Cookaholics Bulletin Board

KSS, JB,

Well, a lot of such foods were discovered to be edible once people were hungry enough. When you're literally starving, your standards for what's edible go way, way down.

For example, the way artichokes entered French cuisine was through warfare. Medieval French knights used to stage mock battles ("melee") in which they would fight neighboring nobles to settle bets. While they were OK with a few peasants getting killed, they didn't want their horses to be in danger, so they armed the peasants with makeshift spears ... sometimes out of artichoke stalks, which grew wild in the south. By the end of the melee, they'd have trampled the crops. And, well, let's see if we can eat these artichokes if we boil them long enough ...

This doesn't explain civet coffee, though.

If I had to guess, the maker didn't try it, they lost some of their crops to the civet and figured the stupid tourists wouldn't know the difference....

'Tis the season, and just in time for that special food enthusiast on you gift list is The Scoop On Cat Poop Coffee from "the salt". I guess they are trying to prove that NPR believes in journalism without any limits.

Isn't this the coffee that had Morgan Freeman laughing so hard in the movie "The Bucket List"?

Todd,

Yes.