16 reasons that will probably make you appreciate your mom’s home cooking a bit more.

This photo shows a villager in Indonesian island of Sumatra picking up faeces, which will then be used to make expensive and gourmet coffee called “kopi luwak.

Duck fetus, cooked just before the embryo was old enough to crack through the shell.

Ox penis. Some men believe eating penis of some kinds of animals, such as ox, goats, tigers or dogs can improve their sexual performance.

Giant grilled spiders. Two Cambodian women selling grilled spiders in Phnom Penh’s central market, 09 August 2001 try to attract customers as one of them display a specimen to a passer by. Grilled insects such as those big spiders are very popular with Cambodians who eat them as snack any time during the day.

Bee larva. Nuff said.

Caterpillar fungus is highly valued in Chinese medicine and used as crude drugs to restore energy, promote longevity and stimulate the immune system.

In this village where people eat rats, there are a dozen of rats hunters like this man and each day they sell their catch for about one dollar per kilogram.

Fried scorpions. A Thai worker arranges fried scorpions in the kitchen of ‘Insects Inter in Bangkok, 12 September 2002. Insects Inter has capitalised on the local taste for fried insects, typically sold by street vendors, and created a franchise to take the tasty bugs up market.
Bet you won’t need any hot sauce on those.

Snake blood. A journalist tries to drink snake blood on a jungle survival program during a media training exercise at Sanggabuana mountain in Subang, West Java, Indonesia.

A Thai worker prepares grubs to cook.

A Chinese chef prepares to carve a carcass of a dog at a restaurant kitchen in Beijing. Yes, the same place that had the olympics this year.

A woman looks at a dish of worms during the Taipei Chinese Food Festival. Oh joy.

Fried lizard. An array of once-wriggling reptiles and arachnids is on the menu of a new Thai restaurant seeking to cash in on the country’s appetite for the unusual, the owner of the restaurant said the reptiles served up by his ‘experienced chefs’ were also prominent ingredients in traditional Thai medicines.

Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo: A woman sells maggots at the market of Kinshasa

Grasshopper taco

Florentino Azpetia, chef at Girasoles restaurant in Mexico City, prepares a grasshopper taco (taco de chapulines), a typical Mexican delicacy, in the restaurant’s kitchen. Maggots (gusanos del maguey), grasshoppers (chapulines) and white ant eggs (escamoles) form part of a Mexican specialty cuisine which features over 500 edible insects and bugs.

Snake wine

A waitress pours a favorite Chinese wine, soaked with various herbs and snakes, into a glass for a customer at a restaurant in Beijing. You know, to wash away the taste of the dog you just ate.

Enjoy!

Although pictures should say more than a thousand words, I can only think of three right now. I’d hit it!

*Click chick for big pic.