Second Trifecta

I was re-watching some episodes of The Biggest Loser few days earlier, and I wondered "if they didn't eat so much, they probably wouldn't have ended up on TV doing all kinds of gut wrenching (or humiliating) exercises" But yet, who doesn't love food? We consume so much food everyday, that sometimes we take them for granted, french fries from McDonalds, chicken from KFC, or Burritos from Taco Bell (literally, Yum!). Yet these calories do not only come from American fast food restaurants. There are so much more different food cultures out there in the world, a world far beyond our ideological McDonaldland.

In this blog, you will find different food cultures, dining etiquettes and more about the art of eating from all over the world. From what's considered the "bizarre food", to what Westerners believe as the "norm," this blog attempts to open your eyes to these exotic cultures, as well as to examine how Western's food (or specifically American food) has begun to influence different dining experiences in other parts of the world.

I first came up with this topic after my recent travel to different parts of Asia the past Summer. Thailand, in particular, really widened my culinary horizon. On the famous Sunday Walking Street in Chiang Mai, I saw street vendors selling food that I had never considered edible. Things such as scorpions, silk worms, fetal duck eggs might sound unappetizing, but they seemed to be a widely popular choice of snacks to the local Thais (check out how to eat fetal duck eggs on youtube). After experiencing these interesting cuisines, I am particularly interested in food from what the West considered as exotic food, how the West began to influence their taste, and at the same time, how these "bizarre" food culture also quietly starts to blend into our everyday life.

Let's put this blog as an introduction of "bizarre food" from, not a Western point of view, but an Asian perspective. While I certainly am not qualified to be a food critic, I enjoy traveling and experiencing new things. My origin, as an Asian born and raised in a metropolitan city - Hong Kong - has given me a lot of insights on different food cultures around the world. Of course, the blog will include certain illustrative descriptions and sometimes disturbing images of cooked (or raw) animals being eaten by people from different nations. The blog will also be comprised of history and traditions of the food cultures. (For example, it is a regular practice in China that chefs deep fry rats so as to replace the more expensive quail!) While food culture is distinctive among regions, I believe they all involve interesting stories behind them that are worth examining and discussing.

However, unlike the Travel Channel TV show "The Bizarre Foods" with Andrew Zimmern, my blog also attempts to compare the similarities between different food cultures. As our world is getting more and more globalized, it seems that our dining experience also blends into unique fusion cuisines. It is now very common to see Pizza Hut in Shanghai, Coca Cola in India, or McDonald's in South Africa. Have our food cultures become more similar due to the trend of globalization? or are we exposed to a more diverse choice of food than we did 20 years ago? How do the rest of the world react to these bizarre food culture? Have we become more tolerant, or the other way around? These are some questions to be discussed in this blog in the future.

Throughout this blog, I hope to approach different food cultures from an Asian's point of view. While Americans consider food from other continents as "the other food," it would certainly be interesting to compare and contrast these differences from another perspective. This blog does not only serve to recommend food or restaurants like most of the food blogs do, more importantly, I wish to utilize the blog as a way to enhance communication between cultures through different dishes.

Bon Appetit, fellow bloggers!

links to related blogs:
http://www.andrewzimmern.com/blog/andrew
http://foodandculture.blogspot.com/
http://www.vietworldkitchen.com/blog/asian-food-culture/
http://www.travelerslunchbox.com/
http://worldonaplate.blogs.com/
http://eatingasia.typepad.com/

Profile a Blog Post
I have to admit, it is both easy and hard to look for an interesting blog that is relevant to my field of interest. While food blogs, especially recipes blogs, are probably one of the most popular blog topics in the world wide web, bizarre foods, or namely exotic foods, are not a socially pleasing subject of discussion. After spending some times surfing online, I found a really interesting and resourceful blog while researching for information for my own topic. The blog, Critical Studies in Food and Culture (http://foodandculture.blogspot.com/), is straightforward as its title suggests. It is a blog collectively created by researchers from University of California, Davis. While the blog mainly "aims to support and share the work of Faculty and Graduate Student researchers investigating the intersections of food and cultural studies," it also deals with subjects including food aesthetics, politics of eating, and food appearing in other cultural medium. The blog entries, mainly posted by a graduate student at UC Davis named David Michalski, suggest food related talks and discussions happening on and off campus. The blog also links to other useful journals and websites regarding critical studies in food and culture.

Besides being the Social, Behavior and Cultural Studies Librarian at UC Davis, Michalski also wrote his dissertation on social aesthetics in contemporary wine culture, and the psychology behind cultural and social behavior, which makes him very much qualified to analyze food and its related cultural studies.

Michalski usually blogs once a month. In his most recent entry (written on May 30th 2009), for example, he encouraged his readers to submit papers for food-related architecture, including the packaging and graphic design of food. His blog is about how food provokes our senses. In fact, he also attempts to relate food with other media. For example, in the entry "Slow Food Slow Film" (written on September 19th 2008), he compares the products of industrialized food and the products of industrialized cinema by analyzing how differently food is represented in Hollywood and foreign movies such as Ang Lee's Eat Drink Man Woman and Sandra Nettlebeck's Bella Martha.

The blog is very much related to my topic, in a way that it really inspires me to compare food culture to other possible cultural medium. As a cinema major, it would be really interesting to draw parallels between food culture and the film industry. In spite of its abundant resources and innovative ideas, the blog does not seem to be very popular. It ranks 1,603,173 on technorati.com, yet it is the first blog that came up when I google searched "food and culture." I believe the reason to this is because this site is mainly targeted to students at UC Davis, that in a way it's purely academic. (In other words, it's not a very entertaining site to the general public on the web) However though, this blog does give me a lot of insights and materials regarding how my blog should flow throughout the duration of 15 weeks.

Despite the fact that this site is resourceful, I am not going to simply copy its format. While it does give me a lot of big ideas, my site is hopefully going to be a lot more detailed. Instead of suggesting food related talks and conferences, I would focus more on how food cultures differ across borders and the historical origins of certain dining cultures. If possible, I would love to have more cultural exchange with other bloggers through comments. I believe by allowing comments, my blog will be richer, more specific and educational, and hopefully has more personality than Michalski's.

