oh dear god why taste test #4: kimbo cooked salt duck eggs and maeda-en green tea ice cream

hi kids, your intrepid gustatory adventurer here, ready to plunge headlong into another scintillating chapter in the oh dear god why taste test series. this outing we've got some vaguely offputting "cooked salt duck eggs" and a little bit of green tea ice cream, both obtained at the international market on the corner of winchester and kirby, source of many of the tasty delights featured in this ongoing blog series internet watching and thing. first up, the eggs!



i will confess to a slight concern for my physical well being here. these eggs were not when i purchased them, nor have they at any point afterward, been refrigerated. my logic for not doing so upon return from the store was that if the proprietors of the international market didn't see fit to cool them, who am i to disagree? my feeling (my sincere hope at this point, i should say) is that the roasting and salting process has somehow preserved them in a way that will increase their shelf life. that being said, it has been a few weeks since i brought them home, so i figure if i don't get down to business pretty soon there's no way they're still going to be good. okay, time to open the package and inspect.



well. this is interesting, and a little unexpected. they're individually vacuum sealed, and they appear to still have the shells on. i don't know what i was imagining. this gives me some measure of hope for their continued preservation. but how to open them without destroying the shell? let's try the garden variety small pocket knife.



okay. so what you have here is basically a run of the mill egg, about the size and weight of a chicken egg (maybe a LITTLE heavier), slightly gamier in smell than your usual egg from the store, but duck by and large is gamier than chicken, so that's more or less in line with what i was expecting. now, the question becomes, how to open it without making a humongous mess? i guess we'll just try peeling it like a hard-boiled egg. let's see.



so the attempt was successful, even if the results look more than a little foul. i'm kind of having a problem with the physical appearance of this thing, it really sort of looks way too much like balut for my liking, but thankfully i don't have to eat it with my eyes. okay, time to stop messing around. let's see what this thing tastes like.



oh. oh man. oh that is bad. oh dear god that is just nasty and awful. it's so... salty. and gamey. and... it's not rotten, it's definitely not rancid or anything, i mean it's definitely preserved, but... that tastes really bad.



here's the problem, or at least some of it. a lot of what makes foods unpalatable is the texture. this was one of my central problems with durian, is the texture, just the physical feeling of the thing in your mouth, induces as many gags as the taste and the smell do, if not more. this thing is just dry and crumbly and salty and awful and nasty in the middle. the white of it is much like a chicken egg, very soft and juicy and more or less lacking in flavor, but the yolk is all dark and nasty and super super gamey and salty and just awful and gross. dear merciful heavens i need something wash this down with



i never thought i'd have occasion to say this, but thank god for 40oz bottles of busch beer



ick. here's a close up shot of the wrongness. i don't know if the evil comes through via picture, but however bad it looks, it tastes way, way worse than it looks. i am honestly not sure if i can get another bite down, i gagged pretty hard on the first one. oh well. this is what i do, right? let's have at it.



oh ick. ick gack gack uk uk uk. need beer immediately.



apologies for all the gratuitous pictures of me drinking, but good lord, trust me, if you had to choke down this nonsense you would too. it's... not QUITE as bad the second bite in, if only for the fact that you kind of know what you're getting into (and know to immediately chase the egg with a swallow of beer, much like you would chase a shot of bottom shelf tequila) but it's still just god awful. man... how can i describe this? there's such a long finish of salt and gamey flavor, along with this texture that's kind of like... if you've ever had home made bread or cookies or muffins that just didn't come out, like they were overcooked or just whatever, and they basically fell apart into this dry, inedible conglomeration of clumps of grain, that's basically what the inside yolk texture of these eggs are like. it's truly foul.



okay, well that's one egg down. i am in no way intending to eat the entire package - sorry, i couldn't eat four normal cooked chicken eggs in one sitting - but i would be remiss if i didn't take one more hack at it. from the outside i thought this little slip of paper was a small packet of the silica gel desiccant they include in like shoes and whatnot to absorb moisture, but it turns out it's just a small slip that i have to assume is some sort of inspection notice like you find on the inside of garments sometimes, like "inspected by number 313" or something, except this is in some asian language i can't read, but i'm just going to assume that's what it is, some sort of quality assurance memento, which assuages my fear about the relative spoiled-ness of these eggs more than a little.



