What weird food did you eat as a kid?

[Dahlia]

I think on two separate occasions as a kid I once ate an earthworm and drank a few sips of human pee on a dare. Without a dare to excuse it, I also ate a large minnow that i caught, raw. On that one I started to worry afterwards that I would sicken or die, so I confessed to my parents and they assured me I would be fine, and they also thought the whole episode was hilarious. It's a wonder that kids ever survive to adulthood. Puppies are the same way! They put everything into their mouths!

On more conventional grounds, my grandfather was a great outdoorsman and we ate a lot of venison and ducks that he had shot. On New Years we used to have a game dinner of rabbit, squirrel, gamebirds of various types, as well as the above mentioned quarry. Organ meats were delicacies, then and at thanksgiving when we had the more traditional turkey bought from a neighboring farm, and I make giblet stuffing to this day as my grandmother used to.

Now as an old person, many foods are not available to buy, because only old people like them. I and my peers, it seems, are being phased out! Pepperidge Farms used to market delicious macaroon cookies - can't get them anymore nor find a recipe that tastes as they did. Olive loaf used to be a common deli-meat, but that too has been discontinued because the market for it is shrinking. Tongue sandwiches, once commonplace at Jewish delis, are now unheard of, and tongue was a meat that needs to be aged and processed in a complicated manner that I would have no hope of recreating here at home. (At least I still can get pastrami.) Those fat knockwuurst sausages served with sauerkraut have also gone the way of the dodo. Sauerkraut is still available, but name is now shortened to "kraut" because people apparently are too lazy to pronounce or read a food name with more than one syllable. (I'm surprised that the existing name hasn't been replaced for pc fear of offending those of German nationality - that will probably be next. lol) Jello salads and deviled eggs are now traveling down the path to extinction. A large segment of the newest generation has never heard of either one. Fried liver and onions have vanished from the menu at most diners. (Diners themselves are becoming casualties of the new world order.)

I forgot to mention that I ate rattlesnake at a fancy party with my parents as a child!

 

[Dirtmechanic]

"he"




i didn't intentionally eat them. primary taste was formic acid. which to me tasted like Pepsi. i'd never liked Pepsi anyways so it wasn't any big problem to me, but i've never looked at any Pepsi commercials or drinks without thinking of the ants...

You should try the sugar ants. Back in my school daze the marketing professor proved pepsi was more popular because of the sugar.

 

[SPedigrees]

I once ate some meow mix out in the garage when no one was watching! Lol!

That is hilarious. Did it taste good?

That brought to mind another incident from the early 1960s. There was a local celebrity back then, an exercise and fitness gal, on a Boston TV channel, and when interviewed about diet, she stated that she fed Milk Bone dog biscuits to her kids and ate them herself. A few years later as a young adult, recalling that, I nibbled on one of my collie's Milk Bone biscuits. The taste was pretty non-descript. I imagine they might have had appeal for a teething toddler.

 

[SPedigrees]

I forgot to mention that I ate rattlesnake at a fancy party with my parents as a child!

You are ringing a lot of bells in my distant memory. I too sampled rattlesnake meat (pickled) at Busch Gardens as a kid, offered to members of the audience at one of their live shows, demonstrating how a handler "milked" the captive snakes for venom destined for medical labs to make anti-venom for snake-bite victims.

 

[Dahlia]

That is hilarious. Did it taste good?

That brought to mind another incident from the early 1960s. There was a local celebrity back then, an exercise and fitness gal, on a Boston TV channel, and when interviewed about diet, she stated that she fed Milk Bone dog biscuits to her kids and ate them herself. A few years later as a young adult, recalling that, I nibbled on one of my collie's Milk Bone biscuits. The taste was pretty non-descript. I imagine they might have had appeal for a teething toddler.

The meow mix was OK, but I wouldn't say it was good. I thought it was too salty!

 

[baymule]

Horse feed, sweet horse feed! It was tasty and did the trick when I was hungry.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

For some reason, a lot of people thought it was odd I would eat cow tongue (it's a perfectly standard thing in Jewish cooking).

Most of my exotic eating came later, due to better access to exotic things (you can't eat snake if you can't get snake to eat.)

I ate a lot of shark, back when it was legal to catch them for food (one effect of that is that, when I am served fish and chips and find out the fish is dogfish, (which is very common in traditional British fish and chips, I don't react with the same surprise or repulsion I have seen other people react with, I'm used to the idea of eating shark.)

 

[digitS']

....

 

[digitS']

Okay. I have my herbal tea to help settle my breakfast. Here's the kid thing. Yes, I have eaten cow's tongue -- and yes, much of the truly weird things came later, as an adult.

Dog Biscuits. They used to sell them by the pound out of a bin at the feed store. Smelled kinda good. Bro and I would snitch one every time we went in with Dad. Until we were caught by someone who worked there, who chewed us out.

How about that. The only shoplifting that I have ever done was for a dog biscuit.

Steve

 

[flowerbug]

i had a rather poor friend who admitted at one time that he put dry cat food in lime jello and ate it. he said it wasn't that bad. no, i've not tried it and no plans to do so. i'd much prefer dry beans well cooked in lime jello...

as for adult and more intentional foods, the odd stuff were things like head cheese, some blood sausages and most of the foods my best friend's Fillipino wife would make (many were ok but not my favorites as i wasn't into strong seafood tasting things). ice-cream with beans and corn in it.

in college during the anthropology class the instructor brought in some fried grasshoppers. they were ok, a bit resinous and crunchy, the flavor had hints of roach flavor (marijuana roach, not the bug roach), which i'd gotten acquainted with when almost busted by a teacher and i had to dispose of it rapidly...

i have yet to taste a fresh fig, that one's on my list of things to try sometime. but that's not all that odd...