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Food Quest

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Today’s post comes from Dr. Larry Kyle, produce manager and founder of Genway, the supermarket for genetically engineered foods.

DrKyle

I love it when people are passionate about their foods, and no group is more passionate than those who get all wound up about genetically modified (GM) products. Every day at the store I’m buttonholed by people who have become irate about what they see (and don’t see) on the shelves. And one of the sharpest and most frequent complaints has to do with labeling – sometimes there is simply no way to tell if a food has been altered in the lab.

At Genway I stand by my promise – everything we sell has been tweaked, massaged, improved, and in some cases completely overhauled as part of a continuing process of unsupervised experimentation. You are our guinea pigs.

And in fact, if you visit the meat counter today, you’ll find choice cuts from Genway’s Giant Guinea Pigs (GGGP) are on special! These succulent animals are the result of a DNA cocktail that brought together the essence of guinea pig, combined with a little bit of farmyard hog, water buffalo and gray whale. The size improvement has been remarkable and far beyond anything anyone ever imagined for a mere guinea pig. They looked so tiny and helpless when, as a child, you kept them in a cage in your room. Now, one flank steak from a Triple G Pig can feed a family of five! Thanks, Butterball!

But seriously, if you are trying to provide for your family with a diet that includes nothing but GM foods, it is sometimes hard to know if you’ve found scientifically altered products. Certain experimenters are not as extravagant as I am and only they make subtle, virtually invisible changes. So you can’t always tell if a tomato in the produce bin has been bettered by someone like me. And why should you waste good money expecting to buy the results of literally weeks of random experimentation, only to wind up eating a fruit that has been touched by nothing more than the unaccountable hand of nature? There’s no drama in that!

By the way, if you’re looking for something that’s shockingly manipulated to add to a showy salad, try Genway’s Transparent Tomatoes! Thanks to the DNA of deep-sea jellyfish, these tomatoes are almost entirely see-through. Presentation is so important. When you serve the salad, it appears that a phantom-like cluster of seeds is hovering over the lettuce. The true nature of the fruit is only revealed when you slather it with dressing!

Where was I? Oh, yes. Labeling, and Our Promise.

When you come to Genway, you can be certain that everything in the store has been interfered with on a truly fundamental level. Right now you’ll have to take my word for it, but someday I hope we can perfect a technology that will make it possible for you to walk around the store and actually quiz individual products about their background. I can’t give you more details at the moment except to say it relies on a truly generous DNA donation from by gabby Aunt Lydia, who is known in the family for her fascination with her own pedigree and a habit of over sharing in the personal details department!

Your Friend in Food,
Dr. Larry Kyle

Dr. Kyle appears to be in touch with a segment of the food-shopping public you don’t often hear about – the GM product fan base. But it stands to reason that if there is a sizable group that believes everything natural is good, there’s a somewhat smaller counter-group that distrusts nature’s unpredictable ways. At least when you eat a Genway Giant Guinea Pig Flank Steak, you know who to blame when random parts of your body start to grow far out of proportion to the rest of you. Though if you’re also eating Genway’s Transparent Tomatoes, you may find that these newly oversized appendages are invisible to the casual observer. Eating equals adventure when you dine on foods from Genway!

What’s the most adventurous thing you’ve eaten?

59 thoughts on “Food Quest”

  2. Good morning, baboons. I’m not sure how best to answer that question. I could go for fare such as escargot, caviar, or chicken feet that I have eaten as an adult, or I could tell you about some of the foods that I grew up eating that you might consider adventurous if not downright disgusting. Considering that there a quite a few vegetarian baboons, I can imagine my list may well gross some of you out. I grew up eating such things as pig’s trotters, all kinds of organ meats from pigs, cows and even poultry (hearts, livers, gizzards and even kidneys). Blood sausage, horse meat, and blackbirds are on the list as well!

    Now roasted blackbirds is not a common Danish dish; nevertheless, I ate quite a few of them as a kid, and this is how that came about. In our front yard was a very large cherry tree, and each year it was a contest between the blackbirds and our family as to who could manage to harvest the most of those cherries. When dad was home during cherry-picking time, he would sit on a chair in our yard and shoot them; it was my job to collect the dead birds and carry them by the legs to chimney sweep Andersen’s wife. Mrs. Andersen was a terrific cook, and she would prepare a delicious dinner for our two families when there were blackbirds enough. As you can imagine, there isn’t that much meat on a blackbird, so it would take quite a few birds, and a lot of work, to get that meal on the table.