so now, egg number two, in its presealed package, but instead of just robotically choking down another one with no variation, we're going to change it up a little bit and try some of the hot sauce my boss brought back from his recent trip to belize and was kind enough to kick me down a couple bottles of, just as a way to spice things up. before we do that, though...



here's what this foul little bastard looks like. i didn't do quite as good of a job peeling this one as i did the first one, and i didn't do a very good job with the first one, so... yeah. looks pretty nasty.



here's what we'll be trying on top of it. apologies, by the way, for the relatively poor quality of the pictures, i've had some interruptions in my usual technological routine and am making do with whatever supplies are at hand. anyway, down to business.



here's what i'll be eating. good god, i cannot believe i am about to try this again.



UK UK UK UK UK. GACK. it actually tastes worse than the last one. how is that even possible?



OOOH and it's spicy! all i've succeeded in doing is making a very unpleasant food item even less so by cranking up the scoville units quite a bit! ugh oh oh oh



help me beer!



that was just so sickeningly, profoundly foul. that may have been the second worst thing i have ever eaten, after durian. it's one thing to know that it's coming, and have some sort of preconceived notion about what it's going to taste like, but your body doesn't process any of that, it just knows what's nasty and what isn't, and this definitely falls on the far side of the "nasty/not nasty" scale.



all right. almost done. gotta finish. let's throw down some of this other hot sauce on it, it's got carrots in it or something, maybe it'll mask the flavor.



we have decided to err on the "lots of sauce" side this time. it couldn't be any worse than the last bite... could it?



you know what? that's not exactly awful! there's a certain PUNCH to it at first taste, just like every other bite, and maybe it's because i'm kind of used to it by now, or maybe it's because i've knocked down the greater balance of this huge bottle of beer, but i'm not entirely pained by that particular bite. the flavored hot sauce definitely does wonders for the whole concoction, as does that fact that this bite was definitely more white and less yolk. i'm still choking it down with a fair amount of effort, don't get me wrong, but as far as tastes of a nasty food go, this isn't the worst.

by and large i couldn't exactly recommend the roasted salted duck eggs as a culinary experience, in fact actually i'd have to say it's one of the worst things i've ever eaten, but like many other obscure asian delights, it's at least interestingly bad. some bad food (most bad american food anyway) is just bad, bad all the way through, and does nothing but make you regret ever placing it anywhere in the vicinity of your mouth (see: gas station hot dogs) but the eggs were at least bad in a compelling way, even if the end result of that compulsion was gagging and vomit.

to reward myself after that bataan death march of nastiness i picked up some green tea ice cream, something i hear is delicious but have never had the chance to taste.



it looks kind of like packaging foam and has a slightly unfriendly smell. but several people whose taste i trust (for no good reason really) swear by it, so let's see what we get.





WELL! that tastes REMARKABLY like green tea! in fact it tastes exactly like green tea, in a way that's almost offputtingly authentic. it's not bad, not by any stretch of the imagination, in fact i kind of like it, but i'm realizing that as an american with an american palate, when something (especially ice cream, for some reason) advertises itself as "flavored" i expect it to taste like the suggestion of whatever it's supposed to be "flavored" like instead of the thing itself. yogurt, ice cream, candy, you name it. if it says "strawberry" you, as an american, know to expect that weird chemical generic "STRAWBERRY FLAVORING COMPOUND #67" taste instead of the taste of actual strawberries. this actually tastes like green tea, which is rather nice, if you like green tea, which i do. let's give it another shot





yeah, this is delish. it's got the right texture and consistency, it's cute and bite sized like a little asian hagen daz thing, and most thankfully of all it cleanses the palate rather nicely after the horror that was my previous course. A++++, would eat again.



