Oh, hey, I still have a blog.
CLEARLY, THAT MEANS IT'S TIME FOR A MEME.
The rules that I followed (which are slightly lazier than the real rules):
- Put an asterisk by anything you have eaten.
- Explain if you like.
1. Venison
* 2. Nettle tea (Meh.)
* 3. Huevos rancheros (I first had these in Mexico, in a rural town, made for me by my homestay mother, who wrapped them in delicious handmade tortillas a foot and a half across and sent them with me and her daughter to school. I've never since had any huevos rancheros that quite compared.)
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue (Yessss. And set a disposable chopstick on fire and sketched the restaurant patrons on my paper table mat with the charcoal point afterwards. ...I've also made it plenty of times at home.)
8. Carp
9. Borscht (Beets. Meh.)
* 10. Baba ghanoush (Damn good, shame about the prep time. I suck at peeling roasted eggplant.)
11. Calamari (Worst calamari ever, made by a lab teacher over a bunsen burner at the Science Center when I was a kid taking a class there. My opinion was slightly influenced by having recently completed a squid dissection, but mostly influenced by the fact that she cooked it to bike tire consistency. Ew.)
12. Pho (I have a recipe and am planning to make this for my parents.)
* 13. PB&J sandwich (And peanut butter and banana, and peanut butter and Grandma's homemade raspberry jam, and peanut butter and honey, and peanut butter and butter on toast [the butter makes the toast soft first.] Staple food of childhood, here.)
* 14. Aloo gobi (Indian food = win.)
* 15. Hot dog from a street cart (Again, not since I was a kid.)
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
* 18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes (There was an apple wine on the local vinyard's tasting table at the fair, and it was so good it almost made me want to buy a bottle. And I don't drink.)
19. Steamed pork buns (I've been up close to them plenty of times; does that count?)
* 20. Pistachio ice cream (I love pistachio-flavored anything.)
* 21. Heirloom tomatoes (From my own garden! Store-bought tomatos taste like watery cardboard by comparison.)
* 22. Fresh wild berries (Someday I'll have to relate the story of how I learned what nettles look like. Let's just say that this point is quite relevant. Damn but Cascade blackberries are good, though.)
23. Foie gras
* 24. Rice and beans (This is a foodie thing? This is a staple. Ask the government of New Mexico. ...I will say that I like it best in the form of dirty rice, though. Cajuns know what they're doing with food.)
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper (No, but I have made habanero taffy, and it is divine. Chop one whole habanero fine and add to a butter taffy recipe - lots of butter, and let the sugars brown slightly - and the full fruity flavor comes through with only a gentle hint of heat.)
* 27. Dulce de leche (I like it best when it's all the way to a solid fudgelike consistency that you can keep in your fridge and nibble.)
28. Oysters
* 29. Baklava (YES. Oh my, yes. With pistachios or walnuts and wildflower honey.)
30. Bagna cauda
* 31. Wasabi peas (Wasabi is one of those things that goes right up through your mouth to your sinuses, smacks you in the face from inside, and then goes away. Making it a crunchy coating on a snack food is brilliance. I wish I could have found these in Japan... as it was, I had to carefully nurse the contents of a two-pound bag of them that a friend brought from the States.)
* 32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl (On a pier in San Francisco early in the morning, before we went out on a boat in choppy waters to whale-watch. It was worth the seasickness, and almost worth my younger brother throwing up on my shoe.)
* 33. Salted lassi (Surprisingly, this is better than mango or blueberry.)
* 34. Sauerkraut (I'm not a fan.)
* 35. Root beer float (One of the better uses for vanilla ice cream.)
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
* 37. Clotted cream tea (YES. CLOTTED CREAM IS THE BEST CONDIMENT EVER INVENTED and I will forgive the British the majority of their cooking for it.)
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
* 42. Whole insects (Two words for you: mealworm cookies. Surprisingly good, actually. Kinda nutty.)
43. Phaal
* 44. Goat’s milk (I'm not a big milk fan. Goat cheese is awesome, though.)
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
* 49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut (God I hate these. The flavor of congealed fat dipped in sugar! Give me Tim Horton's or a local donut shop any day.)
50. Sea urchin
* 51. Prickly pear (Pads and fruit. The fruit are much better.)
* 52. Umeboshi (Lived on this stuff in Japan, are you kidding?)
