Yesterday I proclaimed my affection for my Microplane zester. It perfectly extracts every bit of zest from any citrus and leaves the white pith behind. It also perfectly grates Parmesan cheese. It's so easy to use that I can let my 4 year old zest an orange for me. A Microplane is a excellent kitchen tool to keep in the utensil drawer. And I love mine so much that I want you to have one too.
I am feeling generous. I am giving away a Microplane zester. Leave a comment by evening time Saturday, January 9. In your comment, tell me the most disgusting/weird thing you have ever eaten. And tell me if it was surpisingly good or expectedly terrible.
My answer? I think the weirdest thing I have eaten has got to be tripe. I know, it's not that weird, but it is for a white girl. The menudo was delicious, but the tripe made me want to hurl. Just the look of it alone is enough for me to walk away.
111 comments:
Head Cheese...I was tricked into it!
While in Jerusalem, we ate fish eyes but they were tiny and mostly just to say we did it. On my mission I was served 'soup' that was simply broth and about 7 chicken livers. SO. NASTY. The smooth/dense texture- blech, enough to make me gag a little just writing about it. Missionaries around the world have lots of heave-inducing experiences, I'm sure.
Parmesan and citrus zest, however? Sign me up!
When I was on a mission trip in South Africa, the local church made us wildebeast sloppy joes. Seriously! Ground up wildebeast, ketchup, and two slices of white bread. They were trying to make us an American meal. So sweet!! They really weren't all that bad. Pretty gamey though.
Cow tongue!... A few times!!! I was surprised that each time was deliciously tender - grilled and/or fried, sliced w/ a couple different sauces and side dishes.
Marmite. For those that don't know it's a toast spread that pretty much everyone uses. I cannot explain the grossness of it. I think it's probably how it would feel if I decided to eat pureed gravel.
I went to eat sushi and wanted to try something different as an appetizer. I decided to get the jelly fish salad. it contained jelly fish, ginger dressing and cucumbers on the bottom for crunch. The texture was not as bad as i thought, but I don't think i would have liked it if there were no cucumbers to offset the slimy texture. The ginger made it taste pretty good, but the fact it was cold was off putting. I guess that is expected for raw jellyfish. It is not something that I would personally order again, but if it were given to me the eat I would not push it away.
It has to be beef heart. I was at a Peruvian restaurant with my husband and extended family. We had the most deliciously marinated steak on kabobs. Once we were done with dinner, my husband asked me what I thought of everything. I told him how much I liked the steak for appetizers. He then told me I had eaten beef heart! I am glad he told me afterwards because I would have never tried it!
probably the half masticated cinnamon bear that just came out of my boy's mouth
Let's see...I've eaten rattlesnake and it wasn't bad. I've also had squirrel once and it was horrid.
Chicken hearts -- not my favorite. :-)
I'm a little bit of a food wimp. During my trip to China I am sure I ate something questionable but ignorance is bliss, right?
Um. How about the most awful thing I've gotten someone ELSE to eat? ... When I was 12 and my youngest sister was 4 I talked her into taking a bite of ginger root. This was only 2 days after talking her into eating a spoonful of pepper. SO MEAN! Especially since I adored her!
Anyway ... the weirdest thing I've eaten has probably been raw oysters ... I'm not a fan.
p.s. I'm loving the soup guide you offered a week or so ago. SO handy dandy!
Chocolate covered ants. They just confirmed what I'd always suspected--everything's delicious when enrobed in a thick layer of milk chocolate.
A mealworm, fried and seasoned. It was surprisingly tasty - a bit like popcorn. I'm not sure I would do it again though. It is hard to get over the bug-eating factor.
First night in Phoenix we went to five star resort and my uncle ordered rattle snake for the table. Everyone said it tasted like chicken--I had a hard time making it go down instead of up my esophagus. And no, it did not taste like chicken.
I ate Sushi for the first time in Hawaii...I liked it ALOT...until I was told that a California Roll is not "REAL" Sushi. I was then presented with a plate of the real stuff and from then on I opted out on Sushi forever.
Totally my answer is Sushi. I had always shyed away from it because of the "raw fish" aspect of it. But I went out to dinner with someone once and since then I have been hooked! LOVE SUSHI!
marie.moser@comcast.net
coleslaw.