okay, that's it. survived another round. be back later with more nasty crap. you love it, don't lie.

d

oh dear god why taste test #3 (k/l): drank/bawls

and now it's time to say goodbye...



to all our liquid friends...



good bye...

goooood byyyyye........

well this is it kids. we've reached the end of the long arduous journey together that has been the oh dear god why taste test #3. i've opted to combine the last two legs of the trip into a single entry, both for practical reasons (if i drink this whole can of drank and don't have an infusion of caffeine afterwards, my day effectively ends here) and selfish ones (i'm lazy). before i get into the long sentimental farewells, let's not forget we have two more drinks to go before we call this one a day.



first up is drank. even semi-regular readers of this internet beverage tasting space have heard me extol the virtues of the world's only (to my knowledge anyway) ANTI-energy drink before, but for anyone who's not familiar, let me give you a rundown.

sometime in the 90's, the practice of drinking heavily codeinated prescription cough syrup to get high caught on in the underground hip hop scene in houston texas. the reasons for this (other than the fact that it's super fun to get fucked up) are largely lost to history, but nonetheless, the practice of drinking the syrup (often mixed with soda, juice, or candy) became closely associated with a type of music (or music mixing, to be accurate) called "screwing" or "chopping," which involves slowing down tracks, thereby dropping the voices of the performers often several octaves, rendering the entire track a muddy, disorienting haze (much like the effects of getting high on cough syrup - not that i'd know) and then chopping up the actual track itself by skipping the cd/record. if you've never heard it it's a little impossible to imagine, but as this style of music caught on in houston and surrounding areas (atlanta, new orleans, even good old memphis) the practice of drinking what had come to be known as "sizzurp" (among other things) caught on as well. more information is available here if you're interested, along with a list of notable casualties of this HIGHLY FUCKING INADVISABLE practice, growing every day.

so it seems a couple years ago an enterprising beverage company decided to see if they could make a buck off this phenomenon by offering a legal (and substantially less deadly) alternative to sizzurp, using herbal extracts like rose hips, melatonin, and valerian root to simulate the effects of codeine and promethazine. thus, DRANK was born. i had heard about this stuff somewhere on the internet shortly after we moved to memphis, but hadn't been able to get my hands on a can until last summer, when my hours of scouring local gas stations paid off and i found a place on summer ave that had a few cans available. impatient after a long struggle to track some down, i elected to slam a can in the parking lot of the gas station and see what happened.

that brings us to today.





it tastes like nothing quite so much as cheap grape soda. aside from the herbal extracts mentioned above, it's got the usual high fructose corn syrup, citric acid, yada yada whatever that all sodas have, along with some B vitamins which is curious considering people usually take those for energy. maybe they had to include them so people weren't just straight up lapsing into comas after two or three swigs. speaking of which.



the taste doesn't really change much over the course of the can... but you didn't come here to hear about the taste of this stuff, did you? you want to know if you can get FUCKED UUUUPPPPP by drinking it, right? well let me pick my story up where i left off.

so there i was, having slammed this 16oz lousy tasting grape soda in the parking lot of this run down gas station on summer ave, and i needed to get home (i was in the middle of running errands) so back in the car i went and tooling down summer, not giving the whole thing another thought beyond "well that was kind of a waste oooofffffff........ ttttttttiiiiiiiiiiimmmmmmmmeeeeeeeee....."

ladies and gentlemen, my roll had been slowed. it came on all at once, which i would imagine probably wouldn't happen that way if you didn't chug an entire can like a moron, but regardless it was like my brain slammed into a brick wall. my first thought was "i need to get home - quickly." probably goes without saying but DO NOT DRIVE AROUND after drinking this stuff, it is just not smart, which you will immediately realize if you try. i felt a tendency to lean, as per the advertisements. my mind felt foggy. it was, in short, a much more manageable alternative to drinking prescription cough syrup recreationally. does the world need that, though?

