay, already this doesn't sound like my cup of tea because I'm no longer a rough-it kind of woman and that type of wildlife? I must confess, not so fond of it. But it was a couple of the things Ritha ate that really drove home just how adventurous I truly am NOT. White bread, white bread, white bread. Shaking my head here. My whole image of myself has been turned on its ear.

Ritha ate a larvae that

had burrowed into a coconut. The good news is that it was coconut flavored. The bad news is. . . well, d0 I really need to spell it out? (My son the chef 's reaction was a little different from mine. He said, "No kidding? Fly or bee?" because apparently one is supposed to be tastier than the other) She also ate lemon ants. Now, those I could probably manage, if they were dipped in chocolate. But fresh from a leaf that was just plucked off a tree? Nope. Not gonna happen.

So, it's official. I'm a wuss. A dull, bland stick in the mud. I've eaten head-cheese and really questionable sausage in Germany. I've eaten blood pudding and haggis in Scotland. But I'm probably never going to eat live bugs.

How about you? What's the most off-the-wall thing you've eaten?

34 Comments:

Anonymous said...: LOL. Don´t worry. At least it´s not NORMAL food you´re eskewing. I´m totally horrendous when it comes to the food I´ll eat. Not only am I very particular about the kind of food I eat, but also about the way it´s served.

And some things I just wont touch. Like cucumbers, strawberries, shellfish (which I´m kind of allergic to), and whole lot of other food.

On the whole I like traditional food. Lamb, steak, chicken, potatoes, rice, salads, breads, apples and oranges.

Anything sour I give a miss.

Shark-"meat", which is considered a delicacy by many in my country (Iceland) has to be the most horrendous thing I´ve put inside my lips. I returned right away and almost emptied my stomach in the process. A mistake I won´t repeat. Even a good dose of "Svarti Dauði" (Black Death - very strong alcohol traditionally drunk with shark eating) was not enough to kill the taste. And the alcohol was almost as bad, in my opinion. I´m more White/Red vine person, not strong spirits.

Sirry.

Bon appetit to all.; 1:16 AM
AgTigress said...: Well, I suppose I have unknowingly consumed the occasional small raspberry- or blackberry-maggot (I'm not sure what they grow up to be), or the occasional greenfly on a bit of lettuce. Insects and larvae of various kinds would have been quite a standard and valued part of the diet of humans in the hunter-gatherer phase of evolution, but I think that very few modern humans can consider eating them with equanimity. Or even with delicate seasoning...

One of the (many) reasons that I dislike crustacea like shrimps, prawns and crabs is that they seem altogether too insect-like to me.

Europeans, if we are meat-eaters at all, are far less anxious about offal than most Americans are, so liver, kidney, heart, tongue, sweetbreads and all the prepared things like various sausages and brawn don't strike me as especially challenging. I have only eaten brains once, though, and definitely would not wish to prepare them myself, but they tasted fine, prepared by someone who knew how to do it. This was in Belgium, and the cook was a Moroccan, but it was long ago. Brains are now illegal in this country, since BSE. Hmm: that sentence could be read in more than one way. Thinking of our politicians, I do, indeed, wonder whether brains have become illegal, or at least rather rare.

:-D; 2:58 AM
DFender said...: Susan,
LOLOLOL... oh, I feel you. Do I ever.

I prefer to think of myself as somewhat adventurous, somewhat tomboy-ish... certainly not squeamish. BUT. I absolutely cannot imagine eating any bug purposely. Blech. Ack.

The grossest thing I've eaten... of course there's a story with it. When my younger brother and I were kids, probably 9 and 6, we were eating graham crackers outside. One of us must have dropped a cracker, continued playing and God knows how much later, I picked up the graham cracker and started muching away to have my little brother yell at me that I was eating ants! Indeed, I turned the cracker over and it was chock-full of antiness. Gah!

Never again. Ever. Iew.

Happy Friday!

Deb

Agtigress... I think brains must be illegal in several countries, America included.; 3:33 AM
Lori Foster said...: I am NOT an adventurous eater. No way. I'm a country girl. Green beans and ham, pinto beans, etc... I like most veggies, and the typical fare of beef, pork and chicken.
I can't think of a single exotic food I've ever eaten.
Bugs are definitely not entering my mouth - not on purpose. I heard once that we consume a lot of them in our sleep.
Ick ick ick!
Maybe that's why I'm an insomniac?

Hugs!
Lori; 5:07 AM
Margaret said...: Agtigress, you'd be soul mates to Dave Barry, the humorist author. He won't eat lobsters as he considers them giant cockroaches. LOL

I'm not adventurous in eating. No matter who's pride gets hurt. I am Southern, however, and like black-eyed peas, chicken fried steak and other southern delicacies. Never chittlins. No way, no how!