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    1. did you get the recipe? i think apple smoked sparrows and finches would be great combined with a squirrel and racoon meatloaf at at those minnesota natural spots. maybe a nice compliment to walleye cheeks and other minnesota specialties

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      1. I didn’t, tim, but how hard can it be? Although apple smoked sparrows and finches sound delicious, I’d be inclined to go with a little bigger bird. Those small critters are an awful lot of work for very little reward. How would like some frog legs with those walleye cheeks? Personally I can’t wait for the snow to melt to I can start scavenging for purslane, pigweed and stinging nettles.

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    2. You know, I used to think that four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie would make for a pretty substantial pie, but you have me re-thinking that, PJ.

      On the other hand, your heathy Danish blackbirds probably weren’t the junk food junkies we have in my corner of St Paul.

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    3. “Sing a song of sixpence, pocket full of rye/Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie…” So they weren’t kidding!
      There is a recipe for Blackbird Pie, I believe, in the Little House Cookbook… When they were trying to keep all those blackbirds off the corn or something. I’ll bet they’re really tasty.

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      1. Blackbird pie also figured in a fun mystery that I read last year “Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie” by Alan Bradley.

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  3. Good morning. Instead of being eaten by a Boa Constrictor, I ate part of one. On my visit to Bolivia I was served a meal at a restaurant that had Boa Constrictor on it’s menu as well as some other unusual dishes including Wild Pig. The Constrictor and the Wild Pig, which I also ate, were fried to a deep brown color and served much as any fried meat would be served. They both had a good meaty flavor which was not strong or very distinctive.

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  6. Rise and Shine Baboons!

    I tried Alligator once. Tasted like fried chicken, to roost on an old cliche. My mother, when she was feeling poor, would occasionally decide we should stop being pampered children and eat like she ate as a depression-era farm child. Then tongue and brains (beef) would show up on the table. These dishes got poor reviews from the family and did not appear on the family menu again. The brains were slimy and the tongue was tough. Apparently she did not like them either.

    What was she thinking?

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    1. Oooh, toungue, one of my favorites. Very tasty and not tough if it’s cooked right. Sliced thin with a horseradish sauce, yum.

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  7. The dish that comes to mind is a soup I had in Korea. I was in Seoul (I’m sure I’ve told the tale before) with my sister-in-law to meet and escort home my youngest niece. I could not convince her to eat at any of the fabulous looking sidewalk restaurants or stands, but did get her to go to a “traditional” restaurant that was situated to appeal to Western tourists like us. There were a lot of recognizable and tasty dishes – spicy kimchee, a gingered raw beef with raw egg, stir-fried vegetables. And a soup that to this day I am not sure of all the ingredients. It was a seafood soup, with a lovely broth base. Not being a big seafood fan, I was unsure before I even saw it. And when it arrived I was less sure. It wasn’t just chunks of unidentifiable fish and critters. Some of them were in there whole (they were small). And several had tentacles and other wiggly things (there was at least one that looked like a tiny baby octopus). But I was there for the whole experience, so I at a few bites – including things that I could not identify beyond “it probably grew up in salt water”…

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  8. I guess it depends on what you think of as adventurous. For me, tofu, tempeh, seitan and okara are perfectly normal, but to my family they’d be bizarre. One time I brought tapenade to Christmas dinner, and nobody touched it, not even my cousin’s “sophisticated” in-laws (whose sophistication consisted solely of getting sloshed on wine instead of American beer, far as I could tell). The last time I went to the family Christmas, after going vegan, I brought a nice Thai curry for myself. My eating with chopsticks was a nine-day-wonder–yes, I know the Thai use forks and spoons, I was showing off–and everyone kept asking me if my meal was Chinese and looking blank at the mention of Thai (makes me feel for my Laotian and Hmong friends in their growing-up years).

    There are a few genuinely esoteric vegetable foods, and of those the weirdest I’ve eaten so far is natto (fermented soybeans, rather slimy), which I sampled in a sushi roll in Madison. It was…different. I’ve yet to try durian…and I’m not in much of a hurry. Sort of on-topic, the gelato place in the Mall of America has fantastic flavors, some of it non-dairy, including black sesame, violet, green tea, rose and I don’t even know what else. It’s my last reason to visit the MoA anymore. If I ever see them offer durian, I’ll be sure to let you all know 😉

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    2. I am not an adventuresome eater. My mother was not adventuresome either so I didn’t experience anything out of the ordinary as a child, then became a vegetarian at 16, which cut out a lot of items mentioned already today.