honestly, i think it does. i love the idea of drank and i don't mind saying i was all for it before i ever got myself a taste. as long as people use this halfway intelligently (not that i expect them to) i kind of think it could do some good. i mean what are you really drinking here, aside from the corn syrup and all that crap? melatonin, rose hips... these things treat anxiety. they're fucking mood stabilizers, for christ's sake, and if this ridiculous "ANTI-energy" beverage gets more people consuming them, then more power to it! that being said, people are people (ESPECIALLY around here) and my first thought (after i came straight home and took a 2 hour nap - no lie) was that it's only going to be a matter of time before some moron decides to combine this shit with three shots of vodka and a blunt and then goes and wraps his car around a telephone pole, and the good people at the DRANK company get sued off the face of the planet. hasn't happened yet, but if you're at all interested in trying this stuff i'd advise you to get out and get it now because i really get the sense it won't be around forever, whatever the reason.

how am i feeling, you might wonder? well while i was typing that last paragraph i knocked down the rest of the can and i can definitely say i feel a good deal calmer than i did BEFORE i drank the drank. am i in a narcotic coma? no. is it anywhere near as strong as, say, chugging a bottle of robitussin? HELL NO! it's not supposed to be, for christ's sake! anyone who would expect to get genuinely wasted off of 16oz of this stuff would probably also expect to start hallucinating after two glasses of absinthe. people: they want you to think that.

that being said, i'll probably keep a can of drank around in the back of the fridge for the next time i can't get to sleep and i need to get up early the next morning. it would be perfect for that. and with that, i happily close the door on drank, the anti-energy beverage (until they make another flavor, that is).

next up?



bawls! a much more straight forward, get your motor running, guarana-based energy beverage. to be honest there are really only three reasons i'm capping this whole foray into liquid insanity with this particular beverage

1. i found the whole "cockta bawls and everything in between" too funny of a tagline to pass

2. it's an energy drink called "bawls" whose logo is a GIANT BLUE BALL that they used to sell in blue ribbed bottles that they had to discontinue because it reminded some people too much of condoms

3. it's a sentimental favorite. my little sister in law loves this stuff. that's right, my little sister loves bawls. say what you will - she's family.

anyway like drank, i've actually had this stuff before, so let's see if it tastes anything like i remember.





that's right, internet, you now have a photo of me with bawls in my mouth. congratulations.

this stuff tastes fine - honestly pretty undistinguished. they don't skimp on the guarana and caffeine though. i can already feel the onset of my drank-induced stupor dissipating before my eyes! i can't honestly say that there's much to recommend bawls above and beyond any other energy drink (except for some of the truly nasty ones) but just the fact that it's not gross and delivers a punch makes it one worth keeping your eyes peeled for. okay kids let's make that last push to glory. all together now...





AND THAT'S A WRAP FOOLS.

i'm tempted to make all sorts of grandiose proclamations about the journey we've been on together, but i think that would somehow cheapen it, don't you? i'd really like to thank anyone who decided to play along with this exercise in masochism - it was really fun to see the response to some of the nastier ones, and made me feel like it might have even been worth drinking yogurt soda a little bit. not that i'd ever do it again.

but don't think for a moment this is the end. remember, this was only installment number 3 of a much longer, open-ended project that i'm already concocting the next step in. i don't want to give anything away but trust me when i say that i have something truly special in store for you, as a way of thanking you for indulging me over the course of 3 months that felt more like 3 fucking years. keep your eyes peeled, there's more to come. until then...

if you don't know, now you know

love

d

oh dear god why taste test #3(j): frank's kraut juice

oh hell.



before i get started, i want to tell you about my step father. a little while ago, my good friend zach posted a touching, heartfelt little entry about his step father on his blog, and while i was getting ready to put this episode of the taste test together, i couldn't help but feel compelled to do something similar, seeing as we had similar situations. my father passed away while my mother was pregnant with me, so the man you see pictured below has always been "my dad." like zach's step father, he's lived an extremely colorful life. he'd seen more of the planet than i ever will by the time he was the age i am now, knows more about art and art history than anyone i've ever met, and if the shit hit the fan, could seriously make his living playing vegas style solitaire in the casinos. also like zach's stepdad, he never had a family in mind, but when my mother chanced along, recently widowed with a 12 year old daughter and an infant son, something just clicked in his head, and he took us all on, relocated us to the east coast, and proceeded to provide for us for the next two decades and onward.



