Have you ever watched the television show Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern? In one episode, he highlighted “bizarre” foods found in Appalachia. Okay, I thought, there may be some rather bizarre foods consumed in Appalachia, but I was confident they were not common foods – until I watched the show.
One of the West Virginia foods was squirrel. Squirrel? A bizarre food? Were they talking about the few people I knew who ate the brains? Yes, they mentioned the brains. To my amazement, they were also talking about the many people I knew, including myself, who ate squirrel meat.
In case you missed the show, you can click here to see an Internet extra for the squirrel segment.
I find it disturbing that something I think of as a “normal” food is on a show about “bizarre” foods. This is not rare and unusual. Look. . . I have even cooked squirrel several times myself.
In fact, the last time I cooked squirrel was evident on the ceiling of my parent’s kitchen for quite a while – grease is hard to get off flat, latex paint.
How did it get there? Well, we always pressure cooked the squirrel before flouring and frying it. It helped to make it more tender and maybe improved the flavor. However, there was a problem with my mom’s pressure cooker and it blew a stream of greasy steam to the kitchen ceiling. Yes, we were able to salvage the squirrel. It was quite tasty as I remember. . .
All of this had me thinking about what other bizarre foods I have consumed.
There are those foods that I do not consider bizarre: rabbit, creamed tomatoes with dumplings, red beet eggs, mustard eggs, mustard beans, lightly pickled cabbage stuffed peppers, dandelion greens, paw paws, and fiddle heads to name a few.
There are those foods that I do consider bizarre in part because I really don’t like them and don’t know why people do: venison, ramps, boiled peanuts and salt fish are just a few.
There are some that are just bizarre: raccoon, turtle, and snake are a few. I have no idea why my aunt cooked a raccoon, but thankfully it was before rabies became a problem in the state. . . it was gross. The turtle was very good and the snake was at a Girl Scout survival camp.
Although I consider some foods to be bizarre, I realize that the term is just a matter of perspective. A food is only going to seem bizarre to people if it is not common to a large population including them.
Many foods that I listed as possibly “bizarre” are just regional to a given area or based in a particular culture.
I suppose the pepperoni rolls I love so much but are originally a product of the Italian immigrant miners in West Virginia could be a considered a bizarre food by someone (I honestly don’t know who though).
There is also Goetta in Cincinnati, scrapple in Delaware, coffee milk in New England, lutefish in the Upper Midwest, Shoofly Pie of the Pennsylvania Dutch, hoppin’ john in the Carolinas, and steak salad with fries in Pittsburgh to name a few more.
Some of the “bizarre” foods were originally a product of just living off what was available. The terrain and the resources are what probably led to eating squirrels being part of the culture in West Virginia.
It has given me a new perspective on the series Bizarre Foods. I now believe that all those foods I watched Zimmern eat, often thinking they were too bizarre, are just ordinary foods to someone else.
