What foods freak you out?

Eric,

I guess if you eat balut with your snake bile you become a lethal weapon. And what better place to use it than in Taipei, where the women like to triple-team you to see what you are made of. (Actually businessmen put the women up to it so that they can report back your personality.)

Covert

But I have a really hard time with bunny rabbit. I know it's trendy and gormay, and I can gag down a bite if I have to. But it's just too darn close to my cat buddies.

When I buy rabbit at the local Italian butcher shop, the skinned carcasses don't make me think of cat as much as they do of squirrel, but that's another ball of catnip ...

I have the cute furry bunny thing in the back of my mind too, but I'm able not to let it distract me from making a nice pot of hassenpfeffer or cacciatore. In fact, I find the idea of eating a wild hare positively delightful. Pitty that all they sell at the butcher shops are the cute bunnies, though.

Paulo, I love fish and seafood. No freaky factor for me there.

However, I have always found watermelon to be one of the most nauseating things I've ever tried. It looks pretty, to be sure; but that vaguely cucumbery taste along with that itty-bitty/granular texture you get when you chomp on the red/pink stuff (whatever it's called - the inside) and the bland, flatness of the juice, is just so unbearable that my stomach rises the moment I taste the stuff.

Paulo, I love fish and seafood. No freaky factor for me there.

However, I have always found watermelon to be one of the most nauseating things I've ever tried. It looks pretty, to be sure; but that vaguely cucumbery taste along with that itty-bitty/granular texture you get when you chomp on the red/pink stuff (whatever it's called - the inside) and the bland, flatness of the juice, is just so unbearable that my stomach rises the moment I taste the stuff.

Isn't it interesting what makes us all grossed out with food? I would rather deal with the graininess of watermelon than the insides of snakes and live fish squirming on my plate!!!

I guess it's what you grow up with too. It was always a special treat to order black cod out at a Cantonese restaurant. Some restaurants will bring it by the table in the net for the adults to approve of the size and freshness before it is cooked and served. (head and tail intact of course). Same with fresh prawns, crab, or lobster.

Although I grew up with fish, prawns, and all sorts of edible live swimmers we seldom had meat at home (vegan dad). So when I was in highschool, I was grossed out at a friend's BBQ by the slabs of steaks and burger patties. The same friend would come to Chinese dinners with my family and loved everything BUT was equally grossed out by the whole fish!

Now I'm over it and eat meat, but I still don't like handling it.

Foods that still freak me out - sea cucumber, chicken feet, pigs feet, tripe/chittlins (um... it's GUT... why would I want to eat that?!), cream sauces (ew gross alfredo!), southern "sausage gravy".

Exactly. Despite being from different cultures I had similar experiences. I never tried veal, rabbit, lamb and many other common meat-meats until I started attending wine dinners. My first steak was eaten at a wine dinner (though I had tried some nasty steak tips before). Fish and anything from the sea is fine.

My gross out foods are gravy, processed meat and "odd parts" i.e. tripe, feet, ears, tongue, innards, "natural casings", etc.

Best,
Joe

I guess the food that most freaked me out was a sandwich containing one slice of a brown meat-like product and one slice of fluorescent orange cheese product, on one piece of white Wonder-like bread and one piece of off-white (verging on brown) Wonder-like bread. As served in the bus station in Indio, California.

That sounds like the scene from the movie "The Odd Couple" where the boys are having a poker game at Oscar's, and he serves them sandwiches for refreshment:

"Want a sandwich?"
"What kind ya got?"
"I got brown sandwiches and green sandwiches."
"What's the green?"
"It's either very old meat, or very new cheese."
"I'll take the brown."

-Paul W.

Don't get me started on the biology background - rat and cat dissections put me off handling raw chicken for almost a decade!

Frog vivisection was the lab experiment that went beyond my moral and ethical limits. I'll spare you all the details.

-Paul W.

Jeff, that would be Balut, the national food of the Philippines. It's widely available here (I live near a huge Filipino population), so we can always arrange to get you some when you visit.

Thank you, Stuart. (How did I know that you would know?)