Voice Critique
Writing about exotic food is not an easy task at all. Eating them probably makes it even harder. While I was looking for blogs about these bizarre food culture, I came across these two "Adventurous Eaters", a husband and wife team who went to different parts of China in search of new and exotic food. The blog has not been updated for more than a year, so I assume they haven't been able to visit China again after April 2008, yet the voice of their posts does speak a lot about their persona. Marsha, the wife of the family, does most of the blog writing, and in most of the entries, she presents a really interesting thoughts on these bizarre and exotic food.

Marsha, her husband and her kids (which I think some of them are adopted from China) are no ordinary family. In one of her entries, "The King of Fruits," she made eating bizarre food sound like an everyday thing.

"I had double cooked sliced pork stomach and steamed green beans with ground pork. Mason got pork dumplings and crispy tofu. The kids got....fried rice. Yep, we went all the way to chinatown for authentic chinese and they got fried rice that you can get anywhere."

First thing on my mind: "what is wrong with her?" The woman is complaining about her kids choosing fried rice over pork stomach. When I was reading, I couldn't help but wonder what kind of character she is. Just from these few lines, I can already tell she loves being extraordinary in terms of her choice of food. She is, as the title of the blog suggests, adventurous and willing to look for every single opportunity to try new and bizarre food.

Marsha also expresses a lot of emotions throughout her blogs. In this same entry, she wants to tell her readers how stinky durian (also known as the king of fruits) really is as she capitalizes certain words as follow:

"WOW! That's the stinkiest thing I've ever smell in my LIFE!"

The excellent use of capitalization once again highlights Marsha's excitement and surprise. Although, as her readers, we might never have actually seen or smelled a durian, she really sounds like durian as something we should probably avoid.

In another entry named "China 07 Guangzhou is Adventurous Eating Paradise," Marsha reveals her inner thoughts when being asked if she wants to have dog meat.

"Doggy, woof woof, doggy [...] if I was going to be crossing an imaginary line. Would people think I was a monster? Would they hate me? Would I lose friends? Certainly I would no longer be welcomed at a PETA meeting."

Again, as a reader, I can see more of the author, as if she is speaking to me as a person, not a virtual communicator. We don't only see Marsha as an adventurous eater, at the same time, through these subtle textual cues, we also know what she was thinking when coming across with these tough decisions. As a reader, it makes the blog post even more interesting to read on as it characterizes the entry and provokes curiosity.

Lastly, I also noticed that she quotes one line separately from the other paragraphs:

"He stayed and watched them chop the snake's head off, skin it, and drain the blood."

Why did she do that? I feel like it does not only emphasize the brutality of killing the animals, it also reflects Marsha's persona as a blogger. The way she says it makes her (and her husband) more of an adventurous eater. Just by looking at this line, she is not afraid of describing the killing of the snake in an elaborate fashion. She is brave, bold, and indeed very adventurous when it comes to eating these exotic food in China.

In general, "Adventurous Eater" reflects very much of its author's personality. The title fits the persona of Marsha very well. By using these textual and visual cues, the blogger's voice is stood out, and it made the experience of reading the blog much more enjoyable and pleasurable. There is so much to learn from the Adventurous Eater. Not only their bravery to try new food, but also the way they voice themselves in the blog. I certainly hope to express a coherent, at the same time, entertaining and even humorous voice throughout my culinary blog adventure. Now, are you ready?

The Testicle Festival

Believe it or not, when I was 15, I ate one chicken testicle. And from that day onwards, I swore I would never eat it again, nor would I go any closer to a raw/ cooked chicken testicle.

I was 15, and I went to a friend's house for a hot pot party (it was extremely popular in Hong Kong, friends and families gather around a hot pot of boiling water, where they would throw all kind of meat inside) One of my fellow classmates bought a bag of pink and tender looking things to the party which I later on found out was chicken testicles. I had never had a chicken testicle before, but I had heard of the fact that many Chinese men eat it to enhance their sexual prowess. We all were once young, and foolish - we decided to play a game, and whoever lost had to eat the chicken testicle. I do not remember what game that was, all I knew was that I lost. I slowly scooped out one of the wet and slippery chicken testicles, put it into the boiling water. I had no idea when I was supposed to take it out, but I did anyway...

I put it in my mouth. It was boiling hot. I closed my eyes, and took a bite. Disgusting juices squirted out. I have to admit, it did not taste terrible. To some extent, it tastes merely like a boiled egg, but the texture scared me. It was so slippery, almost like tofu... but nothing compared to the thought of it. Just thinking about where it came from made me want to throw up.

Writing this blog entry was hard for me. The ghost of that chicken testicle still haunts me once in awhile. In fact, I still keep pictures of that particular testicle that scars the rest of my life...

Have a Bloody Halloween!

If you have been keeping track of my blog posts, almost all of them are bizarre foods from Asia. But... this post is going to be a little different, or to be exact, a little more global!

Eating (or drinking) blood has been a common culinary experience in many countries. Places including but not limited to China, Philippines, Masai in Africa, Sweden or even Norway have their own recipe of cooking and consuming blood in their cultures. Interesting enough though, most of them use pork and sheep blood instead of cow, chicken or other cattle and weird animals' blood. I am in no expert position to explain the reason behind this, but I can certainly introduce you to the world of blood fest!

Growing up in Hong Kong, pork blood is no stranger to me. Literally translated as "the red in pig," pork blood is usually in bouncy pudding form, that almost looks like they are red tofu. Local Cantonese loves to have it with rice congee because of its salty flavor. It is sometimes consumed with other parts of the pig, such as different organs and sometimes ears, but it is believed that pork blood can compensate the loss of iron in human body.

In Trinidad, people do pretty much the same thing - pork blood is steamed into pudding and is served with breadcrumbs and rice.

Interestingly, one of the most "blood thirsty" continents is not Asia, but Europe, our Western counterpart! Germany, for example, has their famous blood sausage, Blutwaust, in which pork blood is mixed into different types of meat (traditionally including horse meat and ox tongue). Blood sausage is readily available in regular grocery stores and butchers almost everywhere in Europe. I certainly can't imagine eating blood sausage in the morning, but apparently this is an extremely choice of food for European. In Hungary, pork blood is prepared like cheese in your scramble eggs. According to Weird Foods From Around the World:

it is a big deal to kill the first pig of the season. So there I was in the morning watching some of my co-working chasing a pig around in the back yard, they caught it. Then slit it's neck and colleted the blood in a frying pan and then beat some eggs and cooked it, It had a brain like look.

