Hey, listen. This isn’t a chest-puffed-out, balls-on-the-table kind of post where I brag about me eating crazy shit. It’s not. Some people will eat some really fucked up stuff: braised peacock beak, turtle penis, eel brains flambe, elf lungs, whatever.

No, I’m posting this because I’ve eaten some stuff that, by my own definitions only a few years before, would’ve been improbable, maybe impossible.

I’m posting this because, in actuality, this stuff isn’t that weird. And, in many cases, it’s actually downright delicious. I’m speaking to the fearful food eaters out there. I used to be one of you. When I was a kid, I’d have paroxysms of primal rage when someone presented me with something as mundane as green peas, for chrissakes.

That’s changed, now. I’d eat a lot of things. Would I eat bugs? Sure. Fried grasshoppers and crickets sound pretty good. No, really. Grubs, maybe not — but, I’d throw one in my mouth. I’m not going to get all Bizarre Foods or anything and head out to a getemono bar, but I’ll try a lot of things that would’ve queased me out a year or three ago.

So, here’s some of the stuff I’ve eaten and my thoughts about it in absolutely no particular order. Feel free to take to the comments to tell me about the stranger things you’ve put in your mouth. (Er, for food.)

1. Sushi.

Score: 10/10

No, it isn’t weird. The world loves its sushi. Some kids grow up on the stuff. For me, it was the paragon of freakishness. Fish — already a grotesque proposition — served raw. Raw. Raw, to me, meant parasites. Total lack of cleanliness. Major fish smell. All wrong. I’m a much bigger fan of sashimi rather than rolls. The nori used in rolls is, texturally, for me, unpleasant. And I’ve had a few pieces of sushi that made my stomach lurch because of strong taste and texture. But that’s not good sushi. That’s shitty sushi. The good stuff is a textural and tasty marvel.

2. Caviar

Score: 3/10

The caviar I’ve had tasted like nothing. Not bad. Not fishy. Just nothing. Now, I understand that it probably wasn’t the “high quality” stuff. Still. It was the epicurean equivalent of “meh.”

3. Escargot

Score: 5/10

Escargot’s… pretty good. It doesn’t look good. Cooked snails look like goose poop stuffed in snail shells. And it’s the type of thing you generally smother in garlic butter and lemon juice. And, texturally, it presents a little funky. All told, though, it has a grassy, mushroomy taste. Which begs the question, why are you paying a bazillion dollars to buy escargot? Just buy mushrooms instead. Given the myriad types of edible fungus, you’re in for a much more satisfying and complex food adventure.

4. Jalapeno Chocolate Ice Cream

Score: 5/10

Chocolate and heat go well together. Certainly it speaks to chocolate’s origins. A good mole sauce is chocolately and with a kick to your throat. So, I saw this over at Owowcow Creamery, a local ye-gods-it’s-too-good-to-live farm-to-table ice cream joint, and I had to try it. Not a great idea. It’s tasty. It’s real tasty. But the jalapenos in the ice cream aren’t dried. They’re fresh. Which is a little disconcerting to be chewing minced jalapeno while you’re mushing chocolate ice cream in your mouth. And listen — it’s hot. The heat isn’t subtle. It’s a garden rake scraping divots out of your esphogeal meats. It threw my heartburn into overdrive. Shit, it threw it into Bachman-Turner Overdrive. It has a good taste, but I was really hoping the dairy of the chocolate would dampen my chest pain. It did not. I couldn’t finish the ice cream.

5. Sweetbreads

Score: 8/10

Just had these the other night. Sweetbreads are, of course, neither sweet, nor bread. It’s a cute way of saying, “Hey, look, the thymus glands of a lamb, or the pancreas of a baby cow! Mmmm!” Yeah. Sounds gross. It isn’t. Sorry, baby, bleating cow. The texture isn’t overtly challenging, but it does have a soft, mushroomy texture rather than a meaty texture. But I found the taste very, very mild. Buttery. Nothing difficult about that.

6. Foie Gras

Score: 10/10 — no, fuck it, 11/10

The poor duck. The cuteness of a given duck is only matched by his deliciousness. At least chickens look like assholes, so you figure, fuck that chicken. I’ll eat him. He’s dumb. A duck? Duck has a goofy nobility. And also, a delicious liver. I’m sorry, ducks. Much as my soul says no, my stomach says yes. I order duck whenever I see it on a menu. Duck confit is heaven. Duck breast, medium-rare, is spot on. And foie gras is the rich person’s version of bacon. You have nothing to fear from the foie gras. Buttery, rich, the zenith of umami (isn’t the Zenith of Umami the final Robert Jordan book in the Wheel of Time series? I think it is!). Nothing funky about it.If you wrapped foie gras in bacon,  it would be the Best Food Ever. And it would probably also get lodged in your heart valve and kill you. So, there’s that.

7. Kangaroo

Score: 6/10

Nothing exceptional. Move along. No, it was pretty good, I guess. A lean meat, to be sure. But nothing stood out about it. When I had it, it… well, it made me think of what would happen if beef mated with chicken. The result is, “cheef” or perhaps “beecken” or something. I dunno. Not worth writing home about. Or writing a blog entry about, but fuck it, here we are.