I live in Lancaster County, PA. Amish country. You can buy pig stomach at the meat counter here. Said to be a great local delicacy. I'll take their word for it.; 5:33 AM
Suzy said...: I used to think I had an exotic palate. I'm Asian, have you been to one of our markets? We eat the WEIRDEST things. Duck's blood, fried milk, chicken's feet are some of my faves.

But then I started watching Andrew Zimmern's Bizarre Foods show on the Travel Channel. He ate a Madagascar roach! It crunched when he bit in. Eeeeeeeeeeew! Then there was the episode where he ate a LIVE tree snake. *shudder*

Yeah, the only food risk I take now is eating raw cookie dough.; 5:42 AM
Anonymous said...: I must say, I am "adventurous" in food only in comparison to someone that is meat and potatoes.

I have eaten sushi and other non cooked meats from Finland. I don't think I have tried steak tartar. It looks raw. Sushi doesn't somehow!

I have no interest in eating bugs so I will never be an adventure traveler. I will however try all the "specialties" of a cuisine in an area like raclette in Switzerland and snow grouse and reindeer in Finland.

I had some awesome food in the Caribbean; native fruits and fish.

Sorry, my idea of roughing it is not making a reservation and going to a Motel 8! I will only do that in a last case scenario!

SusanB; 5:59 AM
Candace Salima (LDS Nora Roberts) said...: I'm worse white bread than you are. I can't even stand to look at the pictures.; 8:05 AM
Elizabeth Guest said...: I'm a semi-adventurous eater. I remember trying chocolate-covered ants and bees back in junior high. I love all fish and seafood, including escargot. On the rare occasion when I eat steak, I do prefer it rare.

I, too, have watched Andrew Zimmern eating bizarre food on the Travel Channel. He's far more adventurous than I could ever be.

Bon Appetit!
~EG; 8:32 AM
AgTigress said...: Thinking about it, my guiding principle for the consumption of any animal protein is that, above all, it should be well and truly dead, and then that the meat be cooked, or at the very least, smoked.

:-); 8:45 AM
DFender said...: This post has been removed by the author.; 9:15 AM
DFender said...: DFender said,
I don't think any of us would ever make it on Survivor or Fear Factor... LOLOLOL

DFender ALSO said, cuz she's intelligence-challened, and fixed her posting...
Andrew ZimmerN is a madman...but very entertaining.

9:15 AM; 9:51 AM
Anonymous said...: I'd consider myself a semi-adventurous eater...meaning no internal organs, animal feet, snails (ick! like chewing pencil erasers dipped in dirt), okra (slimy ick), carrot raisin salad (love carrots and love raisins, just not mixed together), lima beans (pethy ick), buttermilk (just plain old ick).

LOLOLOL!

Karen in Klamath Falls, Oregon; 12:09 PM
susan andersen said...: Karen in Klamath--not even pickled okra? I LOVE pickled okra, but have never tried it prepared otherwise. Love the description of snails. :); 12:45 PM
Jennifer McK said...: Nope, TOTAL white bread here. You're more adventurous than I am when it comes to food.
I'll try it in a social situation (when to refuse to eat it would be rude) but I'm pretty bland when it comes to food.
Though I love okra.....deep fried.
Of course, those lemon ants would taste good deep fried. LOL.; 1:32 PM
AgTigress said...: Just for the record: what Americans usually call 'buttermilk', sold in cartons in American supermarkets, is not buttermilk at all, but soured milk. Buttermilk is the very thin liquid left when cream is churned to produce butter. Soured milk, which is perfect for making scones (similar to American 'buttermilk biscuits') can be made from whole, semi-skimmed or skimmed milk, but it is produced by curdling the milk through the action of yeasts, bacteria or fungi. It is not the same as buttermilk at all. Real buttermilk is pleasant to drink. Soured milk not so much.

One of those odd American/British English differences.