In Sweden, there is blood dumplings; blóðmör in Sweden; beuling in Belgium and Netherlands... whatever it is called. Europeans are one big group of blood thirsty eaters!

If I do not forget, this is the first post I've written about bizarre food in not only the exotic Asia, but also the civilized Europe and America! What exactly makes a local dish bizarre? And as time passes, how has bizarre food becomes regular everyday food? Maybe Europe and America are more advanced technology wise, but as a country, they do have their own local dishes too. Be prepared to see more Western bizarre food in here next time. In the meantime, have a very happy bloody halloween!

"Eating dog meat... ewww"

Dogs have been domesticated by most part of the countries for centuries and they are now considered a man's best friend, but it's true, in some part of East and Southeast Asia, dog meat is still readily available on the street.

I have been researching online, and found a lot of different opinions on this issue. Animal Freedom claims that eating dog is inhumane, and they urge Korea to stop this action immediately or they would boycott them. While animal cruelty is certainly not acceptable by any standards, their complaint did not channel to the Koreans, instead, it stirred up more racial hate towards Korean. So is eating dogs an animal abuse or a cultural gap that we haven't recognized?

I am not here to comment who's right or who's wrong. Eating dogs, since ancient Asian times, has served a long-lasting history and an important cultural role. I find myself agreeing on this anonymous person's letter to Animal Freedom's organizers. Like myself, he is not standing on the side of animal abuse, but he thinks that instead of banning dog meat (which has been legally banned in 1990), there should be a better system of butchery:

I myself, who has never eaten dog or cat meat, am against eating those animals in an emotional way. However I don't believe those Koreans, who see dogs and cats as food, will listen to others (especially westerners) who have also two morals in their way of living. For example, Western people are eating much more meat in daily life than Korean people and a lot of western people think having pets is the best way of loving animals. Most Korean people truly agree that brutal killing of dogs and cats should stop. Even though law has forbid it since early 1990, it sometimes happens still illegally. However it takes time. Some Koreans think the way of butchering dogs by hanging and beating to death makes the meat more tender and tastier. I advice people to persuade the Korean government to do a better job on stopping this illegal and brutal butchery. In most cases, dogs (not pets) are raised in farms and killed by electrocution just as cows and pigs. This is more civilized than some French people who make 'foie gras', using pipes to force food into the throats of geese to make their livers bigger and tastier.

Dog meat is popular in these Asian countries, not because Asians are cold blooded, but it's because of the geographical restraints. Because 70% of the land in Korea are mountains, it is almost impossible for them to breed animals that are bigger than the size of a dog.

Again, comparing the West and the East. Why is the East (or even Africa) always have to be exotic, whereas the West is always seen as civilized? After years of colonial domination, isn't it time for the West to listen to these countries and learn to appreciate their culture?

Culture or Cruelty: Dolphin Eating in Japan

As an island, Japanese enjoy eating seafood. Walking into a Japanese restaurants, one might find it hard to not recognize the variety of fish offered as delicious and often raw dishes. While Japanese cuisine is getting attention from all over the world, their dolphin eating habits bring about a whole lot of attention from the press and environmental activists. More than 20,000 dolphins are captured and killed every year, yet the government claimed that dolphins are not endangered species, and therefore eating dolphins in Japan is not only acceptable, but is also important to the livelihood of local villagers in the industry.

In small towns like Taiji, Japan, dolphins fishing requires a major labor force. Every winter during the months of October through March, villagers (who are most likely fishermen) gather together to capture dolphins. They first disorient the dolphins with nets and fishing boats, then deliberately injure one of them (because dolphins never leave their family or friends if one of them is hurt). As the net begins to tighten, fishermen began to lift the dolphins, one by one, onto their fishing boats, and eventually they are delivered to the factory, where they are brutally slaughtered.

After a bloody and violent process of slaughtering, dolphin meat are either sold in the local fresh market, or packaged as canned whale meat that can be found in many nationwide Japanese supermarket.

What bothers so many environmental activists is not the fact that dolphins are being served as foods, it is the brutal and inhumane ways of killing that brought about so much attention and controversies. The captured dolphins are often tied to a truck and dragged to the process factory. While they are still alive, factory workers would cut open their throats with a sharp knife and leave the dolphins there for hours, until they slowly bleed to death. Often times, it takes hours of suffering for them to die.

For more information on dolphin massacre in Taiji, Japan, take a look at this CNN report on dolphin slaughtering and its related video on youtube.


Looking at both sides of the argument, I find it extremely hard to take a stand on this issue. On one hand, an ocean polluted with dolphin's blood is certainly not something I would like to see; but on the other hand, if there are so many dolphins in that region, and that fishing is the major source of income in those villages, they have every right to consume dolphins. If eating living silkworm and roaches on Fear Factor is acceptable to Western audience, Japanese, too, have their points in seeing the art of eating dolphins as part of their culture. My point is this: why isn't the slaughtering of chickens or pigs or cows generate as much of a controversy? Because they are more abundant, or they are intellectually less of a being than dolphins? I am certainly not supporting the cruelty and violence used on animals, but it seems to me that the standard of humanity is extremely vague and ambiguous. While the West often see the oriental East as uncivilized and inhumane, is the French foie gras industry anyway more lenient to the animals when ducks have to be kept in extremely small cages so as to limit their physical activity, and increase the fat accumulate in their livers?

This is a question that posts the double standards of many environmental activists in the West. Indeed, what makes a dish a local culture? When would you define eating that dish as adventurous, or inhumane? That is something we, as human beings, should all think about.