8. Buffalo

Score: 7/10

It’s good. I like it. A very lean, stronger-tasting beef. A little problematic to cook, because it dries out super-fast, as it’s super-lean. You almost have to handle it like ground turkey or chicken in that way. Worth it if you can find it.

9. Ostrich

Score: 7/10

It’s been a while since I’ve had ostrich, but I don’t know that I could differentiate ostrich from buffalo if you made me. It’s good. It’s lean. It’s a dark meat, which is appropriate for such an angry bird. You think you’re going to get chicken, but it’s a full-bore steak like you’d carve from a cow. Plus, ostriches will kill you with those deadly feet. That’s cool. You eat one, you feel accomplished. I have yet to try an ostrich egg, though. I’ve heard tell it takes power tools to crack one open. Count me in!

10. Emu

Score: 9/10

One of the top ten burgers I’ve ever eaten was an emu burger. I’ve very rarely found it on menus or available at stores. It’s great. High-five to emu meat. And it’s fun to say! “Emu meat, emu meat, emu meat.” Say it three times, and a magical spell happens. Emu is like ostrich, only of greater scrumptiousness.

11. Venison

Score: 4/10

Not that weird, no. I also won’t eat it. Can’t eat it. First, most preparations just aren’t great. Ends up tasting on the bad side of gamey, not the good side. Second, we raised whitetail deer as pets. Yes, really. We had 30+ whitetail deer, and the first two we raised in the house. So, it’s rare you get me to eat deer meat. And yet…

12. Elk

Score: 9/10

…I’ll eat the hell out of some elk. We raised them, too, later on. But they tried to kill my dog. And they masturbate. And they smell. And they’re just pissed off all the damn time. So, fuck elk. I’m going to eat you, surly elk. Nom nom nom. Oh, the taste is good. It’s the hybrid between beef and venison, and it’s on the good side of gamey. Dad would come back from Colorado with elk meat, I was a happy man. He made this giant pot of elkmeat chili with three tiny little Thai peppers that would blow your heart out of your asshole. Supertasty.

13. Rabbit

Score: 8/10

Another cute, tasty animal. Makes me wonder how human infants taste. Probably pretty good. Calm down, I’m not going to eat one — but when our alien masters land and they claim human babies as a delicacy, I’m just saying, don’t be surprised. Admittedly, I’ve only had rabbit sausage. But it was good. I’ve heard some people say that the rabbit they had was strong tasting. This was not. Mild. Buttery. Not exactly porky, maybe a little grassy hint, but somewhere in there.

14. Pheasant

Score: 10/10

I miss pheasant. Haven’t eaten it in many years. The ones I ate, I killed. The only thing that hampered the speed of my consumption was having to slow down lest you crack a tooth on lingering birdshot. It’s like the tastiest dark meat chicken you’ve ever had. No, eff that — better.

15. Geese

Score: 7/10

The taste ain’t all that, though it is satisfying if only because they’re such dicks. Like elk, geese are some cranky bitches, so you feel okay eating them. If only they tasted as good as ducks. Now, you do sometimes get foie gras that’s goose liver rather than duck liver, but I’ve never had it. Anyway. To get the goose meat to not be tough and angry like the birds themselves, you have to marinate the unholy hell out of it. I recommend soy sauce and citrus. Yeah.

16. Antelope

Score: ??/10

I’ve eaten it. I just don’t remember it. Sad, isn’t it?

17. Wild Boar

Score: 8/10

Uhhh — I dunno, it’s like beef-pig. Angrier, gamier, darker pig. I wish I could say more. I will say, though, that I think if I ever had like, a thrash metal band, I’d call it “Beef Pig.” Would you buy our albums?

18. Raw Beef

Score: 8/10

Yep. Raw beef. Velvety smooth, like beef sushi. Really good. Squeeze of lemon, and away we go. It is disconcerting eating raw meat, because your brain tells you that it’s a horrible idea. Steak tartare and steak carpaccio. Try it at a reputable restaurant. Not out of, say, some guy’s van. Unless he has a decal of a wizard shooting lightning into a rampaging fire-eyed pegasus. Because then he knows what’s up. You can trust that guy.

19. My Grandmother’s Cooking

Score: Variable

My grandmother, rest her soul, was a Depression-era eater. If food got moldy — and it inevitably did, because she held onto that food as long as humanly possible — she would simply excise the moldy bits and promptly eat the rest. That’s okay with cheese. Not so okay with meats. “It’s penicillin,” she’d say. Then again, she didn’t get sick, and she died at… I think age 91? Maybe she had a point. I’ll always remember that she had this plastic container of caramel corn on a table by her front door, and that container was there from the time I was maybe five years old, to at least fifteen years old. Never opened. She had cans in her cupboard that bloated. She babysat me when I was a wee tot, and for a snack, she fed me buttered bread and coffee. Lots of coffee. That was awesome. She was great.

…

Anyway, that’s that. Things I’ve eaten. What have you eaten? What should I try to eat?