BURP: A Look Back at Project Gastronome

I posted my last entry, the one about the Miracle Fruit, closed my eyes, and all of a sudden two weeks had passed!  I usually don't let my projects end without some kind of closing thoughts, so I didn't want to miss the chance to properly bring this one to its conclusion.

I entered Project Gastronome with excitement, but a thought entered my head as I sat down on the first night, in front of my dish of pickled pigs feet: "I am about to make myself into a sideshow geek."  I'm already a professional geek, in that I work with computers, but this time I mean geek in the old school sense, the guy at the carnival who eats weird stuff to horrify spectators.

As proof that life's best moments are the serendipitous ones, though, something else happened on that first night that transformed the whole scope of the project.  Blake, who was already in bed, was curious who I was talking to (since Courtney was at work) and came out to investigate.  Although he wasn't in every installment after that, the die had definitely been cast.  This became our project instead of just my project.  He would ask me every night what we were going to eat, and whether he could join me.  He would ask if he could do that night's introduction.  As soon as each night's recording was finished, he'd want to watch it on the camera's tiny screen, and would give me notes on how we could improve the performance the next night.

Even Ava and Jack got in on it to some extent, which made some evenings more difficult to record but much, much more fun to watch.  Do you know one of the things that I got the most comments about this month?  On habanero night, when I was staggering off camera with my mouth on fire, and Blake stopped me so that Ava could have time to eat her cookie on camera.

Since my kids became such a part of this project, here's what I hope they took from it - trying new things is fun, and you're never too old or too young to do it.  Sure, sometimes it means you're going to barf up a century egg, but sometimes it means that you'll also be pleasantly surprised by the yumminess of jellyfish.  And above all, it's a thing that you can do with people who are special to you, and you can build memories together.

But for your childrens' sake, please promise me you will never feed them century eggs.

Thank you, thank you, thank you to everybody who made this so much fun!  As always, your comments, calls, emails, and conversations were one of the best parts of doing this project.  Project Gastronome even opened up a whole new chain of conversations with my Uncle Jim, who is an accomplished backyard chef, and who grills the world's meanest steak.

There really is no better way to bring this project to a close than to let Blake, our young master of ceremonies (or Young MC, if you will), do the honors...

Project Gastronome, Day 20: Miracle Fruit

Tonight's food is something I've wanted to try for several years.  I'm a longtime fan of Rob Cockerham's excellent website, cockeyed.com, and he wrote a while back about attending a Miracle Fruit tasting party.  The Miracle Fruit (Synsepalum dulcificum) is a berry native to Africa which, when eaten, coats your tongue and makes sour and bitter foods taste sweet.  How?  This is the best part - nobody really knows!  There is a protein called miraculin found in the berries which scientists think bonds temporarily to your taste buds and changes the way that they perceive certain flavors.  Miracle!

The berries themselves are really expensive to transport, and perish quickly, so the easiest way for most people to try them  is in the form of handily packaged tablets, which I've shown a picture of here, and which I had on hand for tonight's party.

Although I had some vague ideas about other things that I wanted to eat during the course of Project Gastronome, this was the one that I absolutely knew had to be on the menu.  And since the minimum order is a package of 10, I knew that I had to share this experience with some friends!  Thus was born the idea of the Project Gastronome Wrap Party.

When I posted a request for people to enter for chances to come to the party, I was sort of dreading having to draw names and tell some people that they couldn't come, but as it turns out, I got exactly as many entries as we were able to handle.  Tonight's attendees were:

• Holly Neal
• Ann Haag
• Zeb & Michele Alexander (and their sons Noah and Caleb)
• Roy Bassett (and his daughters Meranda and Callie)
• John & Jessica Quillin (and their daughter Abby)

Since most of you have never eaten a holiday meal at my house, you probably don't know how bad I am at judging food quantities.  I make enough of everything to serve more people than will be coming, and the result is a very bountiful table with plenty of leftovers.  Here's what we had to sample from tonight.

Roughly from L to R: Apple cider vinegar, lemon and lime juices, port wine, sour gummy worms, limes, grapefruit, dried cranberries, oranges, Sour Patch Kids, lemons, dark chocolate, dill pickle slices (Also pictured: Jack's hand, looking like a stone-cold killer because it's covered in streaks of red marker)

I handed out the tablets, and we all had a laugh at how much it felt like we were about to take pills together.  The first one is always free, friends.  The tablets themselves were very tart.  I think the general consensus was that they tasted like those natural fruit Fruit Roll Ups or like sugarless Sweet Tarts.  And then the tasting began!