We Are One Big McFamily

Talking about balut yesterday, I can't help but wonder: if you can buy balut pretty much in every city in America, there's probably even easier to get American food in the Philippines. Indeed, according to this cool map, there are more than 100 McDonalds, and approximately 50 Starbucks in the Philippines region. Starting from 1995, the number of Starbucks shop worldwide has been skyrocketing to 6,200, with three new stores opening each day. McDonalds, as an even more symbolic cultural icon of America, has 31,000 restaurants in 118 countries all over the world, employing more than 1.5 million people in total. With 4 billions in sales, McDonalds has certainly become a representation of America in other countries' perspectives.

Starbucks and McDonalds' success in other parts of the worlds depends greatly on their adaption to local cultures. Take McDonalds as an excellent example, their menus differ across borders. In India, where beef consumption is considered sinful, McDonalds transitioned its famous Big Mac into Chicken Mahajara Mac. In Germany, beer, instead of Coke, is served as part of the combo; In Hong Kong, rice paddies are used as supposed to buns. Of course, the adaption has not always been successful. After numerous trials and errors, McDonalds is still in the process of adaptation and modification. But as Art Siemering says in his article in The Futurist:

"Globalization is the master trend that will drive the world of food in the years ahead [...] I sense that the cutting edge is moving on to nations whose cuisines are the products of many ethnic influences over the years. And we're discovering these countries simply because we're starting to pay more attention."

Look at the newest addition to the McFamily - Chipotle BBQ Snack Wrap: We are not eating more healthily, we are also eating more globally.

Balut: A National Passion

I promised I would dedicate one blog post to the famous fetal duck egg, also known as, balut in Philipines and hon vit lon in Vietnam. Before researching on this topic, I had to tell myself several times "it's okay, it's alright, they are just eggs with hair, legs, and sometimes perhaps eyes." I plucked my courage, went on to google, typed in "balut"... it turned out there were lots of academic article about this cheap and exotic local cuisine. One of the essays, in particular, captured my attention and I found it extremely interesting.

Margaret Magat, in her well-written article, Balut: Fertilized Duck Eggs and Their Role in Filipino Culture, argues that balut is an extremely valuable nutritional resources in Southeast Asia, where alternative sources of proteins are often found lacking. In places like the Philippines, many locals cannot afford to buy luxury food, therefore, they turned to cheaper choices sold by street vendors Many balut eaters believe that eating balut, especially after work, will compensate for the energy lost during the day.

Calling balut the cheapest nutritional substitute available to Filipinos, Butch Coyoca says that one can buy balut instead of buying vitamins. "It's like a powerbar, a superfood," he said. "If you stay up late at night and it's already morning, like 2 a.m., a lot of people would eat one or two before they go to bed because they would believe that (balut) would compensate for whatever losses they incurred for not sleeping enough."

So what exactly is a balut? While normally a duck hatches after 26 to 28 days after incubation, a balut is an egg with a duck embryo aged 16 to 20 days in age. Sometimes fertilized chicken eggs are used instead, but fetal duck eggs have proved to be a more popular choice among Filipinos and Asian Americans. Eating a balut is also considered an national art. To eat a balut, first drop it into hot boiling water, then crack a hole on the shell. Sip the broth (which is the embryonic fluid of the duck), continue crack the rest of the shell, and ... eat the yolk.

Magat also mentions the notion of "machismo," a concept introduced by the Spaniards 500 years ago. According to Magat's informants, many believe that balut has sexual energizing powers:

I believe that the machismo belief is still alive and flourishing in the Philippines and is partly responsible for the belief that balut is an aphrodisiac good for men only.

Instead of Baptism, young men are to be tested in order to prove himself a real man. Under a sex culture dominated by male, Filipino males are supposed to provide pleasure to their wives or mistresses so as to prove himself a real man. Eating balut, allegedly, will "get you knees hard and the sex will last longer." Magat observes this psychological connection between food and sex in Philippines, and balut plays an extremely important part in conventional gender roles and sexual beliefs.

Because balut is often considered a symbolic symbol for fertility, it can almost be found any place where Filipinos and Chinese live. They are widely distributed around the world. In California, there are more than 1 million Filippino Americans, which makes the state a leader in balut production in the country. If you ever want to overcome a fear factor, go to any Fillipino grocery store, or visit Metzer Farm in the Salinas Valley, and I am sure they will be more than happy to show you what New York Times called "A National Passion."

Eating the King of Reptiles

Somewhere in my consciousness, I remember eating crocodile meat when I was a little kid. The great chef of our house, my mom, made this dark colored soup and served it to us one night. Of course, we didn't know it was crocodile meat until after the dinner (she somehow fooled us into believing that it was chicken, what a smart trick!) I asked my mom about it recently, and she said the recipe came from my grandmother, a mother to five children and a grandmother to ten grand kids.

Crocodile meat is rare to find in Hong Kong, though I've heard some really traditional Chinese grocery stores still carry them. My mom said she got her crocodile meat from Thailand. Apparently, some relatives of ours bought us little purses made of crocodile skin, and shipped the rest of the crocodile to us for dinner.

My grandmother told my mom to make us crocodile meat soup because this "hot meat" (as supposed to chicken, which is a kind of "cold meat") is a traditional remedies for treating childhood asthma, which my brother had when he was younger. Try searching "crocodile meat + asthma" on google, you will not be surprised to see many successful cases in which crocodile meat really cured asthma. I don't know if this is scientifically proved, but it is believed that crocodile meat also helps strengthen immunity and delay aging.

I forgot how crocodile meat tastes like, except the fact that it wasn't very tender. The soup tasted good, nothing special, but my little brother ends up having his asthma cured. There's something about crocodile meat then...

Tricked by Treat!

I have been looking for recent and topical issues concerning exotic food on my Google Reader. After hours of efforts, I think I am convinced that bizarre foods are products of heritage and history of different culture, and they probably won't show up constantly on RSS feeds. *Idea light bulb pops up* Why can't I talk about weird behaviors caused by normal food?

We've all heard of how candies and sweets can make one happy. Scientific results have proved that they raise blood sugar level, thus make us more energetic, lively and happy. But recent researches have shown that they can also make us more violent! According to National Post, Topix.com, and many unknown personal blogs, studies have been conducted, showing that "Children who by age 10 were eating candy daily were more likely to be arrested for a violent offense by the age of 34." Well, when I come to think about it, it is possible that this might happen. See, if sugar makes us energetic, the chance that kids would use their energy to commit crimes is relatively higher! We all know kids who are spoiled tend to be more rebellious, thus might be more violent in the future. Do we necessarily need a study of 17,500 children to know this?

