Chow… Just a Saturday (Geezer) Silly
Many here have traveled the world in uniform. This post is/was prompted by an exchange on FB with a young sailor just back in CONUS after a stint in Brussels.
He opined that one of the things he liked about returning was the variety of food he found. It took some time for me to get the neurons firing. At first I was a food fuddy-duddy then I remembered nuoc mam on anything and 33 beer, and Balut. Even after some reflection I am still a bit surprised that he couldn’t find variety in Europe, but that’s just me.
I’ve snacked from street venders in Olongapo and DaNang.
So… what is the strangest thing you’ve eaten? C-RATS and/or MRE’s don’t count.
Caveat: This may well not be the first time I’ve asked. If so….
Category: Geezer Alert!
Monkey-on-a-stick
Kangeroo – very good.
We were doing an exercise in Qatar during the mid-1990’s. Food was provided by our allies, the Qatari Army. No coffee, just tea served at about 400 degrees, with what seemed to be about a pound of sugar per cup. Lunch and dinner had roating schedule of chicken for lunch, goat for dinner, followed the next day goat for lunch, chicken for dinner. Repeat for seven weeks. It was a great way to lose weight, the Qatari Goat Diet. I was inspired to submit an item for the base newspaper listing the Top Ten Slogans From The Qatari Council To Promote Goat Consumption. I’ll dig it up, scan it, and see if it can get posted here.
Week old goat from an open air bazaar, pressure cooked with rice, raisins and afghan salsa on some naan. Served with warm goat yogurt and Zamzam. brown pills are your friend…
Hack Stone #3: Goat? Might be strange if you had spent intimate time with it.
I’ve eaten kangaroo, what I suspect was cat, and a variety of game meats. One of the more interesting of the veggie category is a fermented soy bean dish popular in Japan that very much resembles chunks in mucous. Brains, yep. Don’t have a clue what some things I ate in Iraq were, and that goes for DFAC and meals out with locals. Most of the local fare was quite tasty even when I didn’t know what it was.
Dog in the Philippines
Monkey in Malaysia
Snake and Habu saki in Okinawa
I can’t say the strangest thing, it was all tasty to me. But some of the strangest things I DIDN’T eat were from Korean cart vendors. The conditions were unhygenic, the oil old and rancid, the seacritters didn’t smell any too fresh either.
The only other thing was my year in Saudi immediately after the Kohbar Tower bombing. We were on lockdown the entire time there, couldn’t go to the souks, markets or restaurants on our time off.
As I said, other then that, it was all tasty. That’s one of the reasons I enjoyed the military, for the new and unusual in the countries I was sent to.
Horse meat! In the main dining hall at USCG Training Center, Governors Island, NY. It must have been July or August of 1973.
The MCPO in charge was buying beef which he stole and used at the off base restaurant he owned in the city. Beef prices went sky high while horse was cheap. It was used in pet food and and a lot cheaper than good beef. Actually, we had it in a gravy, like brazed sirloin tips that was quite tasty. The MCPO was arrested leaving the island with a trunk full of beefsteak. No word on what happened to him, but I would bet it was nothing good.
Cat hair. After fifteen years of living with cats, cat hair is a condiment that adds fiber to one’s diet.
And a dog biscuit, on a bet.
Ex-PH2 #10: Can’t let that slide. Cat hair is simply ubiquitous among normal humans. AND I have eaten a dog biscuit out of curiosity. Yesterday, I think.
Korean something-on-a-stick
Raw liver from a freshly slaughtered goat.
Cat-on-a-stick in Okinawa. They said it was chicken. They lied.
Octopus, while vacationing in Tarragona, Spain. Thought it was an onion ring floating in tomato soup. Suspected what it was as soon as bit into it but was afraid to ask until after it was eaten.
Messhall liver wasn’t so much strange as just plain bad. It was baked and I swear you could patch a tire, shingle a roof, or resole your boots with it, but it was damned near inedible.
Sorry, I’m #15
Mystery meat Mid-rats.
jon spencer #17: I call a foul. You had meat for mid-rats? Must be a bubblehead?
