Summary: Food is one of the most basic pleasures in life. Everybody eats, and while caffeine and playing with yourself on Chatroulette can handle your other necessities, you’re pretty much stuck with food. For now. And for any mundane activity there are those who seek adventure. In terms of food, most can be satiated with a little Tabasco. Others need to push the envelope further by indulging in the taboo and the strange. For those people, only the thrill of consuming a still living animal will suffice. Today, we’ll be examining some of the dishes these freaks call dinner. Or lunch. Or whatever. 1. Casu marzu (Italy) Hey, that looks pretty... wait. Why is it moving? Let’s ease into this one. Lots of people eat cheese made from sheep’s milk. On the isle of Sardinia in Italy, they prefer Pecorino. They also like it served a very specific way. Rather than just fermenting the cheese, they just go ahead and give it a push into the “rotting” territory by inviting maggots to the party. Cheese flies are allowed to lay their eggs, which hatch and start chewing their way through. They start to break down the fats and this makes the cheese very soft. So soft, the Pecorino begins to “cry” (as the locals put it) as the digested fatty liquid leaks out. When it’s time to consume the devil-cheese, it’s decision time. Some go for the full experience and eat it, maggots and all, in thin strips on some crispy bread that in no way disguises the taste of live larvae. For the faint of heart, one can also seal the cheese in a bag which causes the maggots to lose oxygen and start launching themselves out of the cheese at distances up to 15 centimeters. That’s over 18 times their body length, about the same as you leaping a 10 story building. When the bag stops making the sweet pitter-patter of maggots in their death throws, the cheese is certified baby fly free. The maggots also provide a cool, pre-industrial expiration date. If the maggots die naturally, the cheese has gone toxic, hence the idea behind eating it while it’s still infested. For the people who nosh with the insects intact, they can look forward to the chance of the larvae surviving the stomach and setting up shop in the intestines. As it turns out, living in rotting cheese means they’re pretty used to acidic environments, and being a disgusting maggot means they’re more than happy to try to burrow into your duodenum. 2. Oysters (Widespread) I wonder if anyone’s ever made a "shellfish look like lady parts" joke. Well, they have now. There’s no classier food than shellfish, except maybe steak soaked in champagne. Lobster, mussels, king crab… delicious delights from the seven seas. And when it comes to seafood, freshness is the phrase that pays. The faster you can get these animals from their underwater home to your plate, the tastier they are. People still pay good money to look their dinner in the eye while they choose a lobster from a tank. Oysters push the idea of freshness to the logical conclusion. They must be cooked or eaten while they are still alive, otherwise you can look forward to an evening bowing to the porcelain god. While they can be boiled, baked or prepared any number of ways, the most delightful method is on the half shell. This means half the shell is cut open or “shucked” while they’re still alive to expose the sweet, sweet innards. Various sauces or juices can be added to the gelatinous mass, but the idea is to get that mollusc into your stomach before it’s legally dead. Obviously the best way to do that is just pick them up and slurp the bloody things down like a two bit whore. Surprisingly, oysters are pretty good for you. They have a number of minerals that you normally only get from the most annoyingly enriched breakfast cereals, as well as vitamin B12, which helps keep you sane and full of blood. Eating them raw (sometimes called “shooters”) retains the most nutrients. Hippies even have a hard time saying no, as oysters are almost always sustain[...]