Yet, I am not denying the possibility of association between candies and violence. In fact, that might actually save us all some bucks from our pockets, especially when Halloween is right around the corner, maybe we should consider stop giving kids their treats...

Believe It or Not... I actually Found My Social Bookmarking Soulmate!

Believe it or not... I have heard about del.icio.us about a year ago, but I never had the chance to try it, or even just create an account for it. After knowing so much more about social bookmarking, for the first time of my life, I registered for a diigo AND del.icio.us account! So now you know my blog is about bizarre, or in other words, scary food, I naturally subscribed to articles and websites that are related to them. In spite of how large the user base of del.icio.us is, I found it extremely hard to look for my social bookmarking soulmate (someone that shares similar interests with me on the web). It literally took me 3 hours to get used to the website, bookmark the sites I found interesting, and patiently look for the one person to pop up. But just when I was about to give up, I found you... after so long... HoustonFoodie!

HoustonFoodie, I don't know if you will ever read this blog, I don't know if you are a man or a woman, but I do know you love to eat and explore, just as much as I do! As his name implies (I am going to assume it's a "he" for the rest of the post), Foodie is a very possibly a food lover from Houston. From her 516 tags on del.icio.us, I would assertively say that more than half of them are about food, or at least food related subjects such as recipes, and restaurants. One thing I like about him, is that he also loves travelling and exploring food from all over the world. His tags include, but not limited to, food culture from "Palestines," "Mexican," "Portugal" and many more "exotic countries the West has yet to see. He also has 26 pages tagged on "travel" and "tourism," which makes us even more compatible.


HoustonFoodie's profile is pretty thorough, as he covers a lot of topical issues concerning food, including food safety and foreign food policies. Yet he never commented on any of those pages. (I think his tags pretty much explain what the pages are about though) he has about 220 bookmarked pages, in which, as I have mentioned before, more than half are food related webpages. Starting from December, 2008, HoustonFoodie bookmark pages on del.icio.us almost every single day. In less than a year, his profile has become an extremely organized page. All of his pages are categorized under specific tags, there are at least a dozen of tags named under the big umbrella of food!

In case you wonder, "food is such a common big topic, how does HoustonFoodie's profile relate to your bizarre food blog?" Indeed, he is probably as interested in bizarre food as I am. One of the oldest page he bookmarked, for example, is a step-to-step guide to butchering a lamb carcass! What interests, or probably benefits me the most, is that his pages also talk about the cultural exchange among countries through the use of food. For instance, in March 2009, he bookmarked a page concerning how pizza struggles to find its way to North Korea, which seamlessly fits the direction of my blog. While my blog tries to compare different dining experience from East to West, this article in particular, provides a lot of insight for me in researching this area of food culture.

Thanks to del.icio.us, I have found my social bookmarking soulmate! His page gives me a lot of big ideas in terms of what my blog should talk about in the future. The technology of social bookmarking tools certainly makes my research much easier and more enjoyable!

A Little Thought on Andrew Zimmern

The idea of eating bizarre food certainly does not come from my originality. As many have known, Andrew Zimmern, the TV host of Bizarre Food with Andrew Zimmern, is probably the pioneer in this field. In fact, as a regular viewer of his show, he has become a great inspiration to my blog. Zimmern also recently wrote his first book, The Bizarre Truth: How I walked out the Door Mouth First... and Came Back Shaking My Head. As a blogger on bizarre food culture, Zimmern really is my role model. He travels around the world eating the most unexpected foods you can ever imagine. His experience is not only a cultural journey, but also a culinary adventure! As Zimmern noted in his book:

"The best experiences you will ever have as a traveler require getting off your (butt) and spending quality time with real people in real towns. ... I prefer to do it by experiencing food and sharing culture"

I cannot agree more that food reflects a certain cultural practices of the country. Have you ever gone to a place, thinking back how stupid it was to not try one of the most famous bizarre food in the country you just visited? Well, I have, but certainly not going to do that again, because what more adventurous thing can you do than to eat a live critter? I certainly am not trying to promote the eating of illegal animals like dogs or cats, but Andrew Zimmern does stand a firm point. While many of us take food for granted, we often neglect the cultural meanings behind them. Sometimes, the simplest action often gives you the bigger picture of life, and Andrew Zimmern is definitely the living example of this.

Trifecta

Hello Post

I was re-watching some earlier episodes of The Biggest Loser few days ago, and I wonder "if they didn't eat so much, they probably wouldn't have ended up on TV doing all kinds of gut wrenching (or humiliating) exercises" But yet, who doesn't love food? We consume so much food everyday, that sometimes we take them for granted, french fries from McDonalds, chicken from KFC, or Burritos from Taco Bell (literally, Yum!). Yet these calories do not only come from American fast food restaurants. There are so much more different food cultures out there in the world, a world far beyond our ideological McDonaldland.

In this blog, you will find different food cultures, dining etiquettes and more about the art of eating from all over the world. From what's considered the "bizarre food", to what Westerners believe as the "norm," this blog attempts to open your eyes to these exotic cultures, as well as to examine how Western's food (or specifically American food) has begun to influence different dining experiences in other parts of the world.

I first came up with this topic after my recent travel to different parts of Asia the past Summer. Thailand, in particular, really widened my culinary horizon. On the famous Sunday Walking Street in Chiang Mai, I saw street vendors selling food that I had never considered edible. Things such as scorpions, silk worms, fetal duck eggs might sound unappetizing, but they seemed to be a widely popular choice of snacks to the local Thais (check out how to eat fetal duck eggs on youtube). After experiencing these interesting cuisines, I am particularly interested in food from what the West considered as exotic food, how the West began to influence their taste, and at the same time, how these "bizarre" food culture also quietly starts to blend into our everyday life.