NUCU!!! its a BIG big winged ant that comes out when its raining down in Chiapas, Mexico. Its fried and stinks while cooking it, but it tastes like peanuts, you can just put lime and chilli, and have it as a snack or eat it in a taco.
The most disgusting thing to me is hollandaise sauce. Never ever again.
Oysters. Years ago as my hubbies family is so wild about them and evry christmas time they buy them. And as i have never had they all told me atleast I should try it before i tell I don't like them.
Well for me it was like eating thick snot.
Now every year during the christmas time i look with disgust when they all enjoy the oysters.
I had homemade orange chicken at a neighbor's house and was looking forward to it....then I almost died trying to eat it without barfing. It was totally unexpected and disgusting. And I love orange chicken, but I don't know what the heck that stuff was.
oxtail stew... A favorite of the husbands... It wasn't terrible. But nothing to write home about.
Sweetbreads (I ordered them willingly) and the first few bites were rather tasty, but then the rubbery texture really got to me. Glad I tried them, would recommend others check it out, but will never eat them again.
When I went to Germany some friends and I ordered bread and cheese as an appetizer. It came with a variety of cheeses. We didn't realize that it also came with butter for the bread. Biting directly into a cube of butter when you're expecting cheese is quite a shock. I love butter, but not by itself!
julien @ alumni.clemson.edu
I love cheese, and when I was given an opportunity to sample brie at Costco, they gave me a big chunk of the rind...tasted like dish soap. Ughhh...
A cricket -- it's a long story! I have been wanting a Microplane zester, so maybe something good will finally come from eating that cricket.
Oh, I love microplanes. Love them. Thanks for giving one away.
I ate raw cow tongue in Korea and it was expectedly terrible. It tasted like I was eating and swallowing a bloody nose. Ugh. I think I need to go dry heave just thinking about it. Thanks a lot.
Cat food. My mom gave me $5 to eat it.
I know that this isn't too bizarre, but the weirdest thing I ever ate was alligator. We were on a family trip to Clearwater, FL, and I was tricked into eating it. And, as cliche as this is, it was JUST LIKE CHICKEN. Bummer.
gimme, gimme, gimme, a microplane! I have a great lemon tree and it desires a microplane! I am pretty boring and don't eat too many weird things. I guess the weirdest thing was snails. Not to bad to taste, but the texture was awful!
Sauerkraut is by far the nastiest thing I have ever tasted. I almost didn't even taste it, because just the smell of it started my gag reflex. I know it's not necessarily a weird food, but in my mind it's nastiness should make it weird.
Years back we were visiting the island of Oahu and eating at a Luau. I saw what looked like fresh salsa and piled it onto my plate. When I took my first bite I gagged and scraped it off my tongue. It was NOT salsa, it was Lomi-lomi salmon. It was horrible because I was expecting salsa - tomatoes, onions, bell peppers, etc. not raw super salty salmon with a few onions. To this day I can't stomach it.
candied, chocolate covered bacon. If it had been crisper, it might have had a chance. However, it was gummy and was disgusting.
I also was served tripe on my mission. I tried it and gagged right there at the table!
When I was little, my grandpa cooked some shark for dinner. I don't remember what it tasted like, but I do remember that it was very rubbery and I had to chew each bite forever. Haven't had it since.
Fried calamari. My ex-husband tricked me by saying it was fried onions.
Pickle juice. Perhaps it's not all that disgusting if you happen to like pickles (which I don't) and if you're expecting pickle juice and not lime Kool-Aid (which my mother claimed it was).
I will never forget it was octopus. It was while I was looking at colleges with my father and I was out to dinner with him and a few other relatives.
I do not much care for seafood and this was a clincher on that.
msgb245 at gmail dot com
Kangaroo in Australia. And I still feel bad when I watch Winnie-the-Pooh as a result.
Souseloaf. It's kind of like bologna, but it contains the parts that aren't good enough to be bologna or even hot dogs.
I am totally regretting asking all of you about the grossest thing you have eaten. It is so disgusting. Comment after comment in my inbox is filled with nasty food. Blech. But I will deal with it. I can't wait to read all of these to Ethan. He is going to gag.
I only had to go as far as the Stake Pioneer Day celebration a few years back......where someone thought it would be a fab idea to roast a BUFFALO!! Aren't they like, protected, or something? Anyway, they passed it off like a BBQ beef sandwich.......urg. I couldn't get past the thought of the bison roaming free on the plains of Yellowstone......or the fatty, nasty meat.