I'm still thinking of the best way to describe the experience of eating these things.  I think we all approached the table with suspicion, because once you've finished the tablet your mouth doesn't really feel any different.  But as we started eating, it quickly became evident that something very unusual was happening on our tongues.  Apple cider vinegar went down with a little burn (it's still vinegar, after all) but tasted like sweet nectar!  Lemons were not sour at all, they were like sunshine-flavored candy!  Grapefruit had no bite at all, just explosive sweetness!  The citrus really was the most interesting part, but the rest was interesting, too.  They didn't taste substantially different, but still noticeably different.  Sour dill pickles tasted like sweet bread 'n butter pickles.  The sour candies just tasted like ordinary gummy candies.  The dried cranberries tasted kind of like raisins, and the dark chocolate wasn't bitter - it tasted almost like milk chocolate.  Wine was interesting; the bottle we had was a pretty good one, but after the tablets, it tasted like Boone's Farm.

Jack camped out near the gummy worms until they were all gone

In about 30 minutes, the tablets began to wear off, and then things got even more interesting.  People started to ask me if I had leftovers from any previous nights, so I pulled out the Baconnaise, gefiltefish, century eggs, ants, and natto.  Nobody would touch the natto or gefiltefish.  The Bassetts and Holly all tried some Baconnaise on crackers.  Roy, John, and Jessica all tried ants.  I think they were all surprised by just how hard it is to get all of the little pieces out of your mouth.  And then John told me that he'd try some century egg if I would eat it with him.

Dammit.

Of course I did it.  I wasn't happy about it at all, but at least I knew what to expect.  John was very close to blowing chunks all over my kitchen, I think.

The evening was a great success.  To each of you who came, thank you so much for being a part of it!  Here's a little bit of video to give you a taste of the evening.  Check back this weekend for a wrap-up of Project Gastronome!

Project Gastronome, Day 19: Gefiltefish & Baconnaise

Thanks very much, everybody, for being so cool about me taking last night off.  I'm in a much better state of mind today, and there's a party to look forward to tomorrow night!  To feel like I've lived up to my self-imposed terms, though, I've got to eat two things tonight.  Here we go...

First up, gefiltefish.

This one was not my idea.  I was originally planning to eat some Circus Peanuts today.  I'd never tried them, have heard generally negative opinions about them, and knew they'd be easy to obtain.  They seemed like a pretty easy way to fill a spot on the calendar.  But then I heard from my friend Kelley, who had this to say:

I must recommend that you do a post on gefiltefish. My husband, Jewish, has asked me to make or buy this food 'from the old country' in the past and I can't pull the JELLIED FISH out of the jar without a visceral reaction. Sometimes love is just not enough.

Kelley and I used to work together, and her daughter used to go to preschool with Blake, where she decided that he was her boyfriend.  Also, Kelley is a former Houston Oilers Derrick Doll!  Now, guys, I ask you this: who among you, when asked to do something by a former NFL cheerleader, would be able to say no?  Yeah, that's what I thought.

In my head, I mixed up gefiltefish with lutefisk, and wasn't sure where to get it.  See, lutefisk is fish that is boiled in lye until the bones dissolve, so I'm sure not going to take the chance of preparing it myself, but I've also never seen it for sale anywhere.  Not to worry, because gefiltefish is something entirely different.  It is fish which is first poached, then minced, and then stuffed back into the fish skin or shaped into balls, usually with a thickener such as bread crumbs, matzoh meal, or onions.  It is, essentially, fish sausage.

Remember a couple of days ago when I mentioned the Thanksgiving dinner flavored sodas?  Like I mentioned at the time, the problem wasn't that they tasted wrong.  The taste was exactly right, but since the texture of the food wasn't there, it was just all off.  This is what the experience of gefiltefish is like.  The taste of fish is there, but the texture is like paté.  It's unsettling.  The taste itself really isn't bad, but eating those fish globs pulled from the murky fluid in the jar was just too much like eating cat food.

With the gefiltefish behind me, it's now time for the evening's second item: Baconnaise.  OK, it's not technically a food, it's a condiment.  But it's a thing that exists, and for that reason alone I had to try it.  Some of you may remember last year when I said on Facebook that what I wanted for my birthday was really expensive bacon.  That wasn't a joke.  And when my friends Steve, Wyatt, and Enusha actually sent me some for Christmas, I was over the moon.  True, I'm not as much of a baconhead as some folks out there, as a quick internet search will prove, but I do love the stuff.

Here was my question about this product, though - would it be a case of two great tastes that go great together (e.g. chocolate and peanut butter) or two tastes which should never have come close to each other (e.g. brushing your teeth and then drinking a beer).  The answer is: a little bit from Column A, a little bit from Column B.

