jtr7 on 3/11/2012 at 11:55

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Yeah, years ago I watched an African man demonstrate how to eat a huge desert tarantula in some show like National Geographic, or something. After stabbing the spider through the thorax, he took a large leaf and used it like a bowl while he gently squeezed the abdomen with both hands, forcing near-marble-sized eggs out in a puddle of whatever fluid they rest in, which could be hemolymph, for all I know. He placed the pointed end of the leaf in his mouth, tilted back the leaf, and swallowed the eggs and liquid down. He then took the deflated spider on the stick he stabbed it with, and cooked it over an open flame, first carefully burning off the hair, then turning it this way and that to cook the rest. Finally, he ate the abdomen, but I can't remember if the legs were broken off, or eaten too, nevermind the head and thorax.


Anyway, I totally forgot the monkey heads in the freezer. Garrett says his "Eww" line even if he sees the momma spider in the cage below, with the meat scraps and blood all over the floor.


Perhaps Mynell does make a marinade of some sort, with leftover scraps of monkey and whole spiders. I assume a papa spider was eaten up in the breeding process with the spider in the cage below. There's no machinery other than the freezer and associated instrumentation. Add monkeys to the menu, (and pork, I forgot, as well), along with the deer, ham, sheep, beef, and by TDS, burrick.

Tannar on 13/11/2012 at 05:46

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At this point all I can say is that I'm really sorry I read this thread. Yeck! :nono:

jtr7 on 14/11/2012 at 01:07

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There are "normal" tasters, "non-" tasters, and "super" tasters. I'd love to hear the opinion of super tasters on all the regional and/or cultural flavors. At this point, I'm fairly confident, allowing for some exception, that the people who enjoy delicacies and exotic edibles the most are probably not super tasters, some of who can break down the ingredients of a recipe and decently replicate it, by taste/smell alone. The three broad categories of tasters have to do with the tongue, but factor in a range of sensitivity for smells, and . Discounting the visual appeal and the textures, and it's too easy to assume that non-tasters can chow down on a lot more edibles than super tasters, and they wouldn't be able to relate to each other at all on certain flavor experiences.

I never was used to flavors simply because I grew up with them. I liked what I liked, and didn't like what I didn't like. During growth spurts and while approaching adulthood, I suddenly liked some flavors I hadn't before, like black pepper and garlic. Both of my parents liked onions, but I rarely do, and have only found two dishes that I really enjoy onions in (well, only one has the proper bulb, and in the other I only like the green leaves, and very much so), and some others where the flavor is muted enough to tolerate okay. I was happy to discover I like the small immature onions, barely shallots, straight from the soil. There are many dishes my parents enjoyed that I never could stand, so I find it odd when entire peoples all eat the same stuff, seemingly, that I know I never could choke it down.

The categories need to be renamed, since "normal" has a different connotation than simply "average", and "non" doesn't mean the person cannot taste at all, just below average in sensitivity to the bitterness, saltiness, sweetness, and acidity, of whatever's placed on the tongue.

It is helpful to know what is edible, and what side-effects there may be to eating things. I won't eat something if I can't be sure enough that I won't get some sort of distressing problem afterward that has nothing to do with my enjoyment, or lack thereof, in the mastication phase. :sweat:

jtr7 on 16/11/2012 at 09:55

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Wow, interesting! How lucky you are! And are you a super-taster in all four flavors, or is one set of papillae closer to "normal"?

I'm really sensitive to salt content, too, and have had to stop going to some restaurants that changed kitchen managers and/or cooks who made the saltshakers on the tables pointless and my blood pressure rise to nosebleed levels.

I'm sensitive to sweetness levels, and agree with foreign visitors who complain that a lot of the food is inappropriately sweet. And people wonder why the obesity rate is climbing. Both saltiness and sweetness levels climbed seemingly across the board for me in the late 90s, and have been holding dangerously steady since, ruining my enjoyment of many favorite or tolerable, financially helpful, restaurants. Even though so many people are pushing for healthier versions, the rising costs of everything, with jumps of whole dollars tacked onto prices to pay for fuel for transportation of goods, and environmental concerns over the containers they come in, among a dozen other things, the companies can't really stop cheapening the quality of ingredients and packaging, adding the latest fillers and preservatives, and adding more flavor enhancers, which have all gone overkill. Ever had the carrageenan and xanthan gum separate out of a beverage that used to be sold with only one or two ingredients total? It's like getting a mouthful of cellophane strands in salty whey. Horrendous. I'm seriously considering learning wilderness survival just to go harvesting better ingredients and avoid the stores, and hopefully not feel too guilty about hurting the businesses further.