Mystery meat kabob in West Africa. After a few bites, noticed it still had fur on it. Yikes.
At my sister's wedding, a traditional chinese dinner - everything was wierd. There was not one thing that was "normal" to me. The grossest food that night was shark fin soup = slimy & gelatinny & politically incorrect.
Calamari. Nope didn't like it.
I would have to say fried fish eggs. My grandfather used fry them up after he went fishing if he found any while he was cleaning the fish. The thought grosses me out, but my grandmother said went I was little I used to love them.
I went to eat sushi w/the family and I'm not that big of a fan and really- it was not my thing.
aww crap...i thought of something grosser. my former in-laws used to regularly fix breaded & fried chicken gizzards. imagine my surprise as I innocently munched on what I thought were harmless "chicken nuggets"........when they told me they were "special nuggets"....lol. I got yer special nuggets.....riiiiight here.......
Frog legs - tasted like chicken. Not bad except that I could still see the itty bitty toes and that was kinda gross.
BTW - I tried the Daniel's Fire Roasted salsa that you talked about a while back. SO GOOD! I was wrong - there IS good bottled salsa. Thanks for the tip.
Well, I'm not a risk-taker so if it doesn't include sugar, I won't put it in my mouth. However, someone did talk me into eating calamari once. I wasn't a fan!
Jalapeno Jam or was it Jelly?! My grandma bought it from some Amish people. I threw up in my mouth! It was nasty!
Mushrooms and Mayonnaise. Both are foul.
I am not a seafood lover but I was trying to be open-minded and tried sushi, I could not get it down. My family loves to tease me about it.
Raw seafood salad. Octopus - and I could FEEL the tentacles. SO GROSS.
Pickled pigs foot!! I tried this on a dare and was prepared to vomit it up if necessary. Surprisingly it wasn't as bad as I was expecting. It tasted like really fatty, undercooked bacon!
is it bad that I've tried and liked most of the items mentioned here? Well, Argentina is known for beef, so what was the wierdest? Had to be the cow brains. I mean, we tried to get and roast an entire head, but someone else bought it before we could, so we only got brains. Not bad though, rolled up in some cannelones, I thought they were quite tasty. Now I just need that microplane to put some rind on my chilled monkey brains, muahahaaaaa
i tried crickets in seminary one time. not too horrible, very crunchy, never again.
What a perfect giveaway! I LOVE microplanes!!!! And I am in desperate need of one! One of my boys ruined mine using it outside to shred sticks! AUGh--my life with 5 sons, what can i say? The strangest thing I ever ate was rattlesnake. And it tasted like chicken:) Seriously!
How about the most disgusting thing I've ever made? A long time ago, in an attempt to broaden my recipe horizons, I ventured to prepare a lime chicken dish. My neighbor had given me the recipe, and the sauce called for two limes. I was skeptical, but threw them in the blender anyways...rind and all. The resulting meal looked beautiful, but taste something like bile. Come to find out, my neighbor meant THE JUICE of two limes. OH! You'd think I'd figure that out...but no. I'm a retard. That lime chicken is the only thing in eight years of marriage that my husband has refused to eat. He's a good man, and I've thankfully come a long way.
There's my sad, sad story. Now gimmie a zester. :)
ooo! oo! i really want a microplane!
weirdest thing i ever ate: let's just say that when i was in russia i was presented with something unidentifiable many times. and when i say unidentifiable, i mean i still have no clue what a lot of that stuff was. a lot of the food we had there was so good! pelmeni and borscht and tons of other good stuff, but yikes! so when you ask, i'd like to be able to answer, but the answer is that i have no idea what that stuff was!
I have three. But when you read them, you have to keep in mind that I am a quasi-vegetarian. I only eat chicken. I've had frog legs. Not too bad. Tasted like fishy chicken but harder to chew. I've had squid. Pretty disgusting. I couldn't even swallow it. And my South African friend gave me some kind of jerky. I think it might have been giraffe. And I wouldn't eat any of the three again. I'll stick with chicken and tofu.
