I have no idea if he could survive, but there's nothing to lose by trying.

I see these listed in a gardening catalog--Has anyone here tried them? I'm in zone 4 so I would assume I would Spring plant them. Have any of you zone 4 gardeners successfully overwintered fall-planted shallots?

Uhh, well, if you eat hot dogs, chances are you've eaten most of the things on that list, LOL! But seriously, I'd definitely draw the line at some of those things...assuming I knew what they were before I tried them. If they were being served to me, as a guest, I guess I'd buck up and eat them! Or at least try.... Looking at it objectively, if he finds all of those foods "weird and disgusting", Ray must have been raised at McDonald's! However, I suppose many of the things listed are probably weird to people (or generations, maybe?) who don't really know anymore where food comes from, or how to eat well! I'm sure poverty, and simple "use it up" philosophy made for lots of "interesting" recipes in every culture, too. I have tried many of the more "westerly" foods mentioned. Blood pudding is just blood sausage - you can buy it at any supermarket (though the more commercial varieties are usually way oversalted, I find). I admit, probably a pretty hard sell to generations raised on fast food and products from M&M Meats! A lot depends on what you were exposed to as a kid, and how adventuresome you are in later life. (We haven't travelled extensively, but it's sure depressing to hear about tourists in Milan asking for directions to the nearest McDonald's, LOL!) Crisps are just potato chips. Right here at home, Hostess used to produce some pretty bizarre "flavored crisps" - ketchup, dill pickle, bacon... There was some especially odd combination I can't recall right now, too. Tongue, cooked for sandwiches, and ox-tail soup are both delicious. Anyone of middle European extraction is probably familiar wiht head cheese; I never ate it as a kid, though my mom made it for my dad and sister, and they ate it with vinegar...which made me cringe at the time. Escargot, truffles, borsht, seafood - delicious! "Boudin" is just a generic term for sausage. Schmaltz is just chicken fat, used for flavorful cooking, in the same way that some people might use bacon grease. My brother-in-law, from Kansas, eats some of the odd things on that list - rattlesnake, frogs' legs (from huge bullfrogs), scrapple, Krispy Kreme doughnuts...ooops, maybe the last one's not on that list! Scrapple is pretty much like head cheese but with oat meal added - again, I declined to try it when my mom made a batch for him years ago! He ate it fried, which would make it a little more palatable, I think. Well, all cheese is based on mold, so blue cheese and roquefort are only a little weirder and more disgusting than the norm. Actually, what I find weird and disgusting is that tasteless stuff from the supermarket! Yeah, I guess there's no visible mold on it, or a funky crust that someone may find nasty, but it tastes of...absolutely nothing. Of course on the topic of strange foods, one always has to consider where eggs come from, LOL! Have you heard of the live food restaurants in the far east? DH's brother is an executive whose company markets products to the far east. Anyway, back before he became the president (and could get subordinates to do this kind of thing!), he used to have to do a lot of dinners with clients. Apparently, Korea is/was a very macho sort of culture for doing business, so he'd be taken to restaurants that featured live food - live fish or snakes in the soup, for example. And to get a sale, I guess you had to make a good "manly" impression....gulp. I don't know how popular this sort of thing was in the general culture, but it does exist.

I'm no help girl. No can do. When my sister and I were little, our mom would make frog legs. We used to "walk" them around on the counter singing, "Look at me I'm walking".... anyone remember the Jerry Lewis Telethons?