This stuff is powerfully bacony.  A little bit goes a long way.  I mean, it's pretty good, but if you eat too much, the artificiality of the bacon flavoring starts to come through.  On a sandwich?  Awesome.  On its own?  It tastes like one of those Beggin' Strips that you give to dogs.

Video time!

Project Gastronome, Day 18: In Which I Beg For Your Understanding

I just don't have it in me tonight.  It's 9:30, and I'm just sitting down for the first time since I left work.  The kids have been (and as of this writing, continue to be) screaming nightmares all evening long.  I'm exhausted from this week, and I know that even if I start eating, recording, uploading, and writing right now, it'll still be nearly 11 before I'm done.

I really am sorry, and I promise to eat two things tomorrow night.  One of them is even really gross, OK?

Project Gastronome, Day 17: Head Cheese

I don't mind telling you that at this point in the month, I'm kind of looking forward to the end of this project.  This isn't really unique to Project Gastronome; there were also points in my two movie watching projects where I hit a wall, especially when I had to watch four days in a row of Julia Roberts.  I think I may have reached my capacity for self-inflicted revulsion, though, which is something that was not a factor in the other projects, except when I had to watch four days in a row of Julia Roberts.  To give myself incentive to power through this final week, I've promised Courtney a steak dinner on Saturday night.  And, of course, there is the Project Gastronome Wrap Party on Friday night!

<Self pep-talk>These are the moments that make us.  These are the moments that let us call ourselves men.  These are the moments when we will sit down in front of a video camera with our son and eat unidentifiable animal parts.</Self pep-talk>  Way back at the beginning of this thing, my friend Roy left a comment telling me that I should try head cheese.  Although I had a menu pretty much ready to go for the entire month, his suggestion was good enough that I decided to use the flexibility of the final week and try some.

I actually didn't even know what this was until I sought it out.  I mean, I'd heard of it, but the name was pretty much enough to keep me from pursuing more information.  Head cheese is not a cheese at all.  It's a cold cut made from bits of flesh from the head of a pig or cow, set into aspic (which is like a gelatin made from meat stock).  On one hand, this sounds really gross.  On the other hand, I used to think the same thing about barbacoa (which is cheek meat) until I tried it, and now I love that stuff.

If you just look at barbacoa without knowing what it is, though, it doesn't appear off-putting.  It looks like shredded brisket.  Here is a picture of head cheese.

It makes me think of those cadavers that they inject with a polymer and then cut into thin slices so that they can study the inside of the body layer by layer.  And craziest of all is that you can buy this at practically any grocery store that has a deli counter!

Speaking of buying this stuff at the store, here is a picture of my receipt.  Maybe it's only funny to me, but I like that if you buy Boar's Head brand head cheese, they economize on ink and just print "BOAR HEAD CHEESE" on the receipt.  Or maybe this was truth in advertising and the head cheese I am about to eat literally came from the head of a boar.  Free range head cheese!

The lady at the deli counter asked how I wanted it sliced, and I had no idea what to say, so I just came back with "Um, how do most people get it?"  Sandwich sliced was the answer.  I'm glad I got it thin sliced, because once I tried it, I can't imagine sinking my teeth into a big chunk of it.  Observe...


Like I said in the video, at this point in the month it's far from the worst thing I've eaten, but I feel that my tongue is still poorer for having tried it.  The best I can say about head cheese is that it is at least a resourceful use of animal parts which may otherwise go to waste.  Except that they could probably make dog food out of those parts, too, so by eating head cheese you are depriving some poor dog somewhere of a meal that he would probably enjoy.  Jerk.

Project Gastronome, Day 16: Thanksgiving Dinner Gumballs

The final week of Project Gastronome is here!  To recap, each of the last three weeks has had a theme - Animal, Vegetable, and Potable.  This week I just wanted to fill in the blanks with whatever I found, so I decided just to call it "Questionable" and have some fun.

I'm pleased to report that I still have intact vision after Friday night's experiment with prison wine.  I also have a ticked-off six year-old who didn't understand why I waited until he was in bed to record the tasting.  One of my regular readers is a police officer.  Not only a police officer, but somebody who I see at church every week!  As funny as I know it would be watching Blake tasting Daddy's silly juice, I just was not prepared to deal with those repercussions.  Not that he understood that.  Anyway, tonight's entry needed to be something kid-friendly so that I could bring him back into the loop.  Seriously, he asks me about this every night now, whether we're going to be recording something.  He's going to be crestfallen when the project ends.