;-); 1:40 PM
Pia said...: I am not really an adventurous eater...my food are very limited...that is until I saw fear factor, in one episode together with the bull balls or testicles (the delicacy in spain) was balut or fertilized duck. When I was young and in the Philippines I used to eat that - well not the whole thing, I just ate the egg part. Looking at it now Balut looks really yucky. I guess because it was so normal in the Philippines to eat it, then it was normal for me to. I recently found out that my husband who also grew up in the Philippines has not eaten balut ever.
Adrew Zimmern also featured balut in his show.
Thanks.
Pia; 1:43 PM
karende said...: Hmm. Off the wall things I’ve eaten... I grew up eating German-style farm cooking, ie, meat and potatoes and the 7 sweets and 7 sours [or close to it]. If I’m eating steak, I prefer it blood rare [my first husband referred to it as warm and well-bruised]. Since I moved away from the midwest, I’ve had venison that wintered on sagebrush [blechh - tough and stringy]; scrambled catfish eggs; snapping turtle; fried frog legs; venison again, but sweet and fat from lots of berries and good browse; venison and seal liver; jellied moose nose and corned moose; seal oil [not very nice unless it’s really really cold out, then it tastes amazingly good]; all kinds of fish, raw, cooked, smoked, and jerked; shellfish, including some of the little chiton thingies that cling to pilings, but which are great in chowder [or raw, if they are cleaned properly]; octopus and squid every way possible; seaweed of all kinds, including sweet pickles made from bull kelp; crab any which way except raw - pickled and deep fried crab tails are wonderful!; chocolate covered bugs of several varieties... If someone goes to the effort to fix it, I’ll at least try it. I really don’t care for mashed halibut eyes, though. And I can’t stand cooked spinach or carrots - too many years of being forced to eat them in preschool, I guess. Even the smell nauseates me. And I don’t think I’d care to try that fish thing they have in Japan which, if it’s not prepared right, is fatally toxic. Nor do I like tripe, it’s too greasy.

And anyone who thinks okra is slimy should try it in a home made gumbo, or dipped in batter and deep fried. Wonderful stuff.

What I find more interesting than the foods themselves are the names of the recipes. Golly-she-was, Scootin’ Along the Shore, like that.

karibear; 2:08 PM
Jayne Ann Krentz said...: Okay, this is certainly a universal topic! Good choice, Susan. Food is definitely one thing everyone has in common.

I'm afraid I fall into the unadventurous crowd. Hey, I thought I was way out there the first time I tried sushi!

--Jayne; 2:17 PM
Stella said...: jellied eels. Yuck, ick, shudder.

Stella; 4:05 PM
Louis said...: I've had a variety of foods. Scrambled eggs with brains, frog legs, Okra-chopped up in a batter and cooked like pancakes and in gumbos. Haven't had head cheese in a long while...made good sandwiches. Spinach cooked I cannot stand...OK raw in salads.

I guess it's all in how you were raised as a child, as to what one will eat.; 4:16 PM
Anonymous said...: My most adventurous eating extravaganza was the first time I went to a local luau, not the ones they put on for the tourists. Aside from the kalua pig, lomi salmon and poi (what the tourists call wallpaper paste-how would they know what wall paper paste tastes like?), they had raw crab, ake which is raw fish liver, opihi which is a raw shellfish that clings to the rocks at the shore. There are a lot of local favorites like pickled pigs feet, oxtail stew, tripe stew (pig's stomach). There are some interesting Chinese dishes too like salted duck eggs (not sure exactly how they're made but it involves burying them for a long time) and if you like hot food don't forget Korean kim chee (spicy hot pickled cabbage also buried for some time). Then there are the Philipino dishes aside from balut mentioned by Pia, chicken or pork adobo, blood pudding, black dog.

I couldn't handle them all but having grown up in the midwest to meat, potatos, and vegetables, I'm proud that I eat now eat a wide variety of foods including sashime and poke (both raw fish), lots of fish and shellfish, love escargot, and steak tartar is really good when prepared correctly.

But, I wouldn't make it on survivor or fear factor either. The things they have to eat look as bad and they seem to taste. Yuck!

Happy weekend everyone.

Kathy H; 4:53 PM
Anonymous said...: Karende...what is jellied moose nose? I've never heard of it. What does moose taste like...(deer, elk, beef)?

Actually, the scrambled catfish eggs sound pretty good!!

Karen in Klamath Falls, OR; 4:55 PM
karende said...: Just about everything tastes somewhat like what it’s been eating. That’s why the first venison I had was tough and gamey - sage brush keeps them alive, but a little goes a long way, just like putting sage into turkey dressing. And milk from a cow or goat that’s been eating stinky weeds isn’t good for much beyond feeding other livestock, unless one is used to the flavor of skunk cabbage. Even eggs from free range chickens can get a bit strange. When I kept chickens they always got the leftover bits at salmon canning time, and by the time I was done with the canning, the eggs had a salmon-colored ring around the yolk. At least they didn’t taste fishy, they just looked funny.

