Where The Wild Things Are Eaten

There's A club in New York that has attracted adventurers and adventurous eaters for decades.The meats aren't your usual roast beef and chicken.They"re a bit more gamier, in fact they're downright wild.It's the famed Explorer's Club and it' been serving up some strange beasts for interesting feasts. Stephen Rex Brown wrote about it in today's New York Daily News(again the Daily News has some really good food articles).It an annual dinner that has attracted some of the last century's more famous explorer's.Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Sir Edmund Hillary This year Amazon founder ,Jeff Bezos and the edge of space skydiver, Felix Baumgartner will be honored. However it's the food that will shine.In past years it was a maple glazed hog mask or the face of the pig,along with python patties with bacon on top.For seafood adventurists the club served up jellyfish slivers in a white soy sauce.Turtle cakes with capers remoulade has also been given out.Desserts usually have the added decoration of mealworms and crickets. The club started in 1903 when navigating through most sit down dinners was an adventure.The club was founded by professionals dedicated To the exp,oration of Earth, the oceans and outer space.The first group included early Arctic explorer's,Adolphus Greeley and David Brainard.Teddy Roosevelt and Prince Albert I of Monaco were honorary members..The club has always been known for it's strange dinners.This year a few dozen pounds of alligators will be used as well as some exotic fungi.The dinner became a yearly fixture in the 1930s when explorer's brought back well preserved mammoth meat from Siberia.Since then every kind of meat, from ostrich to tarantula has been served.It's been made into such mundane recipes like bakes and sliders,the easier to eat them. Insects become kabobs while eyeballs are like appetizers. The Explorers were never faint hearted men and women.Eating the wild things on the planet means having a steely constitution.It's a club for the adventurous palate.

Odd Food Marriages

There are some pretty strange food marriages out there. Look at the pizza burger or batter friend iced cream. Or even a chili dog which is a scoop of chili over a hot dog. We make up some weird combinations and then eat them.


As I‘ve written the pizza burger is a pretty strange duck. I couldn’t find the origins of this. Maybe some just figured that a burger mixed with pizza sauce and topped with mozzarella tasted good. There are a lot of recipe out there for it , the best being canned sauce (yes, surprisingly!!) mixed with ground beef and a little oregano. Another strange idea are those fried sandwiches like the Monte Cristo. This started in 1910 and was an offshoot of that famous Parisian bistro sandwich ,the croque monsieur, it was first served in this country in the 1960’s in California. Something got lost in the translation however. The finished sandwich was dusted with confectioners sugar and served with a side of grape jelly???!!! Talk about bizarre!!!!

Fried ice cream is another oddity, melding freezer cold with hot oil. It’s a staple in Mexican restaurants and despite the oxymoronic name is really pretty tasty. It’s just taking a scoop of hard ice cream , dipping it into raw egg and then frying it in either batter, crushed corn flakes or bread crumbs. Mexican restaurants then serve this with a dusting of cinnamon. Another odd sweet treat is the national craze for chocolate dipped wasabi or chili peppers. There’s this wacko relationship of sweet dark chocolate offset by a fireball exploding in the mouth. Years ago we had this craze for dipping insects in chocolate. To be honest, thank heaven’s that ‘s over

The wildest I’ll ever go is maybe the fried iced cream or caramels infused with French sea salt. That’s about it. Anything other than that, nah, I like my food plain and simple. Life is too bizarre as it is without strange food pairings.