Happy New Year Readers!

I hope the year 2010 has been thoroughly digested and I hope that the year 2011 brings you all the tasty delights you can handle.

This year’s first post is about adventurous eating and being willing to try new things. I think that if there is a country or a culture or a people that enjoys eating a particular food, then there must at least be the potential that I will enjoy it too. As long as it is food, I will be adventurous enough to give it a try.

In 1986, Prince Philip commented on Chinese eating habits to the World Wildlife Fund conference saying: “If it has got four legs and it is not a chair, if it has two wings and it flies but is not an aeroplane, and if it swims and is not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it.”

Some people (non-Chinese) find this offensive. I don’t. Maybe said at a WWF conference by a member of the royal family, it was a bit misaligned. I guess it depends on the intentions. If it was meant to be racist it’s offensive. If it’s meant to show what adventurous eaters the Chinese are, then it’s not.

My sister teased me once when I pronounced that I would try delicacies like testicles (I haven’t…yet), then I would eat monkey armpits. I don’t know any cuisine that features monkey armpits though, so I don’t consider it to be food. I’m not going to eat random things that are not food.

I don’t eat people’s pets either, but I don’t think it’s wrong to eat a meat just because someone, at some point in time, somewhere in the the world considered that type of animal to be a pet. I don’t eat rabbits. I’m sure it’s delicious. Why wouldn’t it be? But I prefer not to eat them and I’m not going to blacklist you if you don’t feel the same way.

So here’s to trying new foods and may you meet many new delicious things in 2011.

Tofu and Olliver aged 4 months, helping themselves to our plants. Most of the palm has been stripped already, but they eventually ate the tough stalks too. Around here, if it is bunny height, expect that it will get eaten.