Food Meme

Tai Haku at Earth, Wind and Water just posted a meme that I too couldn't resist. It is a list of foods that you cut and paste then bold the ones that you have tried. The original instructions suggested crossing out the ones you would never try but there just wasn't anything on the list I wouldn't consider tasting and some I definitely look forward to trying. Like Tai Haku, I added a few comments in parentheses behind some of the foods.

1. Venison (pronghorn, mule deer, white-tailed deer, caribou, bighorn sheep, elk, moose, bison....all made into many fine dishes. My favorite recipe might be reconciliation chile made from pronghorn. You can find the recipe in Steve Bodio's book On the Edge of the Wild.)
   
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros (I think I know what I might have for breakfast tomorrow!)
   
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile (I marked this one even though technically it was alligator not crocodile)
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp (Dad made great fish cakes from carp when he was still bowhunting for fish)
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi (Made this at home after watching Bend it Like Beckham - the DVD came with a recipe and a great clip of the director making aloo gobi with her mother and aunt).
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries (strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, huckleberries.. I miss being able to pick and eat wild berries - one of the drawbacks of living on the prairie. Oh and my grandmother's wild blueberry pie - a favorite memory of late summer trips to Minnesota)
    
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn - otherwise known as head cheese.
    
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava (I won the Men Who Cook contest one year with a recipe perfected by my wife)
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar (even better is number 45 with a very good cigar! Haven't done that for a long time).
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat (not yet but it certainly sounds good.)
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat's milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more (mmm..)
    
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
    
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald's Big Mac Meal (SuperSize Me pretty much ended any lingering desire to do this one again)
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini (Laura's favorite)
    
58. Beer above 8%
    
59. Poutine (a couple months on a French Canadian Icebreaker? - you bet)
    
60. Carob chips (only made me appreciate #90 even more)
    
61. S'mores
62. Sweetbreads (surprisingly mushroom like - got to try this one thanks to Steve and Libby)
    
63. Kaolin (Like Tai Haku I am not sure why this one is on the list. I just know it as a type of clay and I am not real geophagic)
64. Currywurst
65. Durian (been intrigued for years - one of these days I just have to try it)
    
66. Frogs' legs
    
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost or brunost (not sure about this one but probably. The more I say the name the more it sounds familiar. Many of the original homesteaders in this part of MT were Norwegian and lutefisk and lefse are well known foods around here so there is a good chance I have had this cheese before. In fact, there is a small lefse producer, the Lefse Shack, located in Opheim, a small town just north of here on the Canadian border, that makes and distributes lefse throughout the country).
    
75. Roadkill (why not - the pheasant wasn't there when I went to town and there when I came back a short time later. Great meal and the when the rest of the ferret survey crew found out where I got it, I didn't have to share with anyone!)
    
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong (one of my favorite teas - probably has something to do with the same taste buds that cause me to like the smokey, peaty scotches too)
    
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict (my favorite breakfast)
    
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant
85. Kobe beef (would much rather have good Montana grass fed beef anyway)
    
86. Hare (Montana surf and turf - Walleye and Cottontail Rabbit - I know, technically not hare but close enough)
    
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate (Criollo, Carenero, Trinitario, Forestero, ahhh. If you are interested in chocolate check out The New Taste of Chocolate: A Cultural & Natural History of Cacao with Recipes)
    
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano (I was first served mole by a fellow ferret researcher from Mexico. She made some for us one fall and I have loved it since.)
    
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee (sounds like something I will have to try)
    
100. Snake (My research partner Rich Reading and I tried Prairie Rattlesnake one summer to see what the fuss was about. It was about nothing.)
     

I could add a few to this list like giant barnacle or picorocos (at a dockside restaurant in Puerto Montt Chile - it tasted like lobster) and other assorted animals of one type or another. Like Tai Haku, I am not going to tag anyone, but take a shot at the list if you would like.