I'm sensitive to bitterness, but there are many kinds of bitterness I enjoy, including grapefruit, which seems to be losing popularity every year where I live, as the regional tastes evolve, so stores sell less juices, or only have the super-sweetened kind. Unfortunately, black coffee is not a flavor I enjoy, so I have to have it with sugar and cream if I'm going to drink it. I love strong cinnamon, black tea, and black pepper, but not strong licorice or clove, so black jellybeans and licorice throat lozenges are pariah. And finally, I love strong acidic flavor, particularly acetic, citric, erucic, and ascorbic, as long as it's not strong malic or lactic acid, so I'm a big fan of real vinegars, lemons more than any citrus, strong yellow mustards that aren't too bitter unless it's a horseradish bitterness, and I tend to happily damage the lining of my mouth for the quantity, unlike with salt. Curiously, my mother really loves bitter foods, and I never found out if it's because her brain just likes it, or her tongue can't quite taste it, though she refuses to understand that the rest of us in the family can't enjoy some of her favorite bitter treats (which don't include the bitter flavors I like), which she keeps offering us and getting angry when we struggle to swallow, or frown in disappointment, again. :D

The family restaurants kinda suddenly started putting so much more salt in food that it burned lips and mouth after a couple of bites and caused the runs a couple of hours later, and I'm glad I got the runs rather than burst blood vessels and headaches. I tried to point out that there are saltshakers on the tables for people who feel they need more, and that there's no way for customers to reduce it in the meal served. I may as well have been trying to make a point about hot and cold room temperature preferences. They changed nothing, so I've had little choice but to not go back, and these were places I really looked forward to going to, as a non-chef.

The commercial foods began to add to or increase sweetener in things it didn't make any sense to spike up, except to please some narrow demographic. I bit into a burger two days after knowing what to expect for the previous 30 years, and was shocked at how sweet the bun was, like it was almost a dessert, and the beef, cheese, and condiments, were somehow rendered nearly tasteless. The only reason I ate there was I was on the road and got real hungry and had $4. I've found it very difficult to find satiating non-produce foods that aren't oddly unhealthy--as opposed to obviously unhealthy--with what I'd call adulterants in what should be a sweetener-free, or low-fat, or low-sodium food until the companies' processing concerns, shipping costs, and target retail prices make it all get weird and toxic. What commonly passes for good food just boggles me, and even worse, that people will choose more expensive garbage that only used to be food, over cheaper, fresh, real food with many times the nutrients, color, and flavor.

I need two bites or swigs to get the full flavor of something, but a couple more if there's something subtly yet actually wrong with it, like if it's spoiling, become tainted, going rancid or stale, but even after I stop eating it, the grossness builds and builds, sometimes for 20 minutes, if I can't find something to effectively rinse it out when water's not doing it.



ANYWAY...
I'm not sure how firm the insides of a spider abdomen would be, or if they cook like egg, or if they just need the water driven out to condense the proteins. Too analytical. Maybe Mynell was motivated by greed, which is an easy thing to presume in The City, same with corruption, or he was just exotic and would be misunderstood. Spider blood and monkey brains: Lots of protein, sodium, and cholesterol, there. We don't see any of Mynell's production processes or equipment, so we can't see if he injects monkey/spider sauce into the steaks, or if they are the steaks, though I still think it's more the latter, than a flavoring agent, somehow.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fried_spider), but not steaks:

jtr7 on 29/11/2012 at 23:06

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:p

I know my posts are tl;dr, but yeah, I mentioned the monkey heads a couple of times. There's a lot more spider going on than monkey, though, so I was suggesting the monkey is also an ingredient rather than a source of steaks.

Maybe monkey-fed spiders!