but it's funny, the things you get from someone. we didn't play a lot of catch. he let my mom handle the parent-teacher conferences. our "quality time" was usually spent playing pool or pinball in smoky bars, listening to working-class blues bands from around syracuse crank out "sweet home chicago" one more time to rooms full of world war 2 vets, sixties burnouts, off duty auto mechanics, and the lifers, all the lifers, career barflies, most of whom knew me by name. i learned to love soul music, robert crumb and mystery novels from growing up with him. he was an art professor who never thought to teach me to draw. i remember smoking a joint with him when i was 19 walking down the street in greenwich village and thinking i had died and gone to heaven.

what does all this have to do with today's entry in the taste test? what if i said nothing, it had nothing to do with anything, and i was just trying to hold off having to taste this swill? what then? sadly that's not the case, as the more perceptive among you have probably put together for yourselves by now, i was also inspired many times in my young life and into my adulthood to try some truly nasty food and beverage items from hanging around with that lunatic (you too, mom. braunschweiger, anyone?) and today is probably the crown jewel in our family's legacy of consuming royally awful stuff: frank's sauerkraut juice. i can still remember the looks on the faces of the cashiers at the IGA in strum wisconsin as we'd buy stacks of this crap, and the look on my dad's face as he'd pound it down. it seemed to me, as a child, the epitome of that "what is wrong with grownups" feeling that so many kids have, so much of the time. i tried it once when i was about 9 and couldn't get the taste out of my mouth all day. i have not tried it since.

what is it, you ask? surely it can't be just the straight liquid from like a bag of sauerkraut, you're saying? i'm afraid that's exactly what it is AND AS AN ADDED BONUS i'd like to point out that in years past they used to sell it in manageable, 7.5 oz pop top cans, like so:



about like a v8 can or so, with a little sealed top that you could easily rip off and chug down. that, i could do. that's what i thought i was going to be getting when i emailed my dear mother and asked her to send down a can. what did i get instead?



THIS slobbering 14 ounce behemoth, almost TWICE the size of the nice little manageable can from my childhood memories. they say the world gets bigger and scarier the older you get and i've always believed that to one degree or another but i had no idea this is what they meant. the nice people at frank's have done away with the pop top at some indeterminate point in the past, probably to discourage people from doing what i'm about to do, but if there's one thing i hope we've learned on our journey together so far, dear readers, it's that a stupid man with a bad idea will NOT be denied, so here i am, staring down my white whale. it's not solely procrastination that's accounted for the monthlong gap between the previous taste test and this one, i promise you. i knew what was coming, even if i have no idea what i'm getting myself into.

one final aside, my dear mother took it upon herself to send TWO cans of this shit down for some reason, leaving me with an entire can's worth left over once i finish this test (IF i finish it) so if anyone wants to try it for themselves, i'll have a nice cold one waiting for you in the fridge. otherwise maybe i'll boil some brats or spike someone's gatorade at work or something. who knows.

okay, enough foreplay. time to crack this bad bitch open and see what she has to say for herself.

ugh. oh. i just sniffed the CAN OPENER and started coughing and gagging a little. let's see what the can has to say for itself. ingredients: cabbage juice, salt. i think they forgot "death" on there somewhere. there's a recipe for something called "tomato tang" which i will not insult you by replicating here, and then four bullet points. here they are, verbatim. parenthetical commentary is mine.