Let's put this blog as an introduction of "bizarre food" from, not a Western point of view, but an Asian perspective. While I certainly am not qualified to be a food critic, I enjoy traveling and experiencing new things. My origin, as an Asian born and raised in a metropolitan city - Hong Kong, has given me a lot of insights on different food cultures around the world. Of course, the blog will include certain illustrative descriptions and sometimes disturbing images of cooked (or raw) animals being eaten by people from different nations. The blog will also be comprised of history and traditions of the food cultures. (For example, it is a regular practice in China that chefs deep fry rats so as to replace the more expensive quail!) While food culture is distinctive among regions, I believe they all involve interesting stories behind them that are worth examining and discussing.

However, unlike the Travel Channel TV show "The Bizarre Foods" with Andrew Zimmern, my blog also attempts to compare the similarities between different food cultures. As our world is getting more and more globalized, it seems that our dining experience also blends into unique fusion cuisines. It is now very common to see Pizza Hut in Shanghai, Coca Cola in India, or McDonald's in South Africa. Have our food cultures become more similar due to the trend of globalization? or are we exposed to a more diverse choice of food than we did 20 years ago? How do the rest of the world react to these bizarre food culture? Have we become more tolerant, or the other way around? These are some questions to be discussed in this blog in the future.

Throughout this blog, I hope to approach different food cultures from an Asian's point of view. While Americans consider food from other continents as "the other food," it would certainly be interesting to compare and contrast these differences from another perspective. This blog does not only serve to recommend food or restaurants like most of the food blogs do, more importantly, I wish to utilize the blog as a way to enhance communication between cultures through different dishes.

Bon Appetit, fellow bloggers!

links to related blogs:
http://www.andrewzimmern.com/blog/andrew
http://foodandculture.blogspot.com/
http://www.vietworldkitchen.com/blog/asian-food-culture/
http://www.travelerslunchbox.com/
http://worldonaplate.blogs.com/
http://eatingasia.typepad.com/

Profile a Blog Post
I found a really interesting and resourceful blog while researching for information for my own topic. The blog, Critical Studies in Food and Culture (http://foodandculture.blogspot.com/), is straightforward as its title suggests. It is a blog collectively created by researchers from University of California, Davis. While the blog mainly "aims to support and share the work of Faculty and Graduate Student researchers investigating the intersections of food and cultural studies," it also deals with subjects including food aesthetics, politics of eating, and food appearing in other cultural medium. The blog entries, mainly posted by a graduate student at UC Davis named David Michalski, suggest food related talks and discussions happening on and off campus. The blog also links to other useful journals and websites regarding critical studies in food and culture.


Besides being the Social, Behavior and Cultural Studies Librarian at UC Davis, Michalski also wrote his dissertation on social aesthetics in contemporary wine culture, and the psychology behind cultural and social behavior, which makes him very much qualified to analyze food and its related cultural studies.

Michalski usually blogs once a month. In his most recent entry (written on May 30th 2009), for example, he encouraged his readers to submit papers for food-related architecture, including the packaging and graphic design of food. His blog, in general, is not only about how food provokes our senses. In fact, he also attempts to relate food with other media. For example, in the entry "Slow Food Slow Film" (written on September 19th 2008), he compares the products of industrialized food and the products of industrialized cinema by analyzing how differently food is represented in Hollywood and foreign movies such as Ang Lee's Eat Drink Man Woman and Sandra Nettlebeck's Bella Martha.

The blog is very much related to my topic, in a way that it really inspires me to compare food culture to other possible cultural medium. As a cinema major, it would be really interesting to draw parallels between food culture and the film industry. In spite of its abundant resources and innovative ideas, the blog does not seem to be very popular. It ranks 1,603,173 on technorati.com, yet it is the first blog that came up when I google searched "food and culture." I believe the reason to this is because this site is mainly targeted to students at UC Davis, that in a way it's purely academic. (In other words, it's not a very entertaining site to the general public on the web) However though, this blog does give me a lot of insights and materials regarding how my blog should flow throughout the duration of 15 weeks.

Despite the fact that this site is resourceful, I am not going to simply copy its format. While it does give me a lot of big ideas, my site is hopefully going to be a lot more detailed. Instead of suggesting food related talks and conferences, I would focus more on how food cultures differ across borders and the historical origins of certain dining cultures. If possible, I would love to have more cultural exchange with other bloggers through comments. I believe by allowing comments, my blog will be richer, more specific and educational, and hopefully has more personality than Michalski's.

Voice Critique
Writing about exotic food is not an easy task at all. Eating them probably makes it even harder. While I was looking for blogs about these bizarre food culture, I came across these two "Adventurous Eaters", a husband and wife team who went to different parts of China in search of new and exotic food. The blog has not been updated for more than a year, so I assume they haven't been able to visit China again after April 2008, yet the voice of their posts does speak a lot about their persona. Marsha, the wife of the family, does most of the blog writing, and in most of the entries, she presents a really interesting thoughts on these bizarre and exotic food.

Marsha, her husband and her kids (which I think some of them are adopted from China) are no ordinary family. In one of her entries, "The King of Fruits," she made eating bizarre food sound like an everyday thing.

"I had double cooked sliced pork stomach and steamed green beans with ground pork. Mason got pork dumplings and crispy tofu. The kids got....fried rice. Yep, we went all the way to chinatown for authentic chinese and they got fried rice that you can get anywhere."

First thing on my mind: "what is wrong with her?" The woman is complaining about her kids choosing fried rice over pork stomach. When I was reading, I couldn't help but wonder what kind of character she is. Just from these few lines, I can already tell she loves being extraordinary in terms of her choice of food. She is, as the title of the blog suggests, adventurous and willing to look for every single opportunity to try new and bizarre food.

Marsha also expresses a lot of emotions throughout her blogs. In this same entry, she wants to tell her readers how stinky durian (also known as the king of fruits) really is as she capitalizes certain words as follow:

"WOW! That's the stinkiest thing I've ever smell in my LIFE!"

The excellent use of capitalization once again highlights Marsha's excitement and surprise. Although, as her readers, we might never have actually seen or smelled a durian, she really sounds like durian as something we should probably avoid.

DURIAN Courtesy of EatingAsia.com

In another entry named "China 07 Guangzhou is Adventurous Eating Paradise," Marsha reveals her inner thoughts when being asked if she wants to have dog meat.

