"This is going to taste delirious"

Date: Friday July 8, 2011

Time: 10:33 am

Location: Taupo, NZ, The Short’s Kitchen

In a movie I watched the other day with Lizzy called “Paulie,” there is a scene where one of the main character’s Misha, tries to coax a parrot called Paulie to talk.  He had heard him talk before and was attempting to make him talk again by bribing him with mango. He started to cut the mango and was talking about how juicy and delicious it looked. He cut a large slice and said; “This is going to taste delirious.”

Being from Russia, Misha had a rather strong accent and would sometimes use words in the wrong way. If you couldn’t tell, he was trying to say “delicious.” This week I tried a food that can be described as anything BUT delirious. Marmite.

I figured that I should keep my promise to Lizzy, however, she punished me and took it a step further by making me try it in front of the whole youth group on Wednesday night. Her sister, Katie, was only too happy to team up with her and even brought the sample of Marmite to youth group in a thick spread between two crackers.

I sat in front of the kids and told them the story of why I was tasting Marmite, and then surrounded by their chants, I took a bite. It was like gooey salty chicken broth in brown sticky form smeared between two helpless, unknowing crackers. They weren’t happy with this though, and decided it would be a good idea for me to open the cracker and lick it, like you would an open-face Oreo. The similarity ends there though.

“Alright,” I thought “May as well do this right.” After all, I was raised in a house where my Father said to never “half-ass” anything. So, I opened the cracker and licked the sticky Marmite. Gross. Immediate regret.

Another interesting thing I ate this week was pizza with spaghetti on it instead of sauce. These Kiwi’s just like to put strange things on their pizza! First with the pizza from Domino’s with the big potato wedges as a topping (This, by the way, was titled “Mr. Wedgies”), and then using canned spaghetti in tomato sauce as a replacement for regular sauce in a pizza. I have to admit, it wasn’t that bad.

Other out-of-the(my)-ordinary foods I’ve tried:

-Banana-Chocolate Muffin= Delicious

-Parsnip= Good

-Lamb with mint sauce=Amazing

-Mango with custard and ice cream=Fantastic

-Tuna sushi=Could’ve done without

-Mince pie= Incredible

See how brave I am? Trying all these strange foods. Most of which were… delirious. So far, the only ones I truly disliked were the Marmite and the Sushi. Only one of which, is truly a New Zealand cuisine. So overall, I'm liking the food choices here.