When I was a kid my father and I never missed the smelt run in Lake Erie. We caught many hundreds in a seine net right off the beach; they were battered and deep-fried and were absolutely delicious. Those smelt were typically 10-12 inches in length, and were individually cleaned by snipping the heads off with scissors, then slitting from the vent to the throat, pointing the head end at your brother, thrusting your thumb into the vent end and then forcefully ramming it forward which caused the entire contents of the abdominal cavity to squirt onto your sibling, who of course was also feverishly working to return the favour. After the two of us had cleaned several hundred smelt each, we were a sight to behold...good times...
After a successful deer hunt, the celebratory breakfast always consisted of eggs and deer brains, scrambled together and fried in butter. Better than lobster! Thanks to CWD, Mad Cow Disease, etc. that's a thing of the past.
Live Honeypot Ants are an amazing treat, filled with a honey that is even sweeter and tastier than bee's honey. Baked Tarantula is a bit like eating a small, exceedingly hairy crab, except of course for that fact that it tastes as bad as it looks...and it looks
bad! And the number one award for Worst Tasting Live Insect goes to the gigantic white grubs I tried at the suggestion of a San Bushman tracker/skinner in the Kalahari desert. Picture a large piece of raw steak gristle, but wriggling, with six clawed feet and a wicked set of jaws at one end. The trick was to throw it into your mouth and crunch the head immediately before it crunched you; I tried...twice!...but never learned the trick.
And of course, you haven't lived until a Bushman Tracker hands you a still-warm piece of Eland Tripe, cut from interior of the 55-gallon drum full of green goo that is the freshly-killed Eland's stomach. The Professional Hunter, who also serves as a translator, informed me that this was a high honour, afforded only to hunters the San respected. I took the 2-inch white ciliated cube, popped it into my mouth, chewed...and chewed...and chewed...all the while desperately looking for somewhere to spit it out, but I was trapped, surrounded by a number of friendly smiling faces, all masticating their own chunks of stomach lining and anxiously awaiting my verdict. I chewed...and chewed some more...just a bit more...and finally, got rid of it the only way I could, i.e. by swallowing it. They all cheered; the PH smiled indulgently; I asked him if he weren't going to sample a piece, and he replied "I don't eat that s***!"
I hope to someday have as adventurous a pallet as
The Masked Shadow
so I can sample such oddities as...mayonnaise...mustard...relish...my god, the blood runs cold at the mere thought...
