Most Weird And Strange Food Items from Around the World

They say “One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating” . Today in Odd and Funny Stuff  we have brought some of the weirdest and strangest food items which are consumed around the world. They are species from the rodent, reptile and mammal families that are relished as meals. We hope you like our selection of weird foods and if you have eaten any from the list below let us know what was on your mind while eating it.

Smoked Bats ( Indonesia)

 

Where the sight of bats may reminded us of scary tales of Count Dracula, the Indonesians have perhaps overcome their fear by reparing them as a delicacy. People who’ve been adventurous enough to devour on this unimaginable creature say it tastes just like beef jerky. These bats are usually smoked. They’re only about three inches long and look like skeletal brown mice .

Fried Frog Legs (South America)

 

They are battered, seasoned and deep fried. People who’ve tasted them claim that these two large back legs of frogs taste just like chicken. Ribbid that!

Snake Blood ( Thailand)

 

According to a recent TV documentary, this is served freshly-harvested from King cobras, either as a straight cocktail or a mixed drink, for exhorbitant amounts. The blood is supposed to have medicinal and sexual powers. As the slang goes —snake in pants! Hisss…

Turtle Eggs (Nicaragua)

 

Raw sea turtle eggs look just like boiled ping pong balls. The way to have it in Nicaragua is to make a small rip in the soft shell, maybe add a few drops of hot sauce, and then suck the raw contents down, followed by a shot of rum. The eggs taste a bit fishy and may not be relished by all. In fact, in some parts of India, turtle eggs were cooked and eaten just like chicken eggs until the big ban came about with the recognition of turtles as an endangered species.

Alligator Snack Sticks (South Louisiana)

 

Chunks of deep fried alligator (tail part, battered in corn meal seasoning) is served on a 10 inch wooden skewer. Seen mostly at outdoor festivals, this rare delicacy has a chewy consistency like a tough cut of pork. Most people balk at the thought of eating one of these large lizards. When washed well, these can be cooked as anything you like and the flavour would be closest to fried fish, chicken nuggets, or roast barbeque ribs.

Monkey Toes (Indonesia) :

Deep fried monkey toes, are served to be eaten straight off the bone.

Squirrel Brain (US South)

After all the brain of the small tree climbing rode nt obviously would be much smaller than our grass-eating friendly neighbourhood goat! The head of the squirrel is cooked along with the rest of the body (after cleaning of course), then, using the fingers and a fork, the skull is cracked open and the brains are dug out. The braver gourmets have said it tastes like mushrooms.

Strangest Alcohols of the World

If you’re both a traveller and a drinker, you probably conspire to find yourself in the world’s dingiest, most alcohol infested dungeon bars, tucking into a shooter of semi-legal absinthe or a sizable glass of the Chinese drink that visitors tend to rebrand simply ‘firewater’.

Heading out drinking in a new country is a great eye into the culture, a chance to experience a sociable and welcoming vibe that you might not get by staying in the hotel bar. Some drinks, though, are an experience in themselves.we’ve managed to dig out a handful of other beverages that might have you both gagging, and gagging to write home about:

Kumiss


Kumiss is a traditional Mongolian beverage made of horse milk. With only around 2% alcohol content you have to drink gallons of it to get a buzz. That, however, seems not to be a problem to its nomadic makers.

Chicha


Chicha's history goes back to pre-Columbian times where it was drunk during religious ceremonies. At present the word encompasses a variaty of low alcoholic and even non-alcoholic beverages popular throughout Central American, Amazonian and Andean countries. It is made from anything including maize, yuca, quinoa, pineapple, rice, potatoes and other locally available starches and the fascinating or appalling thing about it is that traditionally the ingredients are chewed by chicha makers and it it the enzymes in their saliva that break down the plant starch. The chicha makes then spit out the pulp into earthenware vats with warm water where it is fermented. Appetizing?

Hejie Jiu


Lizard wine is probably more fun to look at than to take a swig of, but the poor creature inside the bottle, usually a gecko, is supposed to give this Chinese specialty the power to fend off various illnesses.

Ruou Mat Ran


Originated in Vietnam and spread throughout Southeast Asia alcohol infused with cobras and other - preferably venomous - animals (scorpions, insects, reptiles, but I even heard of bear penis in spirit) is highly popular for its alleged medicinal and aphrodisiac powers. Judging by the region's population - it does the trick!

Pizza Beer


Just to prove that Westerner are not short on inventiveness - an Illinois, USA couple created this beverage to go with their favorite food. What's next? Eggs and bacon whiskey?