      I have, however, tried Durian. In Malaysia… and I figured this was just something I had to do. Looking back, it was a little out of character. The taste is much sweeter than you expect, and it kind of melts in your mouth — with a texture kind of like pudding or a soft soft cheese. The problem, of course, is that I had to hold my nose the entire time I was trying it, as the smell was making me gag. My guide told me that during Durian season you can actually get used to the smell, but I wouldn’t bet any of my own money on that!

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      1. I’ve tried Durian too, at the Sawatdee restaurant. Not a bad taste, but it’s hard to get past that smell. Not inclined to order it again.

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      2. Had durian candy once-that was enough for me. For days after I would (quite unwillingly) either a memory or an aftertaste/smell. Whatever it was, it would probably be a good way for me to lose weight.

        I will eat Lutefisk, but I draw the line at durian.

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  9. I guess I haven’t adventured too far, either in travel or in food. I’ve had small samples of wild game including elk, caribou, venison, duck and pheasant, all of which are common. I’ve tried sushi and calamari, also common. I enjoyed the calamari but had a response similar to Pat Donohue’s Sushi-Yucky song to the sushi. My mom made some adventurous foods for us when I was growing up. She tried to hide the presence of liver or organ meats in hotdishes or heavy sauces. It didn’t work.

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    1. Too bad you didn’t like sushi! Was it the fish that turned you off, or the seaweed, and did you try any of the vegetable types? Too many chefs treat the veggie rolls as afterthoughts, but I’ve had some that were like tiny beautiful salads, only vertical.

      My favorite sushi is hard to find these days. It’s a hand roll made with a dollop of umeboshi paste–salty preserved plum–with a shiso leaf laid over top and wrapped in a ribbon of nori. Delicious! Midori’s used to serve it, but I guess it wasn’t popular enough because I haven’t seen it on the menu for a year or two. Inarizushi, the sweet tofu-skin packets of rice, is my second favorite. Even my picky-eater roommate fell for those.

      Liver hotdish sounds absolutely horrible. If Mom had tried to serve me organ meats, I would have gone vegetarian at least a decade earlier than I did.

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  10. As a hunter, I grew up eating all sorts of things: squirrel, rabbit, pheasants, quail, turkey, sharptail grouse, ruffed grouse, woodcock, prairie chicken, gray partridge, duck, goose, venison, antelope, moose, elk, caribou and so forth.

    Groups of hunters sometimes put on “game feeds” where the object is to serve up a wild variety of meat not usually eaten. I attended one in which I had beaver tail, snapping turtle, raccoon and “moose balls” (I didn’t ask many questions about that last one). A significant amount of scotch was also involved, and I don’t remember much about the offerings except liking the rich taste of beaver tail.

    Once a man in Walker, Minnesota who ran a restaurant invited me to a special wild game dinner. On that night I ate “Australian opposum,” bear and African lion. I was not there entirely by choice, and I remember being put off by the idea of eating lion. It did NOT taste like chicken.

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  11. Despite the fact that quite a few people out here raise sheep, very few eat lamb, and we are considered quite exotic since we eat lamb quite often. I think many folks out here have memories of mutton on the farm, which I can imagine was pretty strong tasting.

    We reportedly received 16 inches of snow. The plows haven’t gone through yet.

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    1. I love lamb. I don’t know if I should admit it here on the trail, but I also enjoy goat meat, and yak is pretty tasty too.

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      1. Whenever BiB’s troupe increases with little girl goats, I’m always secretly glad, because she has told me what happens to many of the little boy goats. So I don’t think the goat folks would be that horrified by you, PJ. Part of their world.

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  13. Morning–

    Growing up we didn’t eat anything very exotic either. I used to think A1 sauce was fancy. So unless you count Spam I wouldn’t have much to contribute.
    A few weeks ago when we were down in Charleston I ate Foie Gras. But it had a fancy name (The french word that means ‘selection of meats’) and if had know what it was I wouldn’t have eaten it! I’ve had beef tongue at a party. But it was cold. Was it supposed to be cold??
    I make a sandwich of peanut butter with Miracle Whip and chocolate chips on it. It’s very good. I also make a version on Ritz crackers with mini chocolate chips to take to parties.

    I may have mentioned before when we had two Russian gentleman staying with us, they wanted mutton but we couldn’t find it locally. I guess I didn’t try too hard either.

