One of the few things The Girlfriend and I ever seriously disagree about is what constitutes an edible meal (and, by extension, what we should have for dinner). She’s — how shall I say this? — very selective with what she will and will not eat, whereas I pride myself on being willing to give just about anything a go. But am I just fooling myself? Am I truly all that adventurous? Let’s find out!

Here’s a meme courtesy of Javi that does a pretty good job of evaluating the adventurousness of one’s previous eating experiences and — more importantly — the items that force you to draw the line:

The Food tasting meme

 

1. Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2. Bold all the items you.ve eaten.
3. Cross out any items that you would never consider eating (or eating again)
4. Optional extra: Post a comment http://www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.

To make the filling out of this form and generating the HTML for it a bit easier, reddywhp has played around with some PHP. Go to http://reddywhip.org/lj/foods/ and fill it out there. After filling it out, you will be given the code to copy and paste into your blog.

Livejournal users, remember to use your LJ-Cuts!

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare

(So I draw my first line at raw meat. I’m not real keen on the idea of sashimi, either…)

1. Crocodile
   (I had alligator once, is that close enough?)
2. Black pudding
3. Cheese fondue
4. Carp
5. Borscht
6. Baba ghanoush
7. Calamari
8. Pho
9. PB&J sandwich
10. Aloo gobi
11. Hot dog from a street cart
12. Epoisses
13. Black truffle
14. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
15. Steamed pork buns
16. Pistachio ice cream
17. Heirloom tomatoes
18. Fresh wild berries

(I assume grapes qualify?)

1. Foie gras
2. Rice and beans
3. Brawn, or head cheese
4. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper

(Apparently, the Scotch Bonnet pepper is stronger than those Guatemalan insanity peppers that made Homer see a coyote with the voice of Johnny Cash. No, thanks… I don’t mind a little heat, but I don’t want to end up looking like Toht at the end of Raiders, either…)

1. Dulce de leche
2. Oysters
3. Baklava
4. Bagna cauda
5. Wasabi peas
6. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
7. Salted lassi
8. Sauerkraut
9. Root beer float
10. Cognac with a fat cigar
11. Clotted cream tea
12. Vodka jelly
13. Gumbo
14. Oxtail
15. Curried goat
16. Whole insects

(No bugs. I’m sure they’re perfectly safe and probably even quite tasty, but the crunching exoskeleton and stickery little legs… gack.)

1. Phaal

(It’s that face-melting Ark of the Covenant thing again…)

1. Goat’s milk
2. Malt whisky from a bottle worth $120 or more

(Mmmmm… I wish…)

1. Fugu

(I don’t like the thought of being fully conscious but progressively more paralyzed until my lungs stop working, thank you…)

1. Chicken tikka masala

(My buddy Keith makes quite a yummy one, actually…)

1. Eel
2. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
3. Sea urchin
4. Prickly pear
5. Umeboshi
6. Abalone
7. Paneer
8. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
9. Spaetzle
10. Dirty gin martini
11. Beer above 8% ABV
12. Poutine

(I haven’t had this Canadian comfort food, but I have had something very similar, the cheese fries at The Training Table, a local burger chain.)

1. Carob chips
2. S’mores
3. Sweetbreads
4. Kaolin
5. Currywurst

(Ah, currywurst. Love the stuff. Have some happy memories of it, too… when I visited Germany back in 2003, I arrived feeling pretty jet-lagged, and also carrying around an emotional hangover from something that happened before I left. The weather was cold and blustery, and I hadn’t dressed for it. I was, quite frankly, miserable and certain that my journey was going to royally suck. But then my driver — the wife of my friend Keith who makes the excellent chicken tikka masala — stopped at a roadside food stand called an imbiss and I bought this yummy treat that warmed me up and made me think maybe I ought to give Deutschland a try after all. I went on to have a fantastic couple of weeks…)

1. Durian
2. Frog’s Legs
3. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
4. Haggis
5. Fried plantain
6. Chitterlings or andouillette
7. Gazpacho
8. Caviar and blini
9. Louche absinthe
10. Gjetost or brunost
11. Roadkill

(Um, no… I still have PTSD from the time I found a freshly squashed pet cat on my way to school.)

1. Baijiu
2. Hostess Fruit Pie
3. Snail
4. Lapsang souchong
5. Bellini
6. Tom yum
7. Eggs Benedict
8. Pocky
9. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant
10. Kobe beef
11. Hare
12. Goulash
13. Flowers
14. Horse

(I’ve had horses around my whole life. You don’t eat them, you French ghouls…)

1. Criollo chocolate
2. Spam

(I quite like Spam, actually, and have never understood why so many people find it so revolting. A nice fried Spam sandwich really hits the spot sometimes.)

1. Soft shell crab
2. Rose harissa
3. Catfish
4. Mole poblano
5. Bagel and lox
6. Lobster Thermidor
7. Polenta
8. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
9. Snake

So, there we go… I had to look up a lot of this stuff, and a lot of it truly does sound awful, but I’m willing to try all but a handful of items. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, considering what some of this stuff turned out to be…

[Ed. note: Incidentally, I wasn’t all that impressed with reddywhp‘s automatic scripting tool. It’s slick if all you want to do is the bolding and striking-out parts, but because I like to insert my little commentaries, it got to be kind of complicated to make the spacing come out properly, and I found myself thinking it probably would’ve been just as easy to code everything myself as I usually do. Maybe the tool is more useful for users of LiveJournal, which this script was designed for? The intro text does mention something called “LJ-Cuts,” whatever those are…]