The 10 Most Expensive Desserts in the World

If you’re a food fanatic or simply have a stronger sweet tooth than the rest of us, you’d naturally want to experience all that gastronomy has to offer in terms of sweets. And you’re not going to settle for the cheese cake you find around corner, you know you want to try something refined, exotic and luxurious. After taking a look at the most expensive and exotic cocktails, it’s time to see what the rich and famous have for dessert. Forget about pie, pudding or fruits, here are the 10 most expensive desserts in the world:

10. Starting off with a decently expensive dessert, the $640 Chocolate Variation comes in at #10 in our list. Served at the Mezzaluna, an Italian restaurant within the Lebua Hotel in Bangkok, the refined dessert features edible golden leaves, champagne serbet made from the champagne Roederer Cristal Brut 2000 and crème brûlée. To top it all off, the dessert ends with Perigord truffles, strawberry chocolate mousse and a slice of chocolate cake.

9. The chocolate made by Noka is known for being one of the finest and most delicious chocolates in the world. With cocoa from the finest regions in the world, such as Venezuela Ecuador or Côte d’Ivoire, their Vintage collection at $854 per pound delivers a unique, classic aroma with no emulsifier whatsoever. Chocolate can’t get any better than this!

8. Served at the Ciragan Palace in Istanbul, the $1000 Sultan’s Golden Cake is one of the finest tasting experiences you will ever come across. The dessert that takes 72 hours to make contains figs, quince, apricot and pears soaked in Jamaican Rum for 2 years. The topping contains caramel, black truffles and, as you might have guess, a gold leaf.

7. One of the most expensive and refined truffles in the world is the white truffle or alba truffle coming from the Piedmont region in northern Italy. Up until now, sows were used to find the truffles since they produce a scent that mimics a male pig sex hormone. They were replaced with dogs since the sows usually ate the truffles when they found them. The white truffle sells for a price of $3,000 – $5,000 per kilogram. The most expensive truffle ever to be sold was a specimen weighing 1.5kg. Macau casino owner Stanley Ho paid a whopping $330,000 for the big one.

6. Chocopologie by Knipschildt is another amazing experience for your taste buds. The chocolate store founded in 1999 by Fritz Knipschildt sells the most expensive chocolate truffle around the world at around $5,000 per kilogram or $250.00 each. These beauties are only made available by pre-order but you can head down to 12 South Main Street Norwalk in Connecticut to get a taste of the magic yourself.

5. Pierre Hermé is an artist when it comes to sweets of all shapes and sizes. With two headquarters in Paris and Tokyo, every season comes with new and exciting recipes. But the one that stood out from the crowd is the Macaroons Haute Couture. The macaroons the company is famous for are meringue puffs with ingredients the customers can choose themselves. For personalized recipes on a larger scale, the chef meets with the client for “fittings”; based on the ingredients, these desserts can reach even $7,000 per kilogram.

4. A hotel in Sri Lanka is charging $14,500 for a taste of what used to be the world’s most expensive dessert. The Fortress Stilt Fisherman Indulgence is now the runner-up for that title, but as delicious and savory as all the others. It contains golf leaf cassata, mango and pomegranate compote. The thing that makes is the decoration – a chocolate carving of a fisherman and an 80 carat aquamarine stone.

                             

  ©The Fortress

3. Up until recently, Serendipity 3 was famous for creating the most expensive sundae, at $1,000 a piece. Now they’ve outdone themselves, creating the world’s most expensive dessert, as decided by the Guinness Book of Records. The $25,000 Frrozen Haute Chocolate is a product of Serendipity 3 and luxury jeweler Euphoria New York. The desert is a blend of 28 cocoas, 14 of which are the most expensive and exotic in the world. As any dessert on the list, it has to have some trace of precious metal. This one is infused with 5 grams of edible gold and has a gold bracelet with diamonds at the base. Even more, the dessert is eaten with a gold spoon, pimped out with white and chocolate diamonds, which you can fortunately keep.

2. Even though it’s not produced on a larger scale, we couldn’t help but noticed this shiny platinum cake with a price tag of $130,000. It was created by the famous Japanese pastry chef, Nobue Ikara, as a tribute to beautiful women. Nobue teamed up with a jeweler that helped drape his cake in platinum necklaces and foils, some of which are edible. The cake was dedicated to famous Japanese women such as Rinko Kikuchi and Chie Kumazawa, the pastry chef hoping to encourage more women to wear platinum jewelry.

1. We all know the recipe for Strawberries Arnaud – ice-cream strawberries with citrus, and red wine. But the strawberries found at Arnaud’s restaurant in New Orleans French Quarter is not just some sliced fruit. The difference lies in the topping – a one-of-a-kind 4.7-carat pink diamond ring once belonging to the British financier Sir Ernest Cassel. To make it worth the $1.4 million, the strawberries are served with a $24,850 Charles X crystal liquor.

