White Ant Eggs

... some alley off Sukhumvit, Bangkok, Thailand

The Sukhumvit area of Bangkok is a paradise for the amateur adventure eater. From weird, unidentifiable bugs served by multi-gendered street vendors, to odd goat parts in strictly halal restaurants, and even a condom restaurant. We'd already eaten all the insects we could find, and after a few shots of various exotic liquors, we found a soup vendor with a large bucket of what looked like ... maggots. Gastronaut gold!



These were the fabled white ant eggs we'd been looking for, finally!


Collage of white ant eggs, larvae, and baby ants in our soup.

Most of them were plain white, about the size of puffed rice, but some of them had little black eye balls, and some of them were half egg / half embryo. And there were a few fully born ants in the mix as well.

The soup was awesome. Why can't the rest of the world do street food as good as Thailand? The little ant babies were soft and had a subtle peppery taste. Some of the plump ones popped in our mouth. These would be a fine addition to your morning Frosted Flakes -- ants are one of the most efficient ways to get protein.


Yum!

China Cat Lovers Rescue Kittens Meant for Dinner

Oh here's a fun story... over the weekend in Jiaxing, Zhejiang Province (a few hours south of Shanghai), a bunch of cat lovers rescued 800 kittens that were going to be sent down to Guangdong (where they eat all that weird stuff). Supposedly these cats were meant to be eaten too.

Shanghai Animal Protection Association President Zhang Yi appealed to society to cultivate better dining habits. [source]

These cat lovers are speciesists!

Now, my spell check is telling me speciesist and speciesism is not a word. (it's recommending "spacesuit" hah). But the word is in the dictionary:

discrimination in favor of one species, usually the human species, over another, esp. in the exploitation or mistreatment of animals by humans.

Maybe you didn't know, there's a whole debate about this stuff. This guy thinks animal rights activists are misguided - The Speciesist's Corner. This guy asks, Is Christianity Irredeemably Speciesist?.

Part of the whole issue is concerned with humans thinking they are better than animals. But another part of the debate asks why one animal is regarded higher than another.

All that aside, the question begs to be answered -- why are these guys saving cats? What about the pigs, the chickens, the cows, the ducks. Ducks are cute too.

If all that's too heavy for you, watch this woman train her cat to eat with a fork. Hey is that reverse speciesism?

China Bans Dog Meat During Olympics

[Photo from TrekEarth]

During the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, Korea, the government banned some restaurants from serving dog meat and encouraged Koreans to not eat dog when around foreign visitors. There was a lot of hoopla surrounding this, with anti-dog meat organizations rallying and "Korean culture" supporters defending their right to eat dog meat. It's important to note that there were Korean natives and foreigners on both sides of the argument, and I'm sure there always will be.

Looks like China has done the same for the Beijing 2008 Olympic summer games. "Restaurant workers are advised to 'patiently' suggest other options to diners who order dog." [source]

That goes along with a list of all sorts of things they've covered up from foreign eyes for the Olympics.

We've eaten dog meat in many places around China, and other countries, and we've even seen in on the menu at some luxury hotels and airport lounges. The shocking, gruesome pictures of dog meat you might find on the internet are often taken in rural villages, where the butchering and cooking of animals is usually out in the open, for public viewing. It's the same for most slaughtered animals there. You can hand-pick your fish or chicken or goat, and have it slaughtered, butchered, bled, and cooked right before your eyes. How is this different from what happens every day in the modern, urban, Western world? We do our slaughter behind closed doors. But we still do it, and you eat it and you pay for it to be done again (vegetarians excluded, of course).

More about eating dog meat.

And more about anti-weird meat propaganda.