53. Abalone
* 54. Paneer (Indian food is awesome.)
* 55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal (Not since I was little. I still love the fries with sweet-and-sour/ketchup mixed to overcome the extra sweet...)
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
* 60. Carob chips (And carob everything else. My grandmother's apartment complex had a tree.)
* 61. S’mores (Who HASN'T?)
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin (Well, I've eaten paper. Does that count? Some of it was glossy.)
64. Currywurst
* 65. Durian (Durian chips. Not that great.)
66. Frogs’ legs
* 67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake (Check, check, check, check! Beignets are a thing of wonder and joy, and churros filled with pastry cream are right behind them.)
68. Haggis
* 69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
* 71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost (DO want to try this.)
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
* 77. Hostess Fruit Pie (Loved these things as a kid.)
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
* 81. Tom yum (Yup, though I had to look it up to remember what it was.)
* 82. Eggs Benedict (Great stuff, when it's made right.)
* 83. Pocky (...anime fan, duh. I like strawberry deco pocky and montblanc deco pocky. Also, dark chocolate orange.)
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
* 88. Flowers (Crystallized violets are great! I used to eat honeysuckle off the bush at my middle school.)
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
* 95. Mole poblano (Good stuff. I used mole for this awesome veggie meatloaf that looked like a chocolate cake (layer of mole-infused ground cashew/breadcrumb mixture, layer of cream-infused cashew mix, layer of mole mix, 'frost' with remaining mole sauce, serve with cherry tomatoes boiled in red wine and mashed potatoes served with an ice cream scoop. Watch the double-takes and grin.)
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
* 98. Polenta (I like it thin-sliced and smothered in cream sauce.)
* 99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee (Gaaah, I wish I could afford this more often.)
* 100. Snake (They serve rattler at some of the local restaurants. Wouldn't try it twice, but it's useful to check off on these kinds of lists.)
The thing I like most about these kinds of lists is the memories they bring back. Food really is hooked into memory almost as closely as smell, and for the same reason, I'm sure: say Hostess Pie to me and bam, cherry filling, crunchy sugar crust, 85 cents at the clunky old art building vending machine on the college campus where I took summer art courses as a kid.... It's remarkable, really.
(Link me in comments if you do this one! I'm curious about your food memories.)
The rules that I followed (which are slightly lazier than the real rules):
- Put an asterisk by anything you have eaten.
- Explain if you like.
1. Venison
* 2. Nettle tea (Meh.)
* 3. Huevos rancheros (I first had these in Mexico, in a rural town, made for me by my homestay mother, who wrapped them in delicious handmade tortillas a foot and a half across and sent them with me and her daughter to school. I've never since had any huevos rancheros that quite compared.)
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue (Yessss. And set a disposable chopstick on fire and sketched the restaurant patrons on my paper table mat with the charcoal point afterwards. ...I've also made it plenty of times at home.)
8. Carp
9. Borscht (Beets. Meh.)
* 10. Baba ghanoush (Damn good, shame about the prep time. I suck at peeling roasted eggplant.)
11. Calamari (Worst calamari ever, made by a lab teacher over a bunsen burner at the Science Center when I was a kid taking a class there. My opinion was slightly influenced by having recently completed a squid dissection, but mostly influenced by the fact that she cooked it to bike tire consistency. Ew.)
12. Pho (I have a recipe and am planning to make this for my parents.)
* 13. PB&J sandwich (And peanut butter and banana, and peanut butter and Grandma's homemade raspberry jam, and peanut butter and honey, and peanut butter and butter on toast [the butter makes the toast soft first.] Staple food of childhood, here.)
* 14. Aloo gobi (Indian food = win.)
* 15. Hot dog from a street cart (Again, not since I was a kid.)
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
* 18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes (There was an apple wine on the local vinyard's tasting table at the fair, and it was so good it almost made me want to buy a bottle. And I don't drink.)
19. Steamed pork buns (I've been up close to them plenty of times; does that count?)
* 20. Pistachio ice cream (I love pistachio-flavored anything.)
* 21. Heirloom tomatoes (From my own garden! Store-bought tomatos taste like watery cardboard by comparison.)
* 22. Fresh wild berries (Someday I'll have to relate the story of how I learned what nettles look like. Let's just say that this point is quite relevant. Damn but Cascade blackberries are good, though.)