- miracle meat tenderizer - marinade (MEAT TENDERIZER? what is this going to do to my stomach lining?)
- adds a zest to mixed drinks (oh that i will definitely have to try - sauerkrautini, anyone?)
- natural laxative (oh that's just great)
- known to heal canker sores (wtf)

the whole time i've been typing this the smell has just been insinuating itself out into the room. i need to take drastic measures before it's too late. if anything happens to me, you can have my stereo. no, not you, you. yeah, you, in the back.

okay. here we go. i love you, mom and dad. this is all your fault.









wow. i honestly do not know what to say. sour, sour just sour beyond all description, and really really salty, the "entry" as they'd say is just this total bitchslap across your entire palate, with this lingering kind of rotten sour saltiness that just goes on and on. holy god. after the initial wave of your entire body just reacting with utter instinctual horror and revulsion, however, there's a kind of moment of clarity not unlike hurling yourself into an icy lake after sitting and soaking in a hot sauna for an hour or two. i can see for miles and miles and miles and miles and it all looks like sauerkraut from here.

honestly, it's not as bad as the yogurt soda. it's bad, don't get me wrong, it's horrible, but it doesn't have a) the chunks (OH GOD THE CHUNKS) or b) the lingering sourness and disgusting curdled cream taste of the abali. i say this all after my first healthy swig, however, which i would roughly estimate took care of about 1/3 of the can. we still have a long road ahead of us, friends and neighbors, and i may not get there with you.

that's right, i just quoted martin luther king jr. whilst discussing sauerkraut juice. nowhere else on the internet will you find such a sublime mixture of high-minded ideals and outright nastiness, i promise you. okay, time for round two.





oh. oh man. well, it turns out on the second pull off the can, once you've coated the inside of your mouth with this mess, the taste lingers on a whole lot longer, and you don't pass that initial rush of disgusting rotten sour saltiness quite so quickly. in fact as i write this i am still waiting for it to fade. i really totally understand why they used to make these cans single chug servings, i totally do.

i seriously don't know if i can do this. it's not just that it's bad, because it is, if that isn't coming through quite clearly enough for everyone, it's just... there's so god damned MUCH of it. i felt like i took another decent pull off of it, but just by my guesstimation i'd say there's still just under half the can left. i've fought long and hard through thick and thin (and chunky) to get through every drop of every beverage that i've personally hand selected for this experiment, dear readers, but i am honestly not sure if my body or the laws of nature will allow me to consume the rest of this can. i think we might have to call it a day.

...

...

screw it. you know what? this can is going down. right now. this is the last big hump, the final hill i have to crest in this tour de pain i've set up for myself, and i am not going to let a measly 7 ounces of fermented cabbage liquid deny me my glory. you wanted this showdown so god damned badly, frank's kraut juice, well guess what? you've got it.

MORTAL KOMBAAAAAATTTTTT!!!!!!







djhfajsdhflasdjbfhlkasjdbflaksdjfbalksdjfalsfghirugalivbzdkjvhlesirthlzskjfhzldkjfhzlkjfhlskfjhalsdjf!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YO ADRIAN!!! AAADDDRRRIIIIAAAANNNNN!!!!!!

DO YOU BELIEVE IN MIRACLES!?!?!?!?!?\\\

oh, the humanity!

the call was coming from inside the house

bruce willis' character was actually a ghost

the coin was in his other hand the entire time

wow. i can smell colors and hear tastes now. okay, maybe not. but i did just drink a whole lot of nasty crap. all of a sudden that "natural laxative" bullet point on the side of the can looks more like a warning than just a friendly bit of information. i suppose i'll find out later.

but for now, in this moment, let me bask in the glow. i might not be an andrew zimmern (although i've eaten more durian than he has) or anthony bourdain level connosseiur of the disgusting, but i'd like to think i can hold my own. i did it. i actually did it.

so what have we learned here, today? well, for one, i will apparently drink just about anything. also, my dad is a complete and utter lunatic. and finally, and perhaps most importantly, you don't get to pick the things that you take from the people around you, nor what they take from you... all you can hope for is that you don't inspire them to chug an entire can of sauerkraut juice on the internet for other people's amusement, because that is a really messed up thing to do to a kid.

just kidding. thanks for reading, everyone, and thanks for all the pool lessons, quarters for pinball, and cherry cokes, dad. you were the coolest. all of my friends are still scared of you.

see you next time

love

d