Things I Learnt Today (Nov 13th)

1) Paul Verhoeven is directing the sequel to The Thomas Crown Affair and the remake of Topkapi at the same time.

No, he's not doing a Spielberg and making one while finishing the post on another film; the sequel to Thomas Crown is also the remake of Topkapi. Do you see what I did there? I've not seen Topkapi, and I can't imagine that a sequel to Thomas Crown is necessary even though it's one of those movies that's guaranteed to switch off my motor centres and fix me to the sofa whenever it comes on TV because it is so goddamn perfect. So why am I happy? Because I'm always happy when Paul Verhoeven directs movies. Except for Hollow Man (which at least featured some gutsy moments and fantastic effects), his filmography is full of classics, with special mention to Starship Troopers, a film that no less an authority than England's greatest documentarian Adam Curtis said was "the most prescient, brilliant work of the last 20 years." If you don't believe me, check out the reaction of the mother at 1:20.



Black Book, released earlier this year, was a magnificent film about personal and national morality, loyalty, and courage, told with Verhoeven's customary ballsiness and energy. There were no breasts unexposed, no obvious motifs unused, no Hitchcockian suspense sequence unHitchcocked. I can't imagine The Thomas Kapi Affair will be anywhere near as bold or imaginative or moving as that instant classic, and I'm not sure I want to see more of Fierce Pierce's heaving, glistening buttcheeks (especially now he's older and not quite as Bond-pert as he once was), but Verhoeven's earned my trust a million times over. He could direct Garfield 3: Cat in a Bread Basket and I'd still watch it.

2. Canyon makes a mean chicken piccata.

Yum! Good news for me, but bad news for her, because she's going to be cooking that a lot. Sorry, Canyon!

3. I love cheap things.

Amazon Marketplace is the worst thing in the world because it is the best thing in the world for offering cheap things, and I love buying cheap things so much that I will go on Amazon Marketplace and buy a million cheap things and pat myself on the back for buying cheap things but the postage and packing will quadruple the price and I won't notice that until I look at my bank balance a month from now and see large blobs of expenditure all over my otherwise pristine balance. This week I have bought:

* What They Did to Princess Paragon by Robert Rodi.
* Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another by Philip Ball.
* Gus Van Sant's Elephant.
* It's Superman! by Tom De Haven.
* Repo Man soundtrack.
* Black Swan Green by David Mitchell.
* The Angry Island by AA Gill.

Combined price prior to postage and packing: £15.90. It could just be that I'm addicted to having things pushed through my letter box and will buy any old crap that I don't need just to have that sexxy exciting adrenaline rush. I'm sure I'm not alone there.

4. We made a big mistake not watching Journeyman earlier.

We were very behind on this show, and have spent most of today catching up, and damn, it's good. Not the best show ever, but way way better than we'd hoped. Part of it is the appealing and complicated quadrangular relationship that is so much more interesting than the kiddie stuff on most other shows. The other thing is the growing realisation that the showrunners are taking the time travelling seriously. The seventh episode was like Back To The Future 2, with all the skipping back and forth and fretting about our heroic journeyman and journeywoman and whether they can cover their tracks. More on this wonderful show at a later date, I'm sure, if it doesn't get cancelled before the writers strike finishes. Oh, we also found out that co-star Moon Bloodgood (Livia the journeywoman) is shooting up the Maxim Top Hottie list. This means very little to us. I will say, that considering how "hotties" are treated on TV shows most of the time ("Stand over there with your boobs out and giggle at the protagonist."), I love that she's sensibly dressed, serious, intelligent, and mysterious. She's a very compelling character.


That said, from what we've heard, linking a picture of her from the fifth episode and merely just writing her name, Moon Bloodgood, will apparently increase the number of hits to this blog by an order of magnitude, even more so than the phrases, "Jumbleberry Crumble," or "Sonya Walger's boobs". Welcome, Moon Bloodgood fans! Hopefully you'll like it here.



5. Jamie Foxx is off the chain.

He's on an old Letterman right now (thank you Diva TV! ITV4 screwed us by taking it off, those scummy scumbags), and seriously, he's off the chain. James Brown impressions, anecdotes about operations; he's unstoppable.

6. I'm psychic.

One minute after writing that Jamie Foxx is off the chain, he said to Letterman that The Kingdom, the Peter Berg film he was promoting a month ago, was off the chain. Foxx! Get. Out. Of. My. Mind!