Food

This photo was taken by Richard Nowitz and I hope that I can use it here.

These are roasted scorpions on a stick. My student Nike has tried these, and say that they taste like a salty snack. She said that was for novelty, "just experience", they weren't that great.

My student June has eaten monkey brains, he said they were served in the monkey head with the skull opened at the top, like a lid removed. The taste was similar to vomit. He said that the monkey head was very small and "cute". This also falls under the category of novelty and not something that people just eat daily as part of a regular diet. Both these experiences happened in China.

I have another blog entry about bundegi (pupa), but that's not novelty, bundegi is a popular food item in South Korea. I would love to try these scorpions, but here in the Philippines there doesn't seem to be anything exotic like that. They do have balut, but that's disgusting to me, there's blood in it. I'm willing to go for insects and arachnids, but exotic mammals, no. Birds half-formed in their egg, no.

South Koreans also eat small live squids. They say that the sensation is better if the squid is alive. I had one student tell me that he ate a live squid and it came out his nose. It just swam right out the front of his face. He could feel and taste that for a week. Some people have choked to death because the squid opens itself up in the throat and blocks air passage. But again, these are normal foods for Koreans.

South Koreans are not known for being adventurous experimental eaters, some act like they might die if they have to eat non-Korean, so I thought these two students who tried those dishes in China were interesting.