<p>In my neck of the woods, people eat all kinds of things. Just last week I got an email with a recipe for beaver (basically, put it in the slow cooker with onions and bbq sauce) I am told it tastes like pulled pork. Squirrel, muskrat, possum, etc. Everyone I know eats venison, duck, pheasant, etc. I had an employee who got sick eating raccoon this winter-- I think she’s nuts, but I know other people eat it. Me, I can barely stand to eat a chicken beast some days.</p>
<p>In Cincinnati, goetta (pronounced getta) is a local delicacy. It’s a breakfast sausage made from ground pork, mixed with ground oats. I’ve never seen it anyplace else. There’s even a Goettafest.</p>
<p>What the heck is wrong with scrapple? Other than the salt, the fat, the god-knows-what? It’s just a particular type of sausage, one with a lot of cornmeal, and like many sausages a way to make really efficient use of a slaughtered animal. If you eat animals – and I do – it’s over-delicate to turn up your nose at scrapple. Plus, it’s yummy!</p>
<p>Also, someone won’t eat American shad? What’s up with that? We eat shad all the time during shad season. It’s not that easy to cook to cope with its half-a-zillion y-shaped bones, but it definitely can be done. And bluefish, tons of bluefish, which is really the only true local fish commercially available here. A few weeks ago, we had a guest who had never had bluefish, and I was stunned (and immediately ran out and got some to cook).</p>
<p>One of the nice things about this city is that the sub shops that sell cheesesteaks and roast pork will put garlicky broccoli rabe on anything. In my hometown, further west, broccoli rabe is unknown, but in the old Italian neighborhoods dandelion greens serve the same function.</p>
<p>Venison is widely available during and after deer season. And you’ll see stuff like elk and bear on the menu in restaurants, but that’s just showing off.</p>
<p>I need someone to eat the muskrats that destroyed the wiring on my pontoon boat this summer! No muskrat love for me!</p>
<p>Gross regional cuisine? Lutefisk. Do not go near the church basement when the ladies are whipping up that feed. The good stuff? Lefse.</p>
<p>Occasionally, someone passes around wood chuck recipes as a joke. We have a lot of the little varmints, but I haven’t met anyone who really eats them (or Muskrats)</p>
<p>My daughters best friend is from cinch and has made her a goetta lover - still waiting for them to bring me some to try!</p>
<p>Ah, yes, lutefisk: salt cod preserved in lye (“lutefisk” literally translates to “lye-fish”). It needs to be soaked in water for about a week to get the lye out before it’s (notionally) edible, then when cooked it becomes a gooey, gelatinous, pungent, white, fishy-tasting glob. The old Norwegian-Americans swear by it. I’m told that in Norway they watch television programs showing Minnesotans eating lutefisk, and they laugh their Nordic a**es off; they eat fresh fish these days and find it hilarious that Minnesotans think they’re preserving a “heritage dish” that the Norwegians gave up generations ago in favor of superior food storage technology (not to mention taste). But boy, do they line up for the lutefisk during the Christmas season at Ingebritsen’s in South Minneapolis!</p>
<p>Not just in MN. Anywhere there are Norwegian Lutherans. Oh, and (saw this on the Travel channel - Bizarre Foods, I believe), Lutefisk is now exported to Norway from the US.</p>
<p>Bacalao also a type of salted cod, and a traditional must-eat during Lent for some in Latin America. I caught my Cucan-Venzuelan MIL sitting in the living room while the stuff cooked in the kitchen at the other end of the house. She couldn’t stand the smell but felt obligated to cook it anyway. And for whatever reason, it had to be boiled without a lid on it.</p>
<p>The only one in the whole family who would even touch the stuff was her own mother who had been born in a mountain village in Spain.</p>
<p>Cuban-Venezuelan</p>
<p>Golly. Auto-correct never ceases to amaze me.</p>
<p>happymom, my H is from northwestern Spain. Our freezer is full of bacalao! He’s the only one who will eat it in the house, though. He cooks it up for himself and his Spanish friends – I make sure to be out of the house for a few hours when he does :). My kids used to call it the “stinky fish”.</p>
<p>I’m with you NorthMinnesota…anyone want to come get them (muskrats) out of my backyard???</p>
<p>And yes…lutefisk all the time growing up…all the time 
boil it up, put it over potatoes with white gravy…an all white food.</p>
<p>Nothing wrong with scrapple. I prefer to think of it as cornmeal and “something.” Really, not much different than what’s in many sausages, which I also try not to think about. In fact, when I think too hard about many foods…</p>
<p>When I lived in CA and worked at a very international place, everyone was excited about going out for Vietnamese fried chicken feet. Needless to say, not me.</p>
<p>My Norwegian grandmother loved lutefisk. My mother hated it and also had the good sense not to serve it to us. Lefse is a Christmas tradition in our house. My mother orders it from Ingrebeten’s in Minneapolis and we all get several packages from her. We grew up eating it with sausage. I’m not sure any other Norwegians do that. We prefer to eat it with butter and sugar (just like they do at Epcot).</p>
<p>Bluefish Marsala (Yes, Ive seen it on a menu).</p>
<p>I WIN!</p>
<p>I haven’t had bluefish in years! I love it. We stayed at a resort in Costa del Sol once, the menu special each night was sea bass or bacalao. My mom’s Jamaican aid make ackee (sp) with dry, salted cod fish.</p>
<p>Digging up the oldie, but goodie:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/640909-worst-thing-you-have-seen-menu.html?[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/640909-worst-thing-you-have-seen-menu.html?</a></p>
<p>(Zm, bon appetit! 
)</p>
<p>I do not understand attraction to lutefisk. When I was getting ready for my New Years spread, a woman asked the fish guy at the grocery store for 9 lbs. He didn’t have quite that much & told her shed have to go down the street. ( I’m in Seattle)</p>
<p>The weirdest thing I like is probably raw oysters , but they are so popular it doesn’t seem weird at all.</p>
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<p>Yep. They sure do. :)</p>
<p>Every Christmas we make lefsa, which is similar in looks to a large soft shell tortilla only it is made out of potatoes. Yummy with butter and sugar!</p>
<p>Each fall, our local VFW makes Booyah which is basically a stew with a variety of meats. In its purist form I suppose the meats are store bought. But around here, the hunters empty out their freezers of last years meat and it all goes into a big pot to serve hundreds!</p>
<p>We have muskrats down by our lake shore and there is no way I would consider putting one of those in my mouth!</p>
<p>Doesn’t lutefisk soak in lye? I was always afraid of it as a child because they would leave the cover off of the large soaking bucket and I was worried the big dogs would lift their legs and “season” it.</p>