I was a judge for the chili contest at work. There was one chili that smelled nasty and tasted worse. It smelled spoiled. Found out later the guy had trapped a beaver and made beaver chili. Beaver Chili is just so wrong on so many levels!! lol
Fried calamari I know I need to get move crazy
A lot of the answers make me laugh
Wierd?.....Maybe not to some, but because we're talking about a microplane here, I thought I'd share this. My sister and I tend to dare each other to eat strange concoctions when we're out at restaurants. While at Cheesecake factory, her dare to me was.... I had to eat the WHOLE lemon wedge floating in my water glass. IT. WAS. DISCUSTING.!!! I've tried to zest with a cheesegrater because I just have nothing else. Please pick me!!
This is really tame, but calamari is the weirdest thing I've eaten. It was surprisingly good. I never have the opportunity to eat really weird things, so calamari is as exotic as it gets.
The oddest thing I've ever eaten is probably mochi stuffed squid, when I lived in Japan. It's a small squid stuffed with cooked and blended up rice, sewn up with a toothpick and boiled in some kind of sauce. I ate one and gave my second away when my host wasn't watching. It was pretty gross.
Raw octopus tentacles and all. Gross. Maybe it is good if you aren't pregnant? (I'll never know...)
I had sweet breads in a pasta dish once. We had the tasting menu (one of my favorite things to do) at a fancy Italian restaurant in Flagstaff. I was pretty sure the little blobs were sweet breads, but asked the waitress after I tried them just to make sure. I wouldn't say the taste was memorable, but I was pretty grossed out for a good while afterward.
I tried escargot once. The texture was just way too weird for me, but I kept an open mind about it and tried it anyway.
angelilee91@gmail dot com
Wow, lots of people have eaten a lot of gross stuff. I did eat a fried meal worm in for 5 extra credit points in a biology class. And just tonight at a really yummy Brazilian restaurant in Boise I ate some of a chicken heart. It wasn't too bad as far as flavor and texture, but knowing it was a chicken heart made me want to gag. Which is weird because I eat anything.
In Paris, I had horse and I try not to remember the taste. It wasn't awful but I wouldn't eat it again. It's another reason I won't return to Paris without knowing how to speak French! utgal2004[at]yahoo[dot]com
caviar when i was 10... i was disgusted at first bite. i still don't know why i put it in my mouth.
I used to have to eat all sorts of odd things in culinary school, but I think the oddest thing I ate was on a business trip of my husband's to Taipei, I got some squid ink bread from the bakery and it tastes good at first and then you get this weird oily residue in your mouth from the sheer amount of the ink they use to get the bread to be black, ewww!
I tried and liked ostrich. Maybe it was the way it was cooked.
chocolate covered grasshoppers. not too bad, but the texture ruins it.
Alright, I've got a couple. As the youngest in my family, I was sort of the guniea pig/sad sack tag-along for my sister so many, many times I was 'forced' to eat things to stay in the club and not face permanent exile. Motor oil, a moth (still alive), she even tried pee at one point but I drew the line there, even though she tried to pass it off as 'apple cider.' Sick.
Anyway, the worst thing I ate on my mission in Denmark was some seal that some people brought back from their trip to Greenland. The taste was weird, the texture was 'thready' and I couldn't get passed the picture of a baby seal in my head. Sad.
Pretty please can I have a zester? :)
Hmm, I usually am quite sure of what I'm eating before I try it, so have nothing too crazy. But it must be octopus salad at a friend's wedding. I like calamari so thought it'd be close...nope.
Horse Boston Cut Steak....Best steak that I can remember
Escargo........I dated a rich republican in highschool, otherwise I would never have known what it was!
a chocolate covered cricket. crunchy, yet satisfying.
I don't eat too many weird things. But gotta tell you, when they told me what calamari was (after I'd taken a bite), I was ready to spit it out!
Haggis...YUCK!
tukumisi...which is sea urchin. and it was expectedly terrible. When you bite into a slimy tentacly glob, it separates between your teeth like its forming mini-tukumisis that will slide down your throat and kill you.
cheers! Love the blog!
Catfish Stew - Yuck!
Just found your blog and love it. Eating chicken liver pate without knowing it. I am not an animal organ fan.
I tasted Uni (sea urchin) at a sushi place once and was grossed out!
Nycole
knycks1@aol.com
my baby boy's booger...didn't like it.at.all!
Mine really doesn't compare to some comments above I am looking at but... Peanut butter and pickles sandwich, and yes it was surprisingly good....
i ate a ladybug as a kid. i don't remember what it tasted like, so i guess that means it wasn't too bad.
these days ... split pea soup. the look of it is enough to send me over the edge.
