Day 351: Black Licorice

Cat shaped licorice

     Black licorice has always been easy for me to avoid. It seems to be one of the few foods I've come across that is used exclusively to gauge how gross something is. It's like, there's seaweed-gross, then there's fruitcake-gross, and (somewhere in that ballpark) then there is black licorice-gross. After trying it I can't say that it is worse than the seaweed or the fruitcake, but it was far from good too. I couldn't find many redeeming qualities about black licorice while surfing the web either. An article I found on Webmd.com said that eating too much black licorice can lead to abnormal heart rhythms. And the guys on the Yahoo-answers forum used an excessive amount of exclamation marks when typing out their anti-licorice-rants. It's just a crappy tasting (I don't think it counts as candy) food, and everybody knows it. It looks like black licorice, it smells like black licorice, and worst of all, it tastes like black licorice.

Day 270: Flan

    I made a giant serving of flan before I knew whether or not I liked it, or even before I knew what the hell it was. I took it out of the fridge once it was done chilling and began to poke and prod it with a fork. It had the consistency of jello, which wasn't a good sign cause I hate jello. I forced down a couple forkfuls and ultimately regretted it. I wouldn't say it's the taste of it as much as its the texture of the flan that disgusted me. Each bite was like munching on a squid that was coated with WD-40. It was all slimy and whatnot, so I decided to take the incentive and toss that crap away.

Day 170: Deep Fried Pork Skins

     I've always assumed that deep fried pork skins were terrible. You know, those chip bags you see in the questionable isle of most gas stations that are filled with super porous stomach lining. All I gotta say is that they look totally nasty and I have never had the urge to try them, but I guess that's why I started this project. I want to force myself to find out if what I had always assumed was disgusting was really all that bad. Who knows, maybe this convince store snack will be a new favorite. Sadly, that's not how it turned out for me. I bought a bag with my friend David (Who absolutely loves them) and tore it open in excitement, eager to set sail on my deep fried pork skin cuisine cruise. I grabbed one and bit into the crunchy chip. It was absolutely terrible, like seriously one of the grossest things I've tried for this project. I managed to get 3 or four pork skin curls down before I threw in the towel and handed the bag to David, who then proceeded to devour the chips two at a time. I don't know if my longstanding assumption of the snack being completely disgusting had anything to do with me not liking them, or if I'm just pretty good at picking out shitty tasting snacks. I guess the world will never know.

Day 166: Plantain

     I saw this big guy when I was buying a new toothbrush (cause I lost mine during the road trip). It looks just like a banana, only twice the size. I was looking up some facts about these giant brothers of the banana and I was told that I could eat the plantains raw if I wanted to, but its recommended to use it in your cooking to get a better taste. I quickly found out why they usually don't eat these things raw, they aren't very good. They are a lot less sweet then the banana and it had a sort of raw potato-ish flavor to it which wasn't good at all. I couldn't make it through the entire plantain (I'm telling ya, this thing was huge) but I ate enough to learn that they aren't on my favorites list.

Day 158: Use A Pay Phone

     Pay phones creep me out. The're just so nasty. If it's not completely tagged up with graffiti, then it's probably glazed over with some sticky residue. They gross me out, and thats why I knew I'd have to marinate my hands and face in sanitizer after today's challenge. I had never used one before (for obvious reasons) and I decided to change that. It turns out that that last sentence is easier said than done. I checked at literally every single gas station/food eatery/mall that we stopped at during our stay in Arizona for a functioning pay phone. I was 0 for 6 with the working phones and my hands and ear were in desperate need for a soap soak. Some of the phones had a piece of metal that blocked the coin slot and some simply didn't have a dial tone coming out of the receiver. It was depressing, and most of all it was totally unsanitary, but I kept at it. We drove through the rest of Arizona and ended up in Cali before I found a working pay phone that I could waste my four quarters on. It was a lonely phone next to a deli in San Diego. I was so excited when I heard the subtle dial tone that I forgot about its greasy handle and the gum wad that was touching part of the number 8 (just for a second). I pumped in my quarters and dialed the number (I called my mom cause I didn't even know if she was aware that I was on a road trip, I felt like I should check in) and waited for her answer. I heard the buzz of the phone for a couple of seconds and then it went straight to her voicemail. I was bummed for the following reasons, listed from poopiest to least:

1. I was totally grossed out from all 7 of the phones
2. I just got jipped out of a dollar
3. My mom didn't answer

     I ended up just calling my mom with my fully functioning and more sanitary cell phone to get the satisfaction. Stupid pay phones

Day 127: Solo Papaya

Kevin loves Walmart

 
   
     The solo papaya is the most common type of papaya and apparently its also really tasty. Well, thats what this one website says. I picked myself up a solo to try because I was at a Walmart and I needed a challenge to try. I asked the employee that was stocking some produce if he had any exotic fruits that I could eat. He showed me the papaya, which looked a lot like an overgrown pear. So I bought it for $4.87 (which sucks) and took it back to Kevin's house to eat. Kevin, David and Alan had gotten pizzas and were busy cooking those while I diced up the fruit. It was a smelly fruit, like really smelly. Like almost a mild vomit scent, which kept Kevin, David and Alan away from trying it. Everything about this plant seemed unappetizing and just about barfed when I ate one of the seeds because David dared me. I got around to eating some of the overpriced and oversized fruit, and yeah, it sucked. I didn't like it at all. It didn't taste as bad as it smelled, but it was pretty terrible. So I threw that puppy away like a good American!

Heres a like to a site for papaya lovers: http://www.hawaiipapayas.com/the-different-types-of-papayas/

Day 16: Cheeseburger one bitter

     Like seafood, fast food isn't particularly high on my desirable foods list. I cut back almost completely for about the last 6 months. I found myself at a Taco Bell a few times when money got tight or when I decided to make a bad decision. But for the most part, I was fast food free, and it felt pretty good. And so I disregarded all of that today, when I attempted to stuff an entire McDonald's double cheeseburger into my mouth in hopes of completing the cheeseburger one bite challenge.
     Its a challenge that my friend Kevin suggested while at work today. I've seen a couple friends try it, and fail, and I think I've even had the pleasure of watching one of my friends successfully consume a CD sized meat patty sandwich in one bite. Its inspiring stuff, and it was my turn to be one of the greats.

     So I went to a Micky D's (first time in a while) and picked up the food, along with some for Kevin, and mentally prepared myself to be disgusted. The challenge didn't last long and was not a success, kind of like basically all of my previous food challenges. And thats a discouraging thought because if I cant complete these novice edible challenges, how the hell am I going to hold my own when the time comes for me to try the biggest pizza challenge or the 50 piece Mcnugget challenge (which I'm not looking forward to). So it went a little like this: I unwrapped it, stuffed a little bit over half of the sandwich into my face, and then it was apparent that my jaws weren't able to chew and my throat wasn't about to let me take that whole thing down. Thats about when I tried to shovel the rest of the sandwich into my mouth but there was no place for the surplus of food to go. So I failed, I spat it out and was grossed out (mildly because of the thought of even trying that). But at least I did better this time then I did with that damn peep's challenge. I'm starting to notice the trend that has been going on with me and food challenges, mainly, I suck at them. But there is some good news, that challenge has renewed my faith in not eating fast food. That stuff is gross.

Day 1 Raw Egg Challenge

It was more of a spur of the moment thing I guess. I was just sitting in the dish pit at work with a fellow dish washer thinking about my newly proposed project of trying new things (thats what this blog is about) when it became obvious that brainstorming things that you have never done but could still try while at work and not get fired, was pretty hard. We came up with things like the cinnamon challenge (look that one up) and learning how to juggle things that were on fire (that one would probably violate the "not getting fired" thing). Nothing sounded like it had much potential. That was until I found inspiration in the walk-in fridge, there I saw a box of eggs. Needless to say I thought of that classic scene in the Rocky series where he is downing raw eggs and punching frozen meat corpses. And so the raw egg challenge became my first accomplishment of this project. I just cracked an egg, tossed the icky stuff into a glass, made sure that the camera had a good view of it (I filmed it, and I'll post it if I can figure out how) and took the shot. I'm not gonna say that it was terrible (The equivalence of raw spaghetti-o's), but it certainly wasn't worth trying if you could just as easily have cooked into an edible omelette. the egg itself was almost flavorless, the slimy texture is what will make your face pucker up and your muscles flinch. That was it, nothing life alternating or life threatening, just a new experience. Day one finished.