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    1. Ben – a kindred spirit. Peanut butter w/ Miracle Whip is my go-to, all-time comfort sandwich. Learned it from my mom, have passed it down to the Teenager, although Teenager won’t admit to her friends that she eats this.

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    2. Ben, I’ve had tongue hot as a main dish, and also cold as a cold cut on those Danish open faced sandwiches. I like it either way. Foie Gras is delicious but I don’t eat it these days because of the force feeding of the geese. I’m guessing you had it as part of a charcuterie plate. I’d have the same reaction to a peanut butter sandwich with Miracle Whip and chocolate chips as Krista had to sushi.

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  14. I’ve pretty much left meat eating behind me for a multitude of reasons, but taste is not one of them. I confess to being fond of anything wild: duck, pheasant (tip of the hat to Mr. Steve), venison and yes, I know for a fact I’ve eaten squirrel. Also enjoy sushi and can eat a more pickled herring in one sitting than is really decent.

    I will also go on record as loving the taste of liver. I don’t know why, but I always have-
    Still, I don’t really want to slaughter anything, so I don’t generally eat animals.

    My weird sandwich of choice has always been Velveeta cheese on whole wheat with mayo and bread and butter pickles. If you’re packing this in a lunch box, the pickles absolutely must be packed separately, so as not to make the bread soggy.

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  15. I had to smile at the story a friend told me this week. She is a (retired) gourmet caterer and the best cook I personally know. She was entertaining some neighbor kids, and they were hungry, so she whipped up their favorite dish: macaroni and cheese. She used some lovely pasta and an excellent brand of cheese. Well, the kids threw a hunger strike because this dish wasn’t the fluorescent orange-red “macky-cheese” they were used to eating from box mixes!

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  16. Today’s smoothie:
    Washed and trimmed kale packed into the bottom of the blender (about 1/2 cup)
    1 medium beet, cut up
    5 baby carrots, cut up
    1 cup strawberries, cut up
    2 tbsp peanut butter
    1 tbsp protein powder
    1 tsp chia seeds
    1 tsp ground flax seeds
    1 tbsp agave nectar
    1 cup unsweetened almond milk

    It’s a lovely color!

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  17. My son gave me a German cookbook for my birthday, and one of the German cheeses mentioned in the book, Wurchwitzer Spinnenkase, is made from quark, dust mite excrement and rye flour. The mites eat the flour and quark, excrete, and it all turns into a cheese in three months. Apparently, people who eat it rarely have dust mite allergies. I don’t know is I could eat this cheese.

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    1. This is why I don’t like to spend too much time thinking about honey when I’m slathering it on a scone or muffin…..

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      1. Too much thinking, can get you in trouble. Like mig said, it’s sometimes the idea of something that get’s in the way of eating certain things, not necessarily the taste. Other times it’s the way it looks or smells. My favorite Danish cheese is called “Gammel Ole,” a very stinky cheese but oh so flavorful; Hans won’t go anywhere near it. He also won’t eat pickled herring, which I love. Tripe falls in the category of something that I can’t get past the looks of. No rime or reason to it, just is.

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  18. When I was about 12, I considered potato chips on a lunchmeat sandwich to be really adventurous. Now adventurous would something in the “hot” range at, say, a Thai restaurant. I will try a bite of just about anything once, but probably the most exotic was escargot.

    Talk of durian above reminded me: My neighbor was doing a lot of east Indian cooking, and gave me some of this spice:
    “ASAFOETIDA
    A derivative of the giant fennel, also known as ‘devils dung’, in its natural state it has an unpleasant aroma, which is lost when cooked. A common ingredient in the vegetarian cookery of India and Afghanistan.” (From Wikipedia)
    Unpleasant aroma is really understating the case. Thought I’d get around to being brave and trying something with it, but I finally deep-sixed it.

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    1. Asafoetida does have a pungent, unpleasant smell, but it makes all the difference in curries. Another very unpleasant smelling, but essential, ingredient in some Danish baked goods is ammonium bicarbonate, or as we call it Hjortetakssalt. Some tastes are acquired, take some getting used to. First time I tasted fresh cilantro, having bought a bunch mistaken it for parsley, I thought it tasted like soap. Now it’s one of my favorite herbs.

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      1. Agreed about the asafoetida in curries. Makes a good uncrossing powder (with some cayenne pepper and sulfur) too. I used to really hate cilantro, but now I can about stand it cooked. Still dislike it fresh, though.

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      2. Agreed on the cilantro. A friend makes cilantro chutney and I thought it was horrible. I kept tasting tiny amounts on salty chips though, and now I love it.

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