Moose eat mainly water plants, so they don’t have weird after tastes the way the others can. Jellied moose nose reminds me, at least in texture, of jellied tongue, sliced thin for sandwiches. All herbivores can be preserved the same ways, steaks, chops, roasts, stewed, corned, and so on. I’ve butchered my share of deer, but all I did was bone it and freeze it - there was never enough meat on one to bother with getting fancy. I’ve had elk steak, but only ones cut and frozen by someone else. I haven’t done moose either, for that matter, but they are big, at least as much meat as the average beef I’d think, and the skipper of one of the boats I was on supplied the meat for the boat from his own stock of whatever he’d shot the year before. He brought whatever he got home, quartered it, and his wife did all the fine-tuning, so to speak. That’s why they had corned moose instead of a lot of extra stew meat. There’s a fair amount of road-killed moose around Anchorage every winter, and a long list of agencies wanting the free meat. Seems a shame that whoever hit it doesn’t get to keep it at times, especially when the vehicle is totalled, but the first agency to respond ready to butcher and move it gets it. I should also say that hitting a moose is radically different from hitting a deer, also - it’s more like hitting a big horse or a heavy steer - and a lot of the vehicles involved get seriously trashed.

karibear; 7:16 PM
Jayne Ann Krentz said...: Karibear: Whoa! For those who tend to forget we've still got a frontier here in the U.S. and Alaska is it!

Thanks for the reminder.

--Jayne; 8:43 PM
susan andersen said...: Louis, I'm with you--love raw spinach, can't stand it cooked-- unless it's creamed spinach,then bring it on.

I think it comes down to textures-- at least for me. That's why I'm pretty sure I could handle chocolate covered ants but not grubs or larvae. And jellied anything sounds entirely awful.

I grew up eating venison and game bird and truly don't appreciate either. Elk and deer burger is okay, but the steaks are gamey and it's hard to cook a game bird that it doesn't turn out dry. When I was in Scotland years ago I gave pheasant a try again, thinking I was pretty young the last time I had it and my taste buds had probably evolved.

Turned out I still didn't care for it. Whataya gonna do? Love just about all seafood, but prefer mine cooked. My husband loves oysters raw, but I like mine barbequed in the shell or fried. And I like the way he prepares them better than any restaurant I've ever had them in.; 9:23 PM
AgTigress said...: Nobody has yet mentioned very hot/spicy foods. Britain has had Indian restaurants for quite a long time (I believe the first one in London opened in 1807), and even those of us who have never been to India or Pakistan are pretty familiar with the cuisine. There is a kind of generic 'Indian' that one can get everywhere, plus the regional specialities available in more serious Indian restaurants, as well as the now classic Anglo-Indian dishes, like kedgeree or curried eggs, which simply appear on standard menus, and are not even thought of as 'Indian'.

Some Middle Eastern / North African dishes can be pretty spicy, too, though this is often in the form of having an extra sauce, such as harissa, that can be added by the diner. Really hot Indian curries have the zing built in. While I don't crave fiery-hot food every day, there are times when it is perfect.

I have the impression that the majority of Americans are less comfortable with extremely hot dishes than we are.

:-); 3:10 AM
DFender said...: Sheesh, Susan you picked a winning topic here...LOL. Always more to say... not that I'm quiet *snort

Hot, spicy food? Nope, not me. Ketchup is spicy for me...LOL. Joke of the family, I know. The HHP, though, puts hot sauce on everydamnthing he eats and the spicier the foods the better. Ack.

Love seafood... cooked. Fried, really...LOL.

Game foods... venison, duck, 'gator, pheasant are all alright. I think preparation is the key because I've had good and bad of all of 'em.

Japanese and Chinese foods... YUM.

Is cheesecake it's own food group? It should be :-); 5:41 AM
karende said...: If cheesecake isn’t a separate food group, it ought to be, just like chocolate - which is a product of the New World, by the way.

I’ve also noticed that very few of the world’s indigenous peoples have been given credit for their contributions to what we eat. Popcorn and succotash are Native American, for instance. Or fusion cooking - it’s a blend, but not all that many people know what the blend is. My husband grew up in southern CA and lived in Seattle his early adult years - his idea of good food involves rice, salsa, more rice, soy sauce, still more rice, and home made kim chee. His tastes combine Mexican and Japanese, preferably with hot sauces. But he also spent nearly as much time in Alaska as I did, so his tastes are eclectic, to say the least, as are mine.

