Weirdest Thing You've Ever Put in Your Mouth

Probably "Dippin Dots"

I'm game for trying new things, especially when travelling: scorpions and silkworm pupae in China, kangaroo in Australia, squirrels and durian in Malaysia, fugu and basashi (horse sashimi) in Japan, spiders in Cambodia, rabbit in Québec-Canada, etc. It's a big part of the joy of travelling to me. My regular diet is quite mundane.

I also don't remember eating the varnished pretzel on a pin that my parents bought me at the Anderson pretzel factory, but they have a photo of me wearing the pin, and they've told me many times about how as we were driving home my father asked me where my pretzel was, and I responded "I ate it."

Oh this made me laugh out loud. That is so CUTE!

Me too! Thank you for sharing Shlomo!

There are also some things that,. while not weird, I just don't get.

Living in Hongcouver, where we have the best Asian cuisine outside Hong Kong, we often partake of dim sum. The carts come around, you ask for what you want, and they tally up at the end by counting the plates, (rather like the conveyer belts or little boats - we see both - in Japanese restaurants here).

Once in awhile, there is a rush when the Asians get out of their seats and storm the people pushing the carts to get what is on them before it is gone. Because we are gwai lo, not Chinese (although one buddy does speak Cantonese, which surprises them when the waiters are talking about you and he says something like "Why are you being rude?" in their language), we always get seated away from the kitchen, without access to the 'good stuff'.

One time we managed to actually get to the cart before it was all spoken for, and it turned out to be a bland whitish curd of some sort with no particularly good or bad taste. Can't recall the name of it, but it was one of those 'shrug your shoulders' moments when you wonder what all the fuss was.

There have been a few other moments like this with various ethnic cuisines where the food wasn't particularly good or bad, just worthy of a shrug and a wonder what the fuss was about.

There are also some things that,. while not weird, I just don't get.

Only people from English speaking countries queue. When people from countries who don't queue move to countries that do, and they find themselves in the company of a group of countrymen, they revert to their old habits. When we lived in Hawaii, we ran into this when ever we went to a restaurant that had people waiting. Once I flew from one end of Taiwan to the other on a local airline. When the plane landed and taxied up to gate, everyone got up and rushed to the front of the plane.

Only people from English speaking countries queue.

Indeed, and while almost everyone here politely alternates in merging traffic getting on one of our local bridges, the Chinese don't, which can cause a lot of honking etc. Fortunately for them, they also seem to be totally impervious to honking.....

There have been a few other moments like this with various ethnic cuisines where the food wasn't particularly good or bad, just worthy of a shrug and a wonder what the fuss was about.

That's happened to me, too. My guess is that it's something about which they're sentimental so they're really savoring the past, not the present.

p.s. I've also eaten braised sea cucumber in China, but that's not really weird, or is it?

What did they taste like?

Sorry for the slow response, Bill. They tasted of the sauce they were served in. If there was any underlying flavor, it was lost on me. The texture, however, was a whole 'nother story.

Mark Lipton