Today's item is Thanksgiving Dinner Gumballs.  They come in three flavors, Turkey, Cranberry Sauce, and Pumpkin Pie.  I chose these for a couple of reasons.  Remember the miserably failed fizzy cupcake drinks?  I was drawn to those because they made me think of Willy Wonka, and so does a chewing gum that contains a meal.

The second reason is even sillier.  Have you ever seen the holiday packs that Jones Soda releases each year?  My big culinary weakness is trying different flavors of soda.  Most places have the same drab assortment in the cooler or in the fountain, but just ask Courtney - if we go someplace that has something unusual, that is what I'll be drinking.  A big, big dream of mine is to make a pilgrimage to Galco's Soda Pop Stop in Los Angeles someday...  Anyway, when my family got together for Thanksgiving 2005, I'd purchased that year's Jones Soda holiday pack at Target, and brought it along to share.  Only my dad and brother were brave enough to experience them with me.  The flavors were Turkey & Gravy, Wild Herb Stuffing, Brussels Sprout, Cranberry, and Pumpkin Pie.  Here is the thing - the problem wasn't that they didn't taste like those things.  The problem is that they tasted exactly like those things.  I like each of those foods, but there's something very unsettling about having the taste of brussels sprouts in your mouth in the form of cold fizziness instead of hot vegetableness.  Still, tasting them with Papa and Mark was a really fun holiday memory.  It's not Thanksgiving right now, but I think that trying these with Blake will still be a fun memory.

And I also think that I'll have to keep an eye out for this year's holiday pack and do a special holiday edition of Project Gastronome.

First the video, then additional comments.

Jones Soda set a very high bar.  I think I was expecting a similar experience with these gumballs.  They were fun, but the flavors weren't quite right.  The turkey tasted like something vaguely meaty, but it was more like ham.  Cranberry was fruity, but not tangy like real cranberries.  Pumpkin pie was sweet and a little bit like dessert, but tasted nothing like pumpkin pie.  I know this is all very nitpicky, so I should say that they were about as good as what I paid for them.

Project Gastronome, Day 15: Prison Wine

TGIF.  Seriously, it has been some week.  Although I have been smart enough not to fortify myself with a dual dose of energy drinks again, the general pace of my week has not let up at all ever since Monday.  I'm not usually much of a drinker, but if ever there was a week to unwind with a glass in hand on Friday night, this was it.  Courtney is out of town for a wedding, and won't be back until tomorrow night, so it's just me and the kids tonight.  Time to tuck them in and break out the hooch.

Special occasions call for special beverages, and honestly, what occasion is more special than the conclusion of Project Gastronome's Potables Week?  I didn't even drink at my own wedding.  For my silly little blog project, though?  Hells yeah.

You may remember that at the very beginning of Project Gastronome, I mentioned drawing inspiration from the very funny "Steve, Don't Eat It!" series at The Sneeze.  In what is perhaps his funniest entry, he homebrews his own prison wine.  Click the link and see, but when I say he homebrewed it, I mean he took actual ingredients that a prison inmate may have (trash bags, moldy bread, fruit drink, etc.) and homebrewed his own prison wine.  I seriously admire his dedication on this one.  It would never work in my house.  Jack would find those trashbags full of Chateau d'Alcatraz in about two minutes and rip them to shreds.  Instead, I turned again to ThinkGeek (seriously, ThinkGeek HQ - I am open to sponsorship offers), and ordered a DIY Juice to Alcohol Kit.

Here's the kit contents.  It contains instructions, six packets of yeast, six bottle labels, a rubber stopper, and an airlock.  Each packet can turn a 64 ounce bottle of your favorite juice into sweet, sweet ethanol in just two days!

The instruction book has a few handy recommendations for recipes you may wish to try, and different juices that work especially well.  I'm a novice oenophile at best, but I've never cared all that much for white wines.  I decided that you can't go wrong with the classics, so I chose a bottle of Welch's Red 100% Grape Juice and set a reminder on my calendar to start things in motion on Wednesday morning.

Here is where I have to pause for a moment to wonder what my mom's reaction is going to be when she reads this entry.  Last night, she and my dad met us at Blake's PTA program, and she gave me a good scolding for energy drink day.

I'm stalling a little bit because I'm nervous about drinking this.  If you ever see me in person, ask me to tell you my story about a guy who went blind after drinking his home stilled liquor.  It's actually MUCH funnier than it sounds.

Alright - bottoms up.



It was delicious!  I've got five more packets to use, and I think that there's a bottle of Ocean Spray CranApple out there calling my name.