Strange food

One of my only regrets in life is not ordering the crab ravioli with squid ink pasta when I had the chance.

It was in Portland, OR, just a few weeks before I left for the Peace Corps.  Never an adventurous eater, I had decided to order the pasta special anyway.  But when the folks I was eating with acted like I was crazy for trying squid ink, I thought to myself, "What are you doing?  You're not the kind of person who eats squid ink pasta!"  So I ordered something else.  

I told this story recently, and the listeners said, "Then go find somewhere that had squid ink pasta and try it!", but they had missed the point.  My regret is not realizing yet that I was becoming that kind of person, and not starting my transformation a few weeks early.  Hell, I was about to ship off into the middle of nowhere, and I had told my PC recruiter that, if offered eyeball soup, I would at least try it per my mom's instruction growing up.  But I chickened out.

Three weeks into my 2 years in Kyrgyzstan, I was served a portion of a sheep's eye, as the honored guest of my birthday celebration.  Ever since, I have a new standard for food: not much of the food available in restaurants is worse than a sheep's eye.  So I try whatever I can.  I've had snails (taste like clams, but less fishy), alligator (chewy), wild boar (tastes like pork), skate wing (a little slimey), rabbit (bony), guinea pig (mild), horse (absolutely fabulous), goat (tastes like sheep), and "sweetbreads", which are fried thymus glands (just tasted like breaded, fried anything else), along with more common game meats like venison, elk, and duck.  But last night was the first time I tried bison.

We got a package of ground bison at the local grocery store, and decided to make burgers.  I added some chopped garlic and teriyaki sauce, along with about a tablespoon of vegetable oil.  Bison is very lean, and the texture was much softer than ground beef.  I made two patties (it shrinks less than beef, too!) and we pan fried them, covered, for about 6 minutes on a side.  We then dressed kaiser rolls with lettuce and roma tomato slices and chowed down.  They were delicious!  The flavor wasn't very different from beef, but the meat was incredibly tender.  Yum!