"Doggy, woof woof, doggy [...] if I was going to be crossing an imaginary line. Would people think I was a monster? Would they hate me? Would I lose friends? Certainly I would no longer be welcomed at a PETA meeting."

Again, as a reader, I can see more of the author, as if she is speaking to me as a person, not a virtual communicator. We don't only see Marsha as an adventurous eater, at the same time, through these subtle textual cues, we also know what she was thinking when coming across with these tough decisions. As a reader, it makes the blog post even more interesting to read on as it characterizes the entry and provokes curiosity.

Lastly, I also noticed that she quotes one line separately from the other paragraphs:

"He stayed and watched them chop the snake's head off, skin it, and drain the blood."

Why did she do that? I feel like it does not only emphasize the brutality of killing the animals, it also reflects Marsha's persona as a blogger. The way she says it makes her (and her husband) more of an adventurous eater. Just by looking at this line, she is not afraid of describing the killing of the snake in an elaborate fashion. She is brave, bold, and indeed very adventurous when it comes to eating these exotic food in China.

In general, "Adventurous Eater" reflects very much of its author's personality. The title fits the persona of Marsha very well. By using these textual and visual cues, the blogger's voice is stood out, and it made the experience of reading the blog much more enjoyable and pleasurable. There is so much to learn from the Adventurous Eater. Not only their bravery to try new food, but also the way they voice themselves in the blog. I certainly hope to express a coherent, at the same time, entertaining and even humorous voice throughout my culinary blog adventure. Now, are you ready?

My Comment on Andrew Zimmern's Blog

The blog post can be found here. The following is my comment to Andrew Zimmern's blog:

Give Durian a Chance

I am originally from Hong Kong, so durian is no stranger to me. Even so, I have always been really reluctant to try durian ever since I was a little kid. Locals often seem to make fun of durian too. (For example, when I was in high school, one "punishment" among our peers was to eat durian in front of the whole class) However, my grandparents from my mom side seems to like it very much, they tried to force me with it. Not until a few years ago, I finally got to eat it. What really bothered me was, surprisingly not the smell, nor the taste, but the texture of it. It smelled like trash you have put there for more than a month, tasted slightly bitter, but the texture was certainly beyond words can ever do a justice. It just felt like eating some really rotten tofu (yuck!). The whole durian-eating experience was... a stimulating roller coaster ride for all my senses.

However, if you have ever come to Hong Kong, you will find a lot of by-products made by durian which actually tastes acceptable, if not, delicious. One recommendation is the infamous durian pancake made by Honeymoon Dessert. Despite the fact that the crepe is green in color, it tastes awesome with whipped cream and tiny durian pieces. (They probably put a lot of sugar in it to balance off its smell, though)

The locals always say: if you can bare the smell of durian, you can pretty much eat everything. Give durian a chance, it really doesn't taste as bad as it smells.

By thesilkworm on Sun, 09/13/2009 - 05:27

This is No Panda Express

As one of the largest countries in the world, China has numerous distinct styles of food across different regions. While Chinese food is widely spread around the world, Westerners often associate them as fast food packed in a waxed cardboard box - ready to go. Whenever I go to Panda Express or even restaurants with names that sound Chinese (such as Ni Hao, which is another fake Chinese restaurant I’ve been to in Florida), I can’t help but laugh at the menu. Why? Because most of the times I have never heard of these dishes: Orange Chicken, Beef and Broccoli, and dishes that sound authentically Chinese, but in reality, do not even exist in China. I am not trying to pick on Panda Express here, but if you have seen and tasted the real and traditional Chinese cuisine, you probably would wonder: “why am I even eating the American Chinese crap?”

To be honest, I am tired of these chained American Chinese restaurants like Panda Express and Hong Kong express. Just because you put a panda on your logo doesn’t necessarily mean you make real Chinese food. In fact, Chinese cuisine is nothing like their cute and innocent panda mascot. The real dining experience often involves bizarre ingredients you would never imagine edible. To a great extent, Chinese food culture is way more than merely chicken fried rice, especially when it's dated back in the imperial time. Just in case the modern Chinese food isn't weird enough, I present to you... the Manchu Han Imperial Feast, a bizarre banquet that is served only to the imperial families. Think it's a privilege to enjoy such royal cuisine? Maybe you will think about it twice after this.

The Imperial Feast was a tradition developed in Qing Dynasty. On Emperor Kangxi's 66th birthday, he held these extravagant banquets, intended to settle the dispute between Manchurian and Han people. I don't know how a 3-day banquet involving more than 300 dishes could possibly resolve a racial and political struggle. But Cultural China mentions:

Emperor Qianlong promoted the combination of these two banquets. From then on, the catering cultures of these two nationalities have exercised influence on each other and finally developed into an integral catering culture of Chinese nation.

The ingredients used in this feast are certainly more of an interest to me. According to Emperor Qianglong's catalog, there were "thirty-two delicacies" including the "Eight Mountain Delicacies" such as bear's paw, live monkey's brain, ape's lips, and rhinoceros’ tails; "Eight Land delicacies" such as precious certain fruits and mushrooms, and "Eight Sea Delicacies" such as shark's fin, sea cucumbers and bird’s nest; and “Eight Poultry Delicacies” such as quails, swans, and peacocks.

Though most of the recipes are long lost, these ancient cuisines are still commonly found in restaurants in China. For example, shark fins remain one of the local’s favorite and a must have dish in weddings and celebrations. As a Chinese, born and raised in Hong Kong, I have not, unfortunately, had the chance to try the infamous Manchu Han Imperial Feast, although restaurants there have been actively attempting to replicate its grandeur and exceptional dining experience. However, I have had shark fin, snake soup, bird nest and even peacocks numerous times. In fact, many of these dishes are still considered a way to prove your social status. Say if you have shark fin soup in your daughter’s wedding banquet, chances are that people are more likely to look up on you.

The paradox is, most of these delicacies are made of endangered animals. I know in China, there are still a lot of merchants who capture wild black bear in order to get their gall bladders. A lot of these rare animals are treated in extremely inhumane ways. While the Orientals believe in the idea that the more unique the ingredient is, the more benefits it will bring to your body, Westerners have been actively engaged in saving these endangered animals. There have been campaigns that against lab testing on animals, organizations that discourage animal cruelty. Although there are so many cultural differences between the two ideologies, as Westerners get more exposure to these bizarre Chinese cuisines through the use of Internet, Chinese are also beginning to see the Manchu Han Imperial Feast as a mere technicality. It is now almost impossible to find some of these rare ingredients in China, but – it is often more important to reproduce the historical meanings and cultural practice behind the dishes than to present the actual cuisine itself.

