Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Oh! And! Going to school in small town NH, there was exactly one Chinese restaurant in town--having grown up in Seattle I NEEDED Chinese food, and pretty often. The fact that they also served sushi and scorpion bowls should have been a warning, but it helped that they delivered, in a town where the temperature didn't go above 0 (F) the entire January of my Freshman year, and regularly hit 20 below.

But every time I ordered, there was hair in the food. It got to be almost a game: Which dish will have the hair? Will it be fried rice? Maybe the eggrolls, if it's a bad day. For 3 years I put up up with hair in my food just to get a tiny fix of terrible Chinese-American slop.

Then, my junior year, they got shut down for credit card fraud and I had to learn to cook my own Chinese food--wish I'd done it three years earlier!

Oh, I'm totally the one everyone in the office complains about. I pack myself a beautiful homemade lunch every day, then I start to eat it, usually by 9:30 or so. And eat it all. day. long. On top of that, it generally consists of 'smelly' items, including but not limited to kimchi, aged cheese or seafood (in all fairness, we work at a seafood company, it always smells like seafood).

But my big issue with everyone else? They don't eat at all! What is wrong with these people? They go all day and they don't take a lunch break and they don't even eat any lunch most days. Which is why I eat all day at my desk. Sigh.

I can't remember the first, necessarily, but the most memorable is making Shakshouka in Ecuador, with a few fellow travelers.

I think you are probably looking for kroppkakor (singular would be kroppkaka). Potato dumplings. Delicious.

Even though I've traveled a lot and eaten lots of crazy and amazing things made in touching ways, one of the coolest experiences ever was at a street beer stand in Hanoi, Vietnam. That's right, you've heard of street food? This is street beer, and it is amazing. As we crouched on the low plastic stools, drinking our beer and perusing the menu, groups of locals would come by and take us under their wings, showing us what was good, offering us tastes of their foods, trying to talk with us in cracked English. Each time we stopped at a different stand we would make new friends, even with out a common language--well, by the end of it there was one, I can now cheer someone on to chug a full glass of beer in Vietnamese...

For those of you who are haters, think of it as the college student's sangria-- the sweetness comes from the coke instead of the fruit, and it is bubbly. Often, it is served with a lemon, which really cements this theory.

Atlantic salmon is, by definition farmed, so you'll have a lot of trouble finding any wild Atlantic salmon.

I recommend looking for Alaskan salmon, that is the wild stuff. And given that it is wild caught, there is not really an 'organic' labeling option, as it eats what it eats...

I am laughing that this is so shocking to people. I used to always salt my oatmeal, since I prefer salty to sweet, and one day, as a child I complained to my mother that we were out of salt and she being a resourceful person immediately said "add soy sauce, it is basically just salt" and it was delicious. And I've eaten it and cream of wheat and any number of other things that way since!

I was surprised to see I had eaten 5 of the ten.
Durian--I was underwhelmed. Didn't taste bad...On the other hand, not all that good either.
Live Octopus--both tasty and fun to eat. I like a food that challanges me on the way to my mouth!
Kopi whatever coffee--Again, I was underwhelmed. I'm not a big coffee drinker though, maybe someone more into it would be more excited.
Huitlacoche-I mean, it makes a mean quesadilla--how different is this than a terrific mushroom? Not that much.
Balut--Honestly, if you can get over the visual of seeing the body parts of the fetus, it tastes like a very good egg, maybe even a little creamier

This is also not a recipe. One mistake I find that people often make is to try to disguise the tofu as a meat, to make as meat like as possible. Tofu is in fact a delicious and tasty thing.

So my suggestions are like so: Try dishes that incorporate both meat AND tofu--like roasted chicken with soy sauce and tofu stuffing. Try replacing something ELSE with the tofu--a caeser salad where deep fried tofu replace the croutons. And lastly, try blending it in to dips or soups, like so: http://thegastrognome.wordpress.com/2008/09/17/end-of-summer-soup-cold-and-spicy-tomato/

I suffer constantly from trigger finger stiffness. It is an ailment caused by trying to quickly click back to whatever I'm supposed to be doing so that the boss doesn't catch me looking at food porn online...

It's interesting how a group of "Serious Eaters" becomes suddenly so squemish when it comes to crossing a cultural taboo. I have never had the opportunity to eat horse, though I would definitely jump at it if I did, especially having seen the pictures of the horse sashimi my BF at in Japan.

Another thing to take into account, especially with the "tourists are bad tippers" thing is that not everywhere is the minimum wage lower for servers. In NY, where it is so, tipping tends to average 20%, often being even higher, and 15 would be an insult. In, for example, Seattle, where servers have to be paid the same minimum wage as everyone else (around $8/hr) tipping tends to be a little less. The tourists may not realize this. I'm in no way defending a 5% tip, but I am defending a 15%....

@produce stories, it might not be that you are necissarily pegged as a bad tipper because you don't order drinks, but that your bill is automatically $30-60+ dollars less...thus your tip is going to be less, even if you are a perfectly reasonable tipper.