Crazy Food Adventures

So if you have a weak stomach you may want to skip this post. Since I've been back to Indonesia this year I've found myself eating and trying all sorts of crazy foods. I had thought I ate some weird food last year, but so far this year I've topped all that.

The first crazy food adventure we've had is one Friday night we decided to go find a place to eat and ended up at a local Padang Restaurant. When we sat down we didn't order anything, they just immediately brought us a whole bunch of dishes and told us that we only needed to pay for what we ate. Some of the weird foods we tried were cow skin, brain, and lung.

The large spread of food- some normal food mixed in there too.

The brain.

The lung.

The second crazy food adventure we had was on our trip to Bromo. When we got to Surabaya we asked if there was any special food that the city was known for. Our taxi driver told us about the local specialty of cow nose rujak (rujak is cut up fruit covered in spicy peanut sauce).

We went to lunch at a local Indonesian restaurant that was known for serving this specialty. We tried the cow nose rujak (yes, with pieces of cow nose in it as well as mashed up in the sauce). I also tried ox tail soup for the first time. And we had some cow ankle curry which looked very weird and was kind of hairy... not sure what was going on with that.

We got invited into the kitchen to take a look. In the back there is the cow nose waiting to be added in with the fruit and peanut sauce.

Here is some of the things we ate at that lunch. On the left is the cow nose rujak, in the middle is some sort of sauce and something crunchy, and on the right is the ox tail soup.

The last crazy food adventure we've had is a lunch that was hosted for the students who applied to go on the Sea Tribe youth trip in the spring. We wanted to see who would be able to endure an uncomfortable situation and eat weird food with a smile. And eat weird food we did!

Our lunch included crickets and grasshoppers (that were fried). We had stomach, intestine, and lung. We also ordered some chicken head and chicken feet. Lastly, we had some salty fish and durian to round out our list.

Adam, one of the leaders, with his lunch group.

Here's me with one of the girls in my group. We are trying to figure out how to eat some of this stuff.

A plate full of all the crazy stuff- lung, intestine, stomach, grasshoppers, etc.

A close up on those heads and feet... pretty hard to eat. I would not recommend them.