One of my favorite restaurants when I first moved to Alaska had a filipino cook who was an artist with food. Fishermen were always coming to the back door of the place with bags full of all kinds of oddities that had come up in crab pots or trawl nets, asking if he could do something with whatever they had. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Whatever he made, though, was outstanding. One of the local bush pilots was nicknamed Red Baron, and he loved the cooking there so much the cook created a special named for him. It was never advertised on the menu, but anyone who knew about it could ask for a Red Baron Special, which was a plate loaded with whatever seafood the cook thought was best that day. This cook got a mention in Gourmet Magazine in the mid-60s for the best hamburgers west of the Mississippi. He was outraged - said there was all that perfectly good food he cooked, and that North American barbarian picked his HAMBURGERS!?

One of the few odd things I’ve had was European in origin [I think] - my gran used to make snow ice cream the first time it snowed in the winter. She’d scrape up a huge bowl of clean snow, then pour in a bit of milk and sugar and stir like crazy to mix it before the snow melted. I still think it’s a treat, though now I use anything from regular milk to evaporated to condensed to cream to coconut milk, and at times add fruit to it as well. Something she learned to make on the family farm back in the later 1800s.

karibear; 10:47 AM
susan andersen said...: I love spicy foods. I was pouring on extra hot sauce right up to the day I delivered when I was pregnant. I've since scaled back a bit as I realized I was burning out my taste buds with that first bite and could't really taste the rest of my meal. Now the Soul Mate, whose grandparents all came from Norway, on the other hand--well his idea of hot sauce used to be dipping the spoon into the jar and shaking whatever didn't roll off onto his meal. He now uses more. Ah, marriage. It's all about compromise, yes?; 1:20 PM
Anonymous said...: Susan,

Now the Soul Mate, whose grandparents all came from Norway...

Lol, my father was pure Norwegian, 2nd generation. Hot sauce was not a word in his vocabulary. I never realized how bland he liked his food until I left home and started experimenting with tastes. While I am not up to your level of hot sauce, I can and do like some on certain foods.

Thanks for the chuckle.

Kathy H; 4:50 PM
Shoshana said...: Spicy foods aren't odd enough to qualify as strange.
(Although the American idea of 'hot' is pretty sad; there are some supposedly Mexican restaurants in the Midwest where I've ordered a bowl of their salsa and eaten it like soup.)
Think the most bizarre thing I've eaten was fried locusts. They're actually really good, especially with a little cumin sprinkled on. I love them; but from the reactions of most of my friends it's probably rather odd.; 7:37 PM
karende said...: One Mexican restaurant I worked in made their own hot sauce. A blender full of dried red peppers, enough water to come halfway up the blender, a couple cloves of garlic, and that was it. The stuff was so hot you could see the oils floating on it. Thin and watery but effective. I developed a real craving for it when I was pregnant the first time, and consumed it by the quart every night I worked. Must have done something, my daughter can't stand hot stuff and she can't stand chocolate, either. I'd almost think she was a changeling, but she's the spitting image of her father.

karibear; 8:45 PM
Ranurgis said...: My most adventurous eating experiences occurred in France. My father and I met a friend from Winnipeg, MB at the Bourget Air Show and decided to invite him to a restaurant at Montmartre which has become a tradition in our family.

My menu was conservative but the two men decided to have snails and frogs legs (one dish each). Of course, they offered me a taste. At first I demurred but then decided to be brave. I tried both and found that they were more edible than I expected but declined more than a taste. I know these epicurean delights are nothing compared to larvae and the like.

The family I was living with in France also had their favorites: rabbit's brains, oysters, eels, etc. The eel I just could not eat after meeting it hung up outside where they were letting out the blood. The oysters were all right when fried or whatever. The rabbit? No thanks, not after Madame carried it hanging from her grocery bag through the town from the butcher's. And the delicacy the boys fought over, the brain (it wasn't very big), wasn't even on my radar.

Because of the experience with their last au pair girl, the family informed me one day, that we would be having live oysters for supper. (Maybe the seven children under 12 years of age were an indication of the family's predilection for them.) They thought that they'd better alert me to the facts because the au pair before me had not know that the oysters she was eating were still alive and when she was told about this after consuming some, she became violently "ill". I guess they did not relish going through the same experience with me.

I've had buffalo steak too but that was not much different from beef.

Though I'm not the white bread kind either, I'm more European type rye bread.

I've often had steak tartare from my childhood and though I've never been as fond of it as my father was, I'd usually have half a sandwich or so. I guess it really matters what you grow up with. Hence my favoring what I call "real" as opposed to "cardboard".

Oh yes, when I was about 8 or 9 years old my doctor prescribed for me a milk shake which was quite unusual: it was made of milk and whole eggs, and I do mean "whole" raw eggs including the shell. That was already in Canada.; 10:42 PM

Previous Posts

Thursday, September 20, 2007

Susan Stumbles on the Epicurian Trail

34 Comments: