The unlockable answers...

[compilerbitch]

What is the most unusual food you've ever eaten... and enjoyed?

That's a tough one, because I'll eat nearly anything. Hmm... I suppose if I've eaten and enjoyed it, then *I* pretty much by definition don't find it weird. But of the foods that people frequently won't go near, I love haggis. I used to eat black pudding when I lived in north east England, but seldom do these days. And raw fish, and fish eggs. And sprats, whole, on black bread in the Russian style. I like a few Russian things, like cabbage pie, борщ, the little cabbage parcel things with meat and rice inside that I can never remember the name of, etc. But that's not *that* unusual, I suppose.

Oh, yes, I know what I can say. It's a drink rather than a food, though. Another Russian thing: квас, (prounounced 'kvass'). It's kind of a weird fermented fizzy drink that looks like coke and tastes like Marmite. I really like it. I'm weird. Yeah, laugh it up, I know, I know.

Though I should say that once, in Moscow, I was given a weird soup with bits of meat, vegetables and sour cream. In a base of квас. Maybe someone can remind me what this horror-concoction was called, but no one was very surprised when I didn't like it. I mean, cold soup, fair enough, I can deal, but FIZZY and Weird as Hell? C'mon!

omnisppot asks who our common LJ friends are and how I know them...

augeas I know via panzerpenguin, I think, though I've also bumped into him lots at Hinoeuma when I used to sound-engineer there.

davefish I know via doseybat, my ex. We were basically part of the same extended social circle for the last 4 years or so that I lived in the UK.

spidosaur Is doseybat's ex, which is how I know him. ~~~waves~~~, if you're watching.

vulcanita I met via spidosaur, via doseybat.

naranek I know via the Cambridge goth/geek scene.

Comments

[caladri.livejournal.com]

Hm. In what contexts have you encountered fizzy kvas? In Russia and Ukraine from street vendors, I found it always to be more or less like iced tea. Vaguely foamy but not fizzy. The bottled stuff I've found tends towards mildly fizzy but not really noticably. Every stolovaya seemed to have a soup with a kvas base, though the name escapes me. It was definitely not fizzy! Stolovaya food varied between cold and kept warm so long it's dehydrated, but I never had cold fizzy soup! I feel like I'm missing out :)

[compilerbitch.livejournal.com]

Yeah, not *really* fizzy in the case of the soup, but... definitely a bit of dissolved carbon dioxide in the ancestry somewhere. It was weird as hell, honestly! :-)

The квас I had from bottles came from a local store, and was rather fizzier, closer to normal soda.

[caladri.livejournal.com]

Actually, on further reflection, I think I encountered some kvas in bottles which was genuinely fizzy. Interestingly, I thought it tasted more of iced tea mixed with apple juice and a small bit of beer (which is also what it looks like, which perhaps says something about me) than marmite!

Man, I wish my attempt at making kvas had turned out well. Now I'm just letting it sit indefinitely while I watch bizarre chemical reactions occur in it - it's now solidly black in color and no more viscous than water!

[compilerbitch.livejournal.com]

Wow, it looks like I've (transitively) created a monster by mentioning the stuff...

[caladri.livejournal.com]

Well, I've been pretty actively wanting kvas since exiting Russia. It grew on me. You just gave a good excuse to talk about it :)

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

I would like to try квас.

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

Wikipedia says your soup was called okroshka.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okroshka

[compilerbitch.livejournal.com]

Yes!

That's it. Weird as a clockwork chocolate wombat that's been left to go mouldy for a few weeks, pressed between a pair of Republicans and then decanted into a soup bowl prior to serving.

[fluffthebunny.livejournal.com]

OMG. I just had one of those "you made me laugh so hard, milk came from my nose... and I wasn't even drinking milk" moments.

LOL

[lysana.livejournal.com]

If for some unknown reason I had any open questions as to why our mutual sweetie dates you, all born of a lack of familiarity for sake of the record, they are permanently put to rest with this one comment.

[pfy.livejournal.com]

Black pudding is delicious, despite the ingredients being entirely unappetising. Same goes for haggis. I think doseybat has given me квас to try. It was odd (though still perfectly drinkable).

As for other British food, pork scratchings seem to scare some foreign visitors when I describe them ("They're these crunchy fried strips of pig skin, the good ones still have hairs on. I've got some here, wanna try?"). And I have also got one American friend hooked on chip butties, despite her initial scepticism.

I will also quite happily eat stuff that I have found growing wild. I have eaten puffballs, chickweed, parasol mushrooms, hawthorn berries, sloes, and quite a few other things. Amethyst Deceivers are probably the weirdest mushroom I've eaten, just because they are bright purple.

[pinguhateseng.livejournal.com]

Kvas is just a fermented drink - I guess I've been in Russia too long to find it weird. But okroshka is definately freaky.

[damned-colonial.livejournal.com]

Strangest thing I've eaten is probably beaver. No, don't laugh. I actually mean the aquatic mammal, chopped up and cooked. I believe it was the tail that we ate.

[spidosaur.livejournal.com]

*waves* back! :)

Leftovers floating in fizzy marmite?. Mmmm!...
(...*hughey*!.)
Everything else is nice though (especially Haggis, Black Pudding and those parcel thingies).

[omnisppot.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I don't feel so bad stalking you now :)

[jholomorphic.livejournal.com]

Dark fermented marmite reminds me of an Indian drink called "Zim" which I think was made by Coke. But I never actually saw it in India, but only in a supermarket in Austin (which had several other similar soft drinks I've never seen elsewhere. Maybe their entire Indian production is allocated for Austin. Or perhaps they stopped making it, which honestly would bother me very little.)