Turtle, on my mission in Florida. Tastes like Chicken
Scrapple - a combination of pork trimmings (aka discards) and flour. It is really common in PA, but since I'm a southern girl I'd never heard of it. I ate it, loved it, then came home and got sick when my grandma told me what it really was. :-(
The weirdest and probably most gross thing I have ever had was goose liver pate...yuck!
Oh, how I long for a microplane zester...
The weirdest thing I've eaten is haggis while I was in Scotland. (I had to try it since I was there, right?) If you didn't think about what it was, it wasn't bad at all. Very spicy and savory.
Frog legs-kind of watery tasting, but not completely gross.
Beef tongue. The flavor was good but the texture was scary.
Love your blog! I found it off of a friends, started reading, and before I knew a whole hour had passed by! The way you write is fun to read and your recipes are exactly what I need to start cooking again (after having a baby and swearing off cooking for the past 3 months or so) Anyway the sickest thing I have ever eaten has got to be octupus. It wasn't that bad in regards to the taste but I felt like I was eating a piece of bubblegum because I had to chew and chew and chew and chew some more. My jaw got a work out.
It would have to be bbq'd oysters. They were surprisingly good.
I was raised overseas as child, and was lucky enough to live on an island that had many nationalalitys living there, and many were Great Cooks!
They could take anything and with the right spices, it would be Awesome!( but you do not always want to know , what you just ate....lol)
This may not be considered a food, but I had the hardest time taking my daily vitamins, they would make sick as a child.
Retsbar2Go AT gmail DOT com
This might not sound weird, but please try and then you'll understand. For my birthday this year I received some chocolate as a gift - which is usually wildy acceptable - but this candy bar, called "Firecracker" or something like that, has in it: sea salt (yum!), chipotle (have had it before in chocolate, little strange) and...pop rock candy. The combination is totally bizarre - at first it tastes good, then as the chocolate slides down your throat your start to feel popping, and then you're left with a weird, hot sensation. It's a very odd experience.
Also, this giveway is so funny to me because I asked for a microplane from my family for Christmas and didn't get one..BUT my fiance attempted (key word) to find me one for my stocking because he knew I really wanted one, and ended up with a microplane-shaped small grater - close, but not quite there. So I'm STILL waiting for my microplane!! Ahh!! (PS - sorry for this LONG comment!!)
I'm a food whimp. The craziest thing I've ever eaten is calamari- quite delicious, but a walk on the wild side for me.
Snake, I was at a restaurant in China and they had cages of live, black snakes that you could pick from (like selecting a lobster). It actually wasn't bad, tasted like spicy chicken.
I would love to win! I am not a picky eater and will most often try anything. Even things that are not pleasant tasting are not disgusting to me...
EXCEPT for... CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES MADE WITH RANCID SHORTENING!! Do you remember that?? You helped me make those cookies!
And one other was some sort of Salmon Gelatin. I tried it on a cruise and didn't know what it was until I bit into it. YUCK! Salmon and gelatin do not belong together!
The worst thing I ever ate was a mixture of scrambled eggs, tofu, and lemon pepper. Three great ingredients, that should NOT be mixed together.
blood sausage...It actully didn't taste too bad till you remembered that you were eating just a bunch of cooked curdled blood. Yum!
Probably a worm.. not a normal answer I realize. I don't really eat many weird things, I'm afraid to try new things, but when my sisters and I were little when working in the field we would dare eachother to eat worms. One time I decided to actually do it. It was pretty gross.
It's a toss up between the cross section of a baked pregnant fish topped with loads of mayonnaise and colorful cake sprinkles OR duck eggs pickled in horse urine. Both were equally unappetizing.
On my mission we had thanksgiving dinner with a Haitian family and before we could eat dinner we had to eat a heaping spoonful of CORNSTARCH. For the most part it was tasteless, but it sure glued my mouth shut for a while!!!!!!
Frog legs! The disgusting part is that I gigged them, cut the legs off, peeled the skin and cooked them myself. Grilled with butter, they tasted just like chicken. I dipped them in ketchup to forget about the process that I had gone through!
Interesting that most (if not all, for I've not read all the comments) of the Grossest Things Ever Eaten are bits of animals.
I'd have to say Sushi. Never again my friend.
Post a Comment