Ceviche

For the past couple of months my husband and I have made it a habit to try new restaurants every friday afternoon when he is off of work and 3/4 kids are in school. Yesterday we decided to go to a Peruvian restaurant I'd read about. It was a long drive but most of the good places are. We ordered some fried yucca (which the waiter pronounced joo-kah) with a very nice sauce that I couldn't begin to say or spell as an appetizer and ceviche as our entree (chicken bites for the munchkin). The yuccas were excellent and I definitely recommend them. The ceviche mixto we ordered was a combo of raw fish, squid, mussels and shrimp marinated in lime juice and served with onions, corn, sweet potatoes and seasoning. It was very good however a bit on the sour side because of the lime juice. I will say in its defense though that I'm a super taster so I have issues eating anything that is very hot, sweet, bitter or sour. It was probably only too sour for me. Mason didn't have any complaints at all. The texture of the fish and seafood was absolutely perfect. I was afraid the squid would be too rubbery which is always a disappointment since I so love squid, but it was wonderful. As far as drinks went, a nice mango juice for Mia, a Sprite for Mason and an Inca Kola for me. The Inca Kola was delish, tasting somewhat like a cream soda or Big Red, and looking just like cream soda. Yum yum! I couldn't take a picture of the food in the restaurant so I took a photo of it in the to-go box I brought home.

Strange Snacks

I was at the local asian food market this weekend and saw some strange snacks I thought would be interesting to try. They had a few others exotic flavors also that I may try next time, but I figured it looked odd enough with just the sesame and green bean type that I didn't need to make it worse by adding the others with it. On a future visit however, I will buy some. The green bean kind actually didn't taste bad at all, but the texture of the whole beans in the frozen popsicle was odd, especially when the skin of the bean came off as you slurped it. The sesame was a very different taste and texture than I expected, you had to bite into it and chew, and it seemed to be more like a frozen sesame paste than sesame flavored ice cream. These weren't bad once you got past what you thought it should be and just focused on what it was. My oldest daughter ate two of them so they couldn't be that bad. All in all, I wouldn't go out of my way to eat them again, but they weren't bad either.

Adventurous Eating in China pt 5

When we weren't horrifying our fellow american travelers in China with our extreme diets, we tried a multitude of exquisite restaurants that served more normal, though not exactly common fare. One restaurant in particular that we really enjoyed was on the island we were staying, close to our hotel. They are world famous for their pigeons. The secret recipe is so closely guarded that we were only allowed to order one per person, and we could absolutely not take them out of the restaurant with us. They were very nice, and tasted like roasted cornish game hens. My favorite dish at this particular restaurant was the eel with rose sauce. I had tried to make eel here at home, but, like the small snake in my earlier post, it was mostly bones and very hard to eat. The eel served here must have been very large. They were filleted in a way that they were almost in a flower shape and the rose sauce was drizzled on top. It was simply to die for. Other restaurants nearby that we tried served us dishes such as squid (a favorite of mine even back home, I'll eat squid any time any way!), chickens with the head and legs attached, large legs of lamb, soup with baby birds in it (served in a coconut shell), frogs, chicken butts and other wonderful cantonese dishes. We very much wanted to try the bird's nest soup and turtle soup, but we were a bit short on cash by the time we saw them on the menu. We do plan to try them next time though so stay tuned to see how that goes when we travel back to China this summer! baby bird soup Lamb Legs Baby Bird

Adventurous Eating in China pt 4

Our 4th eating adventure, and the last truly strange one, was at a noodle house in downtown Guangzhou. It was decorated very nicely and the waitstaff wore traditional clothing that represented the area in Northern China were the food was from. We were expecting really nothing more than noodle dishes, but our guides surprised us one last time. They ordered us blood sausage (very similar to the gelled blood from earlier, only in a sausage casing instead of sliced from a mold) and something called pig jelly. I'm still not sure how that was made, but it was a clear jello type substance with bits of pork fat inside. It had absolutely no taste though. The biggest surprise of the night was the dish of dark brown meat in a sauce, which we were informed was donkey meat. It tasted very good, however I've been yelled at by a few people for eating this because they said its too closely related to horse meat and horses are our friends. Donkey meat Blood sausage and pig jelly

Adventurous Eating in China pt 3

Our next eating adventure was at a very nice restaurant, whose name I don't know, in Guangzhou. When our food arrived it all looked very yummy. There was no mistaking the large silkworm pods in one dish, but at this point and with every culinary adventure thereafter, I figured once you've eaten solid blood cakes, there really isn't too much you can do that is worse, so I dug in. We also had another dish of what looked to be just a rice dish, but on closer inspection was actually rice with cooked rice worms. Additional plates contained fish lips, crab eggs, and snails. The fish lips were a bit tricky since they were actually the fish face bones and eyes, not lips as you generally think of them. I admit, I admitted defeat when it came to chomping on a fish eyeball, but Mason ate his with no issue. Mason remarked that the silkworms tasted a lot like peanuts and he was right. They were very good! I couldn't much taste the rice worms, but they were not bad. I would eat it all again, and next time, I would try the fish eyes! Fish Lips Rice Worms Silk Worms Fish Eyes

