FOOD FROM ALL AROUND THE WORLD
BAALUT
(Philippines)
How about that great delicacy of the Philippines - You take a fertilized duck or chicken egg, bury it in the ground for a few weeks and then enjoy. Also known as "the treat with feet" or "the egg with legs".
Balut are duck eggs that have been incubated until the fetus is all feathery and beaky, and then boiled alive. The bones give the eggs a uniquely crunchy texture. They are enjoyed in Cambodia, Philippines and the fifth and seventh levels of hell. They are typically sold by street vendors at night, out of buckets of warm sand.
Tell yourself that every time you crack open an egg from now on you won't be half expecting a leathery wad of bird to come flopping out into the skillet.
Baby mice wine is a traditional Chinese and Korean "health tonic," which apparently tastes like raw gasoline. Little mice, eyes still closed, are plucked from the embrace of their loving mothers and stuffed (while still alive) into a bottle of rice wine.They are left to ferment while their parents wring their tiny mouse paws in despair, tears drooping sadly from the tips of their whiskers.
Wait, it gets worse ...
Do you wince at the thought of swallowing a tequila worm?
Imagine how you'd feel during a session on this bastard. Whoops, I swallowed a dead mouse! Whoops, there goes another one!
Escamoles
Escamoles are the eggs of the giant black Liometopum ant, which makes its home in the root systems of maguey and agave plants. Collecting the eggs is a uniquely unpleasant job, since the ants are highly venomous and have some kind of blood grudge against human orifices.
The eggs have the consistency of cottage cheese. The most popular way to eat them is in a taco with guacamole, while being insane.
Again, it gets worse ...
Escamoles have a surprisingly pleasant taste: buttery and slightly nutty.
This hugely increases the chances that, while in Mexico, you could eat them without realizing you are eating a taco full of ant eggs
Durian
A fruit as big as a football, covered with tough spiky skin.
The pulp is pale yellow, with shape and consistency of raw brains. Smell has been compared to rotting flesh, old gym socks, or sewage.
Yet the taste has been called so exquisite that a European explorer of the 1700's claimed it was worth the journey to experience it; "the King of fruits."
ESCARGOT
(France) garden snails
(Arctic Alaska) raw fat from sea mammals
Bull Penis
(Asia) Hmmm.....
Some of us look at a bull’s penis and think “Wow, that is a large penis. I better stay away from that. ” Others, in Taiwan, for instance, look at it and think Man, I’m gettin’ hungry.
Rice Bugs
They are called "rice bugs because they eat rice. They don't eat the insects, but rather pop the heads off and suck the rice out. Disgusting!
Pacha
Pacha only reveals its terror gradually. Sure, maybe you can get around the fact that you're eating face.
But, the more you eat it, the more bone is revealed, until you give a final burp and set your cutlery down beside a grinning ivory skull. Its hollow eye sockets stare back at you with a look of grim damnation.
"Burp while ye may," the sockets say, "for the same fate will happen to you--and all too soon."
We wonder why the Iraqis keep blowing themselves up? Wouldn't you, if every evening meal was a festival of death?
