I Try It So You Don’t Have To: The Last Food On The Shelf, Part 2

When I left you last week I was making this face.

With such a delightful selection of food in front of me I bet you can’t imagine which one might have caused such an adverse reaction. Perhaps it was the  Vienna sausage. Not just any old Vienna sausage but hot Vienna sausage.

It looked as bad as it smelled and it tasted terrible. Imagine the worst hot dog you ever had, loose, mushy with no discernible meat flavor at all. Then add the same kind of spiciness you get from one of those firecracker sausage in a package thing that you only see in 2nd rate convenience stores.

What you have never had one of those?) Well let me describe it to you. It is vaguely hot with no flavor at all.

Moving on it was time for the pigs feet. They really don’t look pleasant.

The gelatinous skin and the overly soft meat had an pretty nasty mouth feel to them. The flavor was very vinegary with some pretty good pork taste in the background. These were not too bad actually. Better than skin pickles but nothing I need to have again.

On to the gastropod course. Visually, these were revolting. Grey is not a good color for food. If you eat with your eyes first then a can of snails should put you off in an instant.

I fished one out with a fork and the sulphury, eggy smell was really strong. They are also a bit bigger than I would have liked. I was hoping I didn’t have to chew them too much and based on their size I was pretty sure it was going to be a task I would not relish. I was right, the taste was all sulphur and egg and of course none of the garlic, butter and parsley you want with a snail. The texture was thick, chewy and mushy and took many more bites to get through than I wanted. Once I got the thing in my mouth I could immediately sense how much of a struggle it was going to be to choke it down.

I could barely bring myself to bite through it and I immediately regretted it once I did. Somehow it was even worse because it was cold. It was all bad smell and bad texture with no flavor to offset things.

I dove in for the jack fruit as a way to cleanse my palate and was rewarded with an almost sickly sweet taste.

It was a lot like canned peaches in heavy syrup except they had the same waxy texture as the cherry in a can of fruit cocktail. I’m sure kids would love it but it was too sweet for me.

So that’s it folks, the final tally

• Hot Vienna Sausage, You Don’t Have To.
• Pickled Pigs Feet, Try It, no reason not to, no real compelling reason to to do so.
• Snails, You Don’t Have To, no one should, at least not out of the can.
• Jack Fruit, Try It, if you like other fruits in heavy syrup.

Until next week.