NotAGran – we had a capon for Christmas when we lived on the Wirral. Only after we moved to Hertfordshire when I was 11 did we start having turkey on Christmas Day.
With the capon came the only bottle of wine that ever entered our house. A bottle of cheap Spanish "sauternes". I don't know where my dad got it from, probably through somebody he knew in the shipyard. He was always bringing bits of surplus stuff home from the yard. We had no corkscrew so there was a grand ceremony where dad drove a six-inch wood screw (also probably yard surface) into the cork and then attempted to remove it with pliers. The end result was almost always half a cork pulled away and the other half pushed down into the bottle with a lot of cork crumbs. I was permitted a small sip of it.
I've done most of the usual suspects. Black pudding and haggis I actually love. Tripe is exactly how Katherine Whitehorn described it: "like boiled knitting". I've done oysters along with several other molluscs and they're ok but not worth the exorbitant price (smoked oysters on hot buttered toast are another matter: delicious!). Escargots, yes, done that a couple of times. With lots of garlic butter they taste of garlic butter, with the texture of rubber bands. Cuisse de grenouille? Yes, had to try them, they are like tiny chicken wings (amphibians, birds and reptiles are very closely related). I've eaten raw baby herring in both Poland and the Netherlands. I spent two delicious summers on the Côte d'azure in my teens (we weren't posh, I got extremely lucky with my French exchange) gathering oursins (sea urchins) to cut open and mop up the roes with fresh French bread. Once I had lunch in Zürich with my friend who lives there, and she suggested I might like to try Rivella, the peculiarly Swiss soft drink made from the whey left after cheese-making. So I did. It was as ok as any other fizzy soft drink but less sweet I think. She said I was the first who had ever taken up her suggestion.
I live in Glasgow but I've never had a deep-fried Mars Bar. Like snails and frogs legs they are strictly for the tourists. Usually though I'm up for anything once and if I haven't tried lutefisk, fugu (more hype than truth about the danger I'm told) or sheep's eyeballs it's because I've never moved in those cultures, not for any other reason. I think I might draw a line at the Sardinian cheese with live maggots in it though.
