Of Devouring the Uncanny

How does one eat a sea slug? A cockroach?

Surely not all have the appetite for such cuisines. What if you were invited to indulge in a sumptuous dish of fried cockroaches out of courtesy, what would you do? Maybe you would just directly stuff the thing in your mouth and swallow it even without chewing. Then, you would end up vomiting all over the place – so much for courtesy!

Each country has its own delicacy that foreigners of that country find impossible to swallow, much more chew. Let us take a short whirlwind trip and let us scan the menu of weird foods found in some countries.

In Indonesia, they eat monkey toes off the bone. Surely, they have never heard of the rumors of the EBOLA originating from our primate friends. Well, if ever they have had, the toes might be just too delicious to put off.

If you have always been fascinated by Dracula and have fancied of becoming a vampire but the only thing that stops you from doing so is that you could not swallow blood, try living in Hungary. They slit pig’s throats there, collect its blood in a frying pan and fry the blood with scrambled eggs. If you prefer to eat blood raw, try living with the Masai in Africa. They thrive on milk and fresh blood from their livestock.

If you think mothers’ milk is only best for babies until two to three years old, chefs in Changsha of the southern Hunan province in China would strongly oppose to that. There, they serve dishes cooked with human breast milk. Eating while experiencing the unconditional love of mothers (not yours, of course) is definitely something to think about.

In some places in the southern part of the USA in Georgia and in Alabama, “kaolin” (clay) has become a specialty, especially among pregnant women. In Africa, clay is also dug and sold in the market-place and is believed to be very rich in minerals.

Though these things might be foreign to some people who do not live in the places where these foods are served, there are also those who find the delicacies very normal even if they too are foreigners of the places serving those meals.

No matter how we put it or in whatever angle we see it, though these kinds of food may not be something that tempts everybody’s palate, they still serve the purpose of ingestion – they give the stomach the feeling of fullness and provide (whether you believe it or not) nutrition. Put that scowl from your face away for a while and put your salivary glands into use. Devour the world’s weirdest meals, put your guts to the test, and with every spoonful of monkey toes, blood or mother’s-milk-laced dish you ingest, remember that one’s concept of the inedible might be another man’s dish of delight or, in some cases, survival.