foods that begin with the letter “s”

Before arriving in China I posted about things Andrew Zimmern had eaten on the Beijing episode of his show Bizarre Foods.  Despite what I said then, a seahorse is actually the first thing I tried when at a night market recently.

The reason I chose it was because at the first stall we came to there were only two options, seahorse or scorpions.  The scorpions were still alive and moving on the stick and the seahorse looked sufficiently dead, so it seemed like a pretty easy decision to me.  But to my surprise everyone else in our group opted for the scorpions!  Now that I could see for myself that they were fried to death before eating, and hearing a consensus of “not bad” I felt confident enough to try them for myself.  And you know what, they weren’t half bad.  Ok so they were kinda gross, but fried and heavily salted, so it was fine.  But that is just my opinion as we met two American girls who were coming back for seconds!  To each their own.

We moved on to the next different looking stall which had more variety.  There I got a starfish.  I didn’t think it was that bad, but just about everyone else in the group said it was the worst thing they tried that night.  My recommendation if anyone ever dares you to eat one… the ends are way better than the middle.

And lastly I tried a silkworm.  My least favorite of the night, yet my roommate’s favorite. 

And that was the end of the night because the place closes up at about 10:30pm.  I think I got my fill and don’t really feel a need to go back, but you never know.  When planning holiday meals it was asked if there was anything I didn’t eat, but after this experience, how could I possibly say yes?