Something Strange but not Yummy: Margerine.

People have been eating butter for thousands of years, but in the early 1900's an alternative was invented.  Its name was margerine, and it was cheap to produce and similar in consistency to butter.  However, the two are in no ways similar.  Butter is churned cream.  Here is a recipe for margerine:

Take any kind of polyunsaturated, liquid vegetable oil made rancid from extraction under high heat.  Mix with tiny, inexpensive metal particles--usually nickel oxide.  Put the mixture in a high-pressure, high-temperature reactor and bombard the unsaturated cabon bonds with hydrogen atoms.  Add soaplike emulsifiers and starch to make the mixture soft and creamy.  Steam the mixture to remove the foul odors.  Use bleach to remove the grey color.  Dye the mixture yellow.  Add artificial flavors to make the mixture palatable.  You have now created margerine.


Don't be fooled: this is margerine, not butter!

Margerine is often used during wars and other times when there isn't enough food or money because it is cheap and easy to produce.  There's only one catch: it's disgusting!

Calamari.

Calamari are some of the more famous strange and yummy foods.  They are fried or baked squid, usually formed into rings and served with a cocktail sauce.  When fried, calamari are extra crispy.  This is, in my opinion, the better of the two methods of cooking calamari.

Calamari are traditionally from the Mediterranean, and it is normally served plain. They are found in Italian and Greek cuisines, as well as Australian, in fish-and-chip shops.  They are an example of a fried, strange, and yummy food.

Mushrooms.

Mushrooms are a diverse example of food that's strange and yummy.  Not all of the 10,000+ mushrooms are edible: some will kill you!  They are found all over the world in endless colors, sizes, and shapes.  The ones we're most familiar with, the yummy ones, are delicious as the star of a meal or as a side flavor.  They soak up flavors, so they go well with almost anything.

Mushrooms are fungi, the family that houses truffles (see earlier post).  The main difference between mushrooms and truffles is that truffles are always found underground while most mushrooms are not.  They are found in many countries' cuisine, so you might know about them already.  But if you don't, next time you're at a restaurant, order the mushroom dish!  You'll see that they really are strange and yummy.