Rock Pyton in Baggio, Pi served in a salad.
I had that Korean something-on-a-stick too, my stomach was turning even before it got there. Also had some sort of squid jerky washed down with ginseng soju. That wasn’t a very good choice either.
Balut. Without a doubt, Balut. I was running a field excercise for my hospital unit, ( I was the Ops/Training officer) and the NCO’s had a ‘Fear Factor’ style MWR event. They had a ‘surprise event’ for the units leadership, and the Commander being absent at the moment, I was ‘volunteered’ quite cheerfully by the enlisted for this event ( Balut, for those of you that are lucky enough to not know what it is, is a fertilized, fermented duck egg… Think partially developed and formed embryonic duckling, and yes, before you ask, it’s as bad as it sounds. It’s a Philipine delicacy, god only knows why)
Well, I stepped up and tried like hell to eat it…. It didn’t end up well. The NCO’s had a great laugh and cheerfully and relentlessly showed me the video of me trying like hell not to vomit for months to come.
So… There you have it. Balut.
@20, yes, I forgot about the squid jerky. I enjoy calamari, but the jerky was a NO-GO.
#18 Zero Ponsdorf, Older DD, lots of leftovers from the days meals.
However if the cooks were the regular Mid-rats cook and the night baker and they were in a good mood the food was better than the days meals. Sometimes they would even let you order, within reason.
When other cooks had to work the night, you took your chances.
Probably not the weirdest thing anyone here is going to come up with …
… but during Desert Storm my squad was invited to eat with some Bedouins. Chicken, goat, rice, and some sort of orange flavored home-brewed hootch, and lots of tea.
This was somewhere west of Hafar Al Batin, almost to Rafha. It might have been just north of the border into Iraq (as we patrolled all over that area,) but was probably just south of it.
We were patrolling an assigned area and just happened across a camp. We got out and met with them and they invited us to dinner. It was pretty cool all things considered … especially the language barrier. I’ll never forget I was the only smoker (Marlboro Reds) and in very broken English they kept calling me “Marlboro Man,” and, of course, bumming cigarettes from me.
Jacob Donner.
Octopus, chopped up but still moving, in Korea. Was delicious, of course I had consumed quite a few Crown maekju at the time, so my taste buds might have been off.
Some kind of dried squid in a bar in Korea, after a good amount of OB and the ever popular bow-wow on a stick (for the record I wasn’t told until I finished).
Whale meat in Norway. Tasted very gamey.
Cougar…but the one thing that did me some harm was eating a Vietnamese Popsicle (remember what they say about the water),ended up with intestinal worms that brought my weight down to 132#. 🙂
You all just ruined my dinner, thx
Jean Baptiste Trudeau #25: No one else here got it. Must been beneficial for you to live this long?
#31 Oh I got #25’s comment, just didn’t feel it was worth responding to. 🙂
Everyone to their own tastes!
While traveling thru Taiwan, saw carts and carts full of bbq CHICKEN FEET.
WTF? How much meat on a chicken’s foot? Seriously?
They had many of these carts, and they were full of racks of sauce-covered chicken feet.
No- couldn’t bring myself to even CONSIDER trying one.
In Vietnam, had some of the BEST food of any country I’ve ever traveled to. Never go sick even once. Or any Montezuma (Ho’s?) revenge. Loved their version of root beer- Xasi. There were plenty of chances to eat dog or cat- but passed, tyvm. But the local pho’? Awesome…
Loved eating in Saigon whenever we could get there, food was excellent.
Probably was Hakarl in Iceland while at Keflavik for a few days. Fermented Shark!
Also in the Netherlands while stationed there I accidently got some Horse Pate. But then again I did eat Ostrich and Kangaroo at a BBQ restaurant in the town I stayed in called Uden.
Dog in a stew served up by some ARVN who didn’t mention the Fido part until later. The dried squid wasn’t bad if you tossed the tentacles with the high gag factor.