23. Foie gras
* 24. Rice and beans (This is a foodie thing? This is a staple. Ask the government of New Mexico. ...I will say that I like it best in the form of dirty rice, though. Cajuns know what they're doing with food.)
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper (No, but I have made habanero taffy, and it is divine. Chop one whole habanero fine and add to a butter taffy recipe - lots of butter, and let the sugars brown slightly - and the full fruity flavor comes through with only a gentle hint of heat.)
* 27. Dulce de leche (I like it best when it's all the way to a solid fudgelike consistency that you can keep in your fridge and nibble.)
28. Oysters
* 29. Baklava (YES. Oh my, yes. With pistachios or walnuts and wildflower honey.)
30. Bagna cauda
* 31. Wasabi peas (Wasabi is one of those things that goes right up through your mouth to your sinuses, smacks you in the face from inside, and then goes away. Making it a crunchy coating on a snack food is brilliance. I wish I could have found these in Japan... as it was, I had to carefully nurse the contents of a two-pound bag of them that a friend brought from the States.)
* 32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl (On a pier in San Francisco early in the morning, before we went out on a boat in choppy waters to whale-watch. It was worth the seasickness, and almost worth my younger brother throwing up on my shoe.)
* 33. Salted lassi (Surprisingly, this is better than mango or blueberry.)
* 34. Sauerkraut (I'm not a fan.)
* 35. Root beer float (One of the better uses for vanilla ice cream.)
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
* 37. Clotted cream tea (YES. CLOTTED CREAM IS THE BEST CONDIMENT EVER INVENTED and I will forgive the British the majority of their cooking for it.)
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
* 42. Whole insects (Two words for you: mealworm cookies. Surprisingly good, actually. Kinda nutty.)
43. Phaal
* 44. Goat’s milk (I'm not a big milk fan. Goat cheese is awesome, though.)
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
* 49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut (God I hate these. The flavor of congealed fat dipped in sugar! Give me Tim Horton's or a local donut shop any day.)
50. Sea urchin
* 51. Prickly pear (Pads and fruit. The fruit are much better.)
* 52. Umeboshi (Lived on this stuff in Japan, are you kidding?)
53. Abalone
* 54. Paneer (Indian food is awesome.)
* 55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal (Not since I was little. I still love the fries with sweet-and-sour/ketchup mixed to overcome the extra sweet...)
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
* 60. Carob chips (And carob everything else. My grandmother's apartment complex had a tree.)
* 61. S’mores (Who HASN'T?)
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin (Well, I've eaten paper. Does that count? Some of it was glossy.)
64. Currywurst
* 65. Durian (Durian chips. Not that great.)
66. Frogs’ legs
* 67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake (Check, check, check, check! Beignets are a thing of wonder and joy, and churros filled with pastry cream are right behind them.)
68. Haggis
* 69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
* 71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost (DO want to try this.)
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
* 77. Hostess Fruit Pie (Loved these things as a kid.)
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
* 81. Tom yum (Yup, though I had to look it up to remember what it was.)
* 82. Eggs Benedict (Great stuff, when it's made right.)
* 83. Pocky (...anime fan, duh. I like strawberry deco pocky and montblanc deco pocky. Also, dark chocolate orange.)
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
* 88. Flowers (Crystallized violets are great! I used to eat honeysuckle off the bush at my middle school.)
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
* 95. Mole poblano (Good stuff. I used mole for this awesome veggie meatloaf that looked like a chocolate cake (layer of mole-infused ground cashew/breadcrumb mixture, layer of cream-infused cashew mix, layer of mole mix, 'frost' with remaining mole sauce, serve with cherry tomatoes boiled in red wine and mashed potatoes served with an ice cream scoop. Watch the double-takes and grin.)
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
* 98. Polenta (I like it thin-sliced and smothered in cream sauce.)
* 99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee (Gaaah, I wish I could afford this more often.)
* 100. Snake (They serve rattler at some of the local restaurants. Wouldn't try it twice, but it's useful to check off on these kinds of lists.)
The thing I like most about these kinds of lists is the memories they bring back. Food really is hooked into memory almost as closely as smell, and for the same reason, I'm sure: say Hostess Pie to me and bam, cherry filling, crunchy sugar crust, 85 cents at the clunky old art building vending machine on the college campus where I took summer art courses as a kid.... It's remarkable, really.
(Link me in comments if you do this one! I'm curious about your food memories.)