Re: Weird Food - Care to share?
 

I had it chilled; it came to me from a friend, not direct. It wasn't nearly as strong this morning (on cereal) which makes me think either a) it's in the cream, which will get prepared anyway, probably in a sauce or b) it went away mysteriously.

Edit: I am so going to try making butter and cheese both, if I'm lucky enough to get raw milk on a regular basis. Google has shown me how. *solemn nod*

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Are you kidding????? He's marinated (marinating) in Single Malt Scotch!!! That ought to tenderize him.

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:ha::ha: like pickled okra!

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Haha. I'm mequite chicken!!

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I was more referring to the lack of meat.

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You could have lied and made a filet mignon reference but ........................"OH NO" (John Belushi voice) Not my pals !!! Chong it's true ......I'm tenderized
lorax..................You are a charmer....... lack of...........oh I'm not going there either !!!

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Wooo-o-o-o-o-o-o . . . . . Hope, that didn't sting too much, Bob. I was really rooting for you.

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OK, I'm going to do the right thing here, and re-rail this thread. Thus far we've heard odd things relating to meat and its consumption, but what about the weirdness of fruits and vegetables?

I'll kick that off with something locally called a "Battery." To make this, slice a ripe avocado in half, turfs the pit, fill the cavity with raw brown sugar (called Panela here; the closest US equivalent is probably demerrera), add three drops of aguardente, mash it all up with a spoon, and slurp it back. It's an acquired taste, but it lives up to its name.

A single avocado eaten in this fashion provides enough energy to continue hiking for another 6-8 hours, and since avocadoes grow wild in many parts of the country, the only thing a hiker really needs to carry is a small bag of panela and a flask of aguardiente, neither of which take up much space in a daypack.

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Hee! Re-rail it is.

Kiwano horned melons are truly bizarre. They're spiky, and instead of melon flesh, they have slimy little fruit-sacs like some kind of cross between a pomegranate and boogers, and they taste like kiwi-cucumber-lime. Also, they shoot bright green juice everywhere when cut open - not what I think of as a melon at all.

That said, they're pretty good.

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In the old days they saved bacon grease. My Grandpa used to spread it (chilled) on rye bread & then sprinkle a little salt on it & eat it like bread & butter. He also poured sugar into a lettuce leaf, rolled it up & ate it. He lived to be 98. He was never in a hospital untill then. He fell & broke his hip so my aunt & uncle took him to a hospital & he was prolly scared to death & died of heart attack there.

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Wanna really tick off an old Southern woman? Just pour bacon grease in her fish grease!!!

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Never heard of fish grease. What do they use it for?

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Fryin' fish :P

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OK, you got me there Pete :)
I figure if bacon grease comes out of frying bacon, then fish grease comes OUT of fish. So, where does fish grease come from - what is it? Just regular cooking oil?

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Sure, but with all the wholesome goodness of fried up fish juice and crispy corn meal.

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Patty's question and Pete's response bring me back to when I was about 10 years old and just learning to cook. We use the cooking oil several times until it gets really dark brown. But the rules of saving them followed a hierarchy. Oil used for frying veggies, nanners, or eggs are used over and over for those particular uses. But once they are used to fry fish or meat, the leftover is saved into pertinent separate containers. When oil for frying fish becomes low, the oil for meat is added first, then if still short, the oil from the veggies is added next, rather than adding new oil outright. However, if oil for frying meat becomes low, only the veggie oil, then new oil are added. If oil for frying veggies, etc., becomes low, only new oil is added. Oil used for sauteing may be from new oil, veggie oil, or meat oil, depending on the dish. Once oil is used for fish, that all that it will be used.

My wife won't let me cook much anymore, so sometimes, I do really miss cooking. I remember how good it felt when I insisted that I cook for our FVW Post's Friday night snacks, just before Thanksgiving last year. The members who were there couldn't believe it was me who cooked the soup. It was chicken-asparagus-pasta soup served with garlic bread. Many of them were surprised with the chicken-asparagus combination. Anybody want to hire an unemployed engineer for a cook?

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" Bacon grease is proof that god loves us" I think Ben Franklin said that .......or maybe it was me. I'm going on vac next week to an area with limited supplies. The first thing we do is cook up a big breakfast and save the grease for the rest of the week. Been doing this for years and always come home having lost weight. Good stuff.

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Ah, the realm of odd sandwiches. My Grampa instilled a great love of butter and black pepper sandwiches (on fresh bread, still hot from the oven), as well as the nasty habit of pouring out a large bowl of maple syrup and then mopping it out with fresh bread. I could never bring myself to do the bacon grease thing, though. Pig products do funny things to me.

On the concept of culture-shocking:

I constantly find myself amazed that Ecuadoreans haven't figured out Borscht and other things that I as a food-afficionado expat Canuck take for granted. Pancakes and Waffles are dessert foods here, and nobody ever thinks of baking anything. Hence, last time I had friends over and served them a stuffed, oven-roasted chicken, they went nuts. They couldn't believe that it was as simple as putting the dang thing in the horno with some veggies and a bit of water. They've also never heard of biscuits or dumplings (to the point that Ecuadorean Spanish doesn't even have words for these concepts; I have to say "Pan Casera" (homemade bread) and "Pan de Seco" (stew bread), and I shudder inwardly at making my first batch of bannock, because I'll never be able to hear the end of it. Equally, my friends were aghast on my last fishing trip when I just gutted out the trout and stuffed it with limes and herbs, then wrapped it in mud and threw it in the coals. Despite this being the proper way to cook a breadfruit, they had never extended it to fish.

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My husband loves to take a bowl of maple syrup, stir it up with peanut butter, and eat the resulting mess with a spoon. I prefer crackers for my syrupy-goodness delivery method.

I save bacon grease (or more likely, the grease from a roast.) There is no particular heirarchy to cooking grease, but then, we don't reuse it - though that would probably be more environmentally friendly..

We also render down bones of almost anything (fish, poultry, beef, goat) and freeze the resulting broth in separate containers. Fish broth is good for other fish, beef and goat for rice and vegetables, poultry for cooking almost anything that needs broth, and all of it's good for noodle soup. I don't know if that qualifies as weird; it's such a staple that I can't imagine not doing it.

Brilliant.

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Raw juvenile crabs in soy sauce
There's something which the older generation of the Teochew Chinese do here;
They buy up the small crabs that are about 1inch in body size which are culled from the main catch. Then they will just soak it in soy sauce and let it marinate for a while like a couple of hours. It is eaten, shell and all. What's left, is eaten over the next day or so. This is something I have not tried cos to me, it's too darn salty with the soy sauce! It seems it is eaten as a health food.