My son makes a holiday treat he calls bacon crack and made with bacon, brown sugar, and maple syrup. (He upped his game last year and added bourbon to the hijinks). He takes it to work and all but gets mugged for thr box before he walks in the door…
2 Likes
And he shares!!
Alcoholic bacon?
Genius!!
1 Like
The maple candied bacon is sometimes served as a snack with cocktails at some bars and restaurants in Toronto , and very occasionally a piece is added to a cocktail in Toronto.
3 Likes
Oh this has a crust and everything. Its much more than candied bacon.
2 Likes
This sounds no bueno: https://technode.com/2023/09/18/moutais-co-branded-chocolate-with-dove-sells-out-within-one-minute-of-its-launch/.
Knowing Moutai well, I’m going to say pass.
But most vile food? Fine, it’s not quite up there.
Honey and cheese are friends are are maple syrup and cheese. Love burek. I usually go spinach and cheese, though. I was Popeye in another life. Animated life.
3 Likes
We have breakfast for lunch at times at my school and the kids get pretty cross that there’s no syrup for the sausages. I’m against the sugar crap we give kids for free breakfast and lunch, but that’s one where I’d bend. I got a lot of backup in that department.
2 Likes
Vile? Hmm, that’s a strong word.
There’s foods I don’t like and foods that disgust (albeit not many), but as for vile, I can only think of one: natto. The smell makes me want to gag, the slimy consistency and mouth feel might turn that gag to vomit. Taste is horrendous. My BF actually eats this occasionally-- he will buy a small pack at the Asian market. I can’t even be in the same room when he opens it up. I seriously do not have this reaction to any other foods, and I have eaten some Andrew Zimmern-like stuff over the years. My body just cannot do natto.
3 Likes
I love natto. Whenever our local Japanese grocery store has natto sushi, I buy it.
My husband dislikes it. He also dislikes believing that there’s any food he avoids (even though there are several) so he often tries a bite of my natto.
Each time he makes a sour face that a friend dubbed “natto face”.
1 Like
Vile enough to cause me to astrally project from my body (or so it seemed): raw eel.
I was a dinner guest at the home of a Siberian ethnic minority outside of Moscow in the 1990s. No common language between us. The mother took an eel, put it into her mouth about an inch, bit down, cut off the remainder with a small curved knife, and then passed the eel body and the knife to the next person. So I knew what was coming. The smell, taste, and textures were all vile. My only goal was to not throw up. Vodka saw me through the evening. The eel made the rounds until it was consumed. On to the next delicacy…
6 Likes
You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din.
2 Likes
Yikes!!!
1 Like
-
Taiwanese stinky tofu. I like it very much. Ate it many times in Taiwan, without any strong alcohol.
-
Sicilian offal sandwiches. According to my Sicilian cookery books these street food sandwiches are found in Palermo. Next time in Sicily I will probably give it a go before slagging it off. Unless the stench is unbearable (i.e. kidneys, intestines etc).
-
Pig’s blood. I like congealed pig’s blood. Sometimes they omit them in a dish and I have to ask to give it to me!
-
Neba-neba. I enjoy neba-neba ingredients, either separately or in a “don”. Turns out some types of natto are not too neba. I have been eating Kagoshima-style natto, which is coarsely minced and quite mild.
Just had raw yamaimo, finally. They call it “yamaimo somen”, on Kikaijima. The yam is so finely shredded (good mandoline slicer!), like “somen” but even thinner. Beautifully presented in a bowl half filled with (dashi?) broth, 2 poached eggs and a little mount of shredded yamaimo. From now on I shall remember to check if a restaurant serves yamaimo.
I don’t find the smell of kidneys cooking unbearable, unless you make the mistake of boiling them!
Before I was enlightened to the fact that you shouldn’t boil kidneys (because they turn into bullets), I asked a lady at the counter in a butcher shop how you avoid the smell; her response: “You cook them outdoors!”. Enjoyed that 
When I was a teen in Uganda, there was a bakery there that made the most amazing kidney pies (not steak and kidney, just kidney); I can still vividly remember the taste 50+ years later. I’ve been trying to replicate the taste ever since. The bakery was owned by the parents of a friend of mine, but he tells me that the recipe was lost when they were thrown out of the country by dictator Idi Amin.
2 Likes
Does Uganda have a national dish?
1 Like
The matoke/meat dish is known as “matoke nyama”.
1 Like
Wow, I’ve been missing the fun here. I’ve eaten a lot of offal and funky foods too. Intestines/chitlins/bung – not a favorite, but I concede that with good prep and cleaning, and then also proper seasoning and cooking, they can be palatable. Same with stinky tofu - I’ve had mild versions that are perfectly acceptable, but I draw the line where they start to smell like rotted food left out in the desert sun for a year.
The one food (outside of licorice flavor) I absolutely cannot stand is durian. I can’t tolerate it in my house or being in the same room as one that has been split open, and when they are not opened but by a section in the store, I can already detect the funk. The stuff smells absolutely vile and nauseating to me.
1 Like
I just remembered one from long ago…government issued canned spinach. The summer camp I cooked at had a freakin’ large quanity of cases of #10 cans from prolly the ‘war years’. We never used it and I think the collection kept growing over the decades. It filled up one whole wall of the store room. Those and thecanned prunes! Ay yi yi!!
1 Like