Seems like it’s common for VN vets to remember the Ba Moui Ba (33) beer, but not many mention Bia La Rue which came in brown re-filled half-liter bottles that looked like they had been around since MacArthur was a cadet.
Jean Baptiste Trudeau: Alferd Packer sends his regards. (smile)
Kibble. I was 6.
Let’s see. I got $50 for chugging a bottle of Aunt Jemima syrup during a CAX at 29 Palms. Not that weird I suppose. Camel in Iraq in ’03 was interesting; very chewy. I swallowed a live lizard in Iraq in ’04 for $100 (yeah, I was that guy) and some Iraqi Army swag.
Frozen snickers, and green apples with salt.
Not so strange, but I remember that every single bar we’d go in to on liberty, and every enlisted bar, used to have jars full of pickled eggs, sausage, pigs feet, whole pickles, etc. I always had at least two eggs and two sausages while consuming mass quantities of Olympia or Shaeffer.
I did have Dog Stew up to the Pine Ridge Reservation while attending the Sun Dance. My father didn’t tell me what is was until later, but although a bit greasy, it wasn’t bad. The Indians doing the cooking had these long “stew pots” made out of old 55 gallon drums cut length-ways, and welded together. We did the same in the squadron for barbecue grills, using expanded metal over the top. Probably a lot of folks here have seen that done.
But dog stew on the reservation was probably the strangest.
The open air market squid jerky, dog, and Snake-ju in Sontang-no SK. Eacargot and sea cucumber in Belgium.
I’m up to try most food at least once…except balut.
@33 for some strange reason the E-Club at Margarita on Camp Pendleton (33 Area) used to sell fried chicken backs. Ribs, spine and skin breaded and fried like the other parts. 50 cents a piece. I always wondered about that.
@39-are you related to Mike Spargo? He was THAT guy in 1/5. Ate elk poop for $1/pellet when we were at Yellowstone back in 88 fighting the fires
Some of the Kurdish dishes were decent, but I can’t remember anything too exotic. Goat yogurt, chicken, and rice were pretty common.
I did get an Asian-style care package. My former brother-in-law is Cambodian and deployed with the Marines shortly after I did. My mom put together a care package for him, but he redeployed (6 month deployments must be nice :)) before she sent it. I still had about five months left, so she sent it to me instead. The dried shredded squid (think jerky) and fried calamari in soy sauce were memorable, but I shared or ate everything in the box.
Had the usual balut, squid jerky, monkey meat, whole octopus. But some of the stuff I’ve had here at home rivals some of that…like Rocky Mountain Oysters. Chitlins. Birilla (goat) or whole sheep’s head. Still freaked out in Hong Kong when the lady meowed when I tried to ask her what was in one of the dim sum dishes we had. Sometimes you’re better off not knowing.
Fried grasshoppers in Thailand
I suspect the mystery meat pyramids on the food carts pierside at Abu-Dhabi were just mixtures of goat and chicken. The unsanitary conditions and the rusty machete the guy was hacking chunks off with was what provided the thrill of exoticness. The resulting flatbread sandwich thing that it made was damned tasty.
We did drink a bottle of liquor that had a lizard stuffed in it in Croatia. Little bits of meat and scales floating in the shotglass from the little guy’s slowly decomposing carcass. Tasted exactly like hangover the next day.
I haven’t traveled much, but here at home I’ve had rattlesnake cakes (think crab cakes) and Rocky Mountain Oysters – both are good. I’ve also tried escargot, not bad actually, similar to clams and oysters.
I have to say though, some of the worst food I’ve had was a hotel buffet in London. I really didn’t think you could make pasta taste bad, but they did. Kind of like soap, no kidding. About the only thing that was any good was the bread which I suspect they shipped in from France.
In France, on the other hand, everything was fabulous, especially breakfast.
If any of you non-Westerners come through Colorado, be sure to have dinner at The Fort where you can try a variety of game meat and the before mentioned Rocky Mountain Oysters.
Nothing too bad, just mealworms and crickets.
Camel