Adventurous Eating in China pt 2

Our second unusual eating adventure in Guangzhou was at a hot pot restaurant. I had heard of hot pot before and knew it was sort of like our fondue here, and I was anxious to try it. We got a table in the back. The table itself had a large pot in the center, in the table, not on top of it, with an even smaller pot inside it. The large pot contained a very spicy liquid, which looked and smelled similar to what crawfish are boiled in here in Texas. I am not big on spicy foods though so I cant tell you what it tasted like. Mason and our guides used it and Mason said it was very hot. The pot in the middle contained a mild stock and tasted very good. This is what I used to dip my meats into. Our guides once again ordered, since the menus were entirely in Chinese. We told them to not let us know what anything we ate was until after we'd eaten it. We wanted to try new things, but were still a tad leery of it all. The server brought out a large quantity of different kinds of meat...not meat as we know it in the states, but obviously different parts of the insides of animals. We used our chopsticks to pick up a piece of meat and toss it into the stock. After a minute or so you take the meat back out and its done well enough that you can eat it. It was very delicious and I am hoping to return to a hot pot restaurant again when we are back in China. Once our meal was over, our guides told us what we had been eating. Amongst the different dishes were duck kidneys, cow stomach lining, goose stomach, pig intestines, and cow livers. Also, my guide asked if I knew what a certain meat was, and I said yes, I assumed it was some sort of liver. No, he said, it wasn't liver. I was stumped so I gave in. "BLAT" he said. "What? Blat? Bladder?" I questioned. "No, not bladder. BLAT. BLAT. B-L-O-D. BLAT" He replied. "Blood? It can't be. Its solid! Blood is liquid!" My guide laughed. "Its cooked and then cut into strips." Oh my. It certainly didnt taste like I thought blood would. I've cut my mouth before, and though this cooked blood did have a mineral taste (which is why I thought it was liver), it didn't taste as coppery and metallic and I thought. All in all, a very strange but delicious experience!

Adventurous Eating in China

I really wish I had taken more photos and kept a better record of our culinary journey in China (7-06). I did, however, take some photos and notes which I am more than happy to share with you now. We will be returning to China this summer (07), and you can bet I will be documenting everything then! Our adventure began when Mason, my husband, mentioned to our guide that he had seen something on TV about drinking snake venom. Bob, the guide, knew of a place where they served snake venom and offered to take us. I was too afraid, at that time, to try the snake venom (which was served in a glass with the snake's bile and I believe the gall bladder, though I can double check that as I am not positive) but Mason and Bob (pictured below) took part in it. We decided to order some snake from the menu to go along with the drinks, and I did try this. There were two types of snake served, one large and one small type (both pictured). The larger snake tasted much better, as the smaller one was mainly bones and hard to eat. Seeing how we were open to trying these foods, our guides decided to order some more things for us to sample. Soon we were introduced to chicken feet, glazed duck tongues, goat meat (which we had already sampled back in the states) and some other dishes that I have now forgotten and am kicking myself for. At first I was too squeamish to try anything, but Mason was eating everything they brought out. At that time I decided, I was in China and I was going to act like it! I summoned all of my courage and tried the foods in front of me. I didn't care much for the chicken feet, but I realized later I was eating them wrong. I was biting on the toes, and you are supposed to pull the toes apart and chew the flavor out of it, not eat the feet. The duck tongues were very flavorful, but had a bone in the center which I was not expecting. Our guides were delighted we were such fun to dine with, and we made plans to go again the next day to try other new things. Snake Venom Large Snakes Small Snakes

New Blog!

Hello everyone! My name is Marsha, and my husband and I are what you would call adventurous eaters, hence the name. My husband has always been more adventurous than I on the food front, but a trip to China last year changed me forever. We were in a city called Guangzhou in Southern China, which was formerly known as Canton (as in Cantonese). While we were there, our guides enjoyed teasing us by putting one "strange" food after another on our plates. Unlike most americans they encounter, we took the challenge and yes, even I ate everything they dished out. Instead of grossing me out, it turned me on to the world of exotic cuisine. Although there are some things I still will probably never try (unless a large sum of money is involved!) such as spiders and cockroaches, I am pretty okay with trying anything once. Some of the things I blog about will seem tame to other adventurous eaters, and other things might seem a bit odd to most. This is not intended to be a blog to disgust or horrify anyone, so if some of the foods we try don't seem up to par on the fear factor scale, note that is not our purpose. My goal in writing this blog is to help others see that just because something looks or sounds strange, or because you've never tried it before, doesn't mean its not wonderful!