Right now, it seems that Manchu Han Imperial Feast can only live in our imagination.

The Voice of the Adventurous Eaters

Writing about exotic food is not an easy task at all. Eating them probably makes it even harder. While I was looking for blogs about these bizarre food culture, I came across these two "Adventurous Eaters", a husband and wife team who went to different parts of China in search of new and exotic food. The blog has not been updated for more than a year, I assume they haven't been able to visit China again after April 2008, yet the voice of their posts does speak a lot about their persona. Marsha, the wife of the family, does most of the blog writing, and in most of the entries, she presents a really interesting thoughts on these bizarre and exotic food.

Marsha, her husband and her kids (which I think some of them are adopted from China) are no ordinary family. In one of her entries, "The King of Fruits," she made eating bizarre food an everyday thing.

"I had double cooked sliced pork stomach and steamed green beans with ground pork. Mason got pork dumplings and crispy tofu. The kids got....fried rice. Yep, we went all the way to chinatown for authentic chinese and they got fried rice that you can get anywhere."

What? What is wrong with her? The woman is complaining about her kids choosing fried rice over pork stomach. When I was reading, I couldn't help but wonder what kind of character she is. Just from these few lines, I can already tell she loves being extraordinary in terms of her choice of food. She is, as the title of the blog suggests, adventurous and willing to look for every single opportunity to try new and bizarre food.

Marsha also expresses a lot of emotions throughout her blogs. In this same entry, she wants to tell her readers how stinky durian (also known as the king of fruits) really is as she capitalizes certain words as follow:

"WOW! That's the stinkiest thing I've ever smell in my LIFE!"

The excellent use of capitalization once again highlights Marsha's excitement and surprise.

Courtesy of EatingAsia.com

In another entry named "China 07 Guangzhou is Adventurous Eating Paradise," Marsha reveals her inner thought when being asked if she wants to have dog meat.

"Doggy, woof woof, doggy [...] if I was going to be crossing an imaginary line. Would people think I was a monster? Would they hate me? Would I lose friends? Certainly I would no longer be welcomed at a PETA meeting."

Again, as a reader, I can see more of the author, as if she is speaking to me as a person, not a virtual communicator. We don't only see Marsha as an adventurous eater, at the same time, through these subtle textual cues, we also know what she was thinking when coming across with these tough decisions. As a reader, it makes the blog post even more interesting to read on as it characterizes the entry and provokes curiosity.

Lastly, I also noticed that she quotes one line separately from the other paragraphs:

"He stayed and watched them chop the snake's head off, skin it, and drain the blood."

Why did she do that? I feel like it does not only emphasize the brutality of killing the animals, it also reflects Marsha's persona as a blogger. The way she says it makes her (and her husband) more of an adventurous eater. Just by looking at this line, she is not afraid of describing the killing of the snake in an elaborate fashion. She is brave, bold, and indeed very adventurous when it comes to eating these exotic food in China.

In general, "Adventurous Eater" reflects very much of its author's personality. The title fits the persona of Marsha very well. By using these textual and visual cues, the blogger's voice is stood out, and it made the experience of reading the blog more enjoyable and pleasurable.

Hello World! :)

We consume so much food everyday, that sometimes it becomes a necessity that we take for granted. In fact, food is much more than fries from McDonalds, pizza from Pizza Hut, or Burritos from Taco Bell. In this blog, you will find different food cultures, dining etiquettes and many more about the art of eating from all over the world. From what's considered the "bizarre food", to what Westerners believe as the "norm," this blog attempts to open your eyes to the exotic cultures, as well as how Western's food (or specifically American food) has begun to influence different dining experiences.

I first came up with this topic after my recent travel to different parts of Asia. Thailand, in particular, really widened my culinary horizon. On the famous Sunday Walking Street in Chiang Mai, I saw street vendors selling food that I had never considered edible. Things such as scorpions, silk worms, fetal duck eggs might sound unappetizing, but they seemed to be a widely popular choice of snacks to the local Thais. After experiencing these interesting cuisines, I am particularly interested in food from what the West considered as exotic food, how the West began to influence their taste, and at the same time, how these "bizarre" food culture blend into our everyday life.

The blog will start by an introduction of "bizarre food" from, not a Western point of view, but an Asian perspective. While I certainly am not qualified to be a food critic, I enjoy traveling and experiencing new things. My origin, as an Asian born and raised in a metropolitan city - Hong Kong, has given me a lot of insights on different food cultures around the world. Of course, the blog will include certain descriptions and images of cooked (or sometimes raw!) animals being eaten by people from different nations. The blog is also comprised of history and traditions of the food cultures. (For example, it is a regular practice in China that chefs deep fry rats so as to replace the more expensive quail!) While food culture is distinctive among regions, I believe they all involve interesting stories behind them that are worth examining and discussing.

The second part of the blog attempts to compare the similarities between different food cultures. As our world is getting more and more globalized, it seems that our dining experience also blends into unique fusion cuisines. It is now very easy to see KFC in Shanghai, Coca Cola in India, or McDonald's in South Africa. Have our food cultures become more similar due to the trend of globalization? or are we exposed to a more diverse choice of food than we did 20 years ago?

Throughout this blog, I hope to approach different food cultures from an Asian's point of view. While Americans consider food from other continents as "the other food," it would certainly be interesting to compare and contrast these differences from another perspective. This blog does not only serve to recommend food or restaurants, more importantly, I wish to utilize the blog as a way to enhance communication between cultures through different dishes.

Bon Appetit, fellow bloggers!

links to related blogs:
http://www.andrewzimmern.com/blog/andrew
http://foodandculture.blogspot.com/
http://www.vietworldkitchen.com/blog/asian-food-culture/
http://www.travelerslunchbox.com/
http://worldonaplate.blogs.com/
http://eatingasia.typepad.com/

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