food! glorious food!

in recent years, i've developed an extreme interest and love for food.
how it's prepared, interesting dishes, ingredients i wouldn't normally want to place anywhere near my mouth...i don't know if i'd qualify as a "foodie", per se, but i'm definitely paying more attention to what i eat: how it looks, how it tastes, trying new dishes and recipes, etc.

i visit seriouseats.com with regularity, and it tipped me onto this site and it's post, the omnivore's 100. what a great idea! the list is highly varied, from pb&j to black truffle to pho. the post suggests pasting the list into your own space and highlighting which foods you've had and perhaps drawing attention to the foods you have zero interest in ever trying. like sweetbreads/#62...the thought of which sort of makes me want to vomit, no matter how many pages of anthony bourdain's writing i read that tries to convince me otherwise. [the wikipedia links to the more obscure items were provided by VGT in the original post.]

so, here it is. my omnivore's 100. the items i've consumed are in yellow. items that i have no intention of ever eating are in red.

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart (jennifer and i eat way too many of these when in nyc)
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns (in fact, i had these for lunch on tuesday)
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras (i'm not saying i wouldn't try it...but after hearing how it's made i don't think i could choke it down without crying)
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu (i prefer my food without the ability to kill me)
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal (i loathe the thought of a big mac; am wary of special sauce)
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads (see introduction)
63. Kaolin (yeah, no.)
64. Currywurst
65. Durian (according to wikipedia, the smell of this, "evokes reactions from deep appreciation to intense disgust." so, no.)
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis (again, no. i watched a special on the food network about how it's made.)
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette (no to intestines)
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie (one of my favorite not-so-secret junk foods)
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict (the best of which, in Rochester -- in my opinion -- is found at Jines)
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta (my mom and i always talk about how we're going to make polenta, even though neither of us really care for it. but then we make pasta instead because we're hungry.)
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake