Top 7 strange gastronomic rituals
You don't have to be a crazy explorer at all to realize that the world is a pretty strange place. There are hundreds of different cultures living in all corners of our planet, with their own traditions and sometimes bizarre rituals. This is especially true when it comes to food: many peoples have their own bizarre culinary traditions, stemming either from their religion or other circumstances that we don't get to live with.
Masai Blood Cows
The Maasai are an ethnic group inhabiting southern Kenya and northern Tanzania. They are especially known for their colorful clothing and their special relationship to cows, namely milk and their blood. The tribe uses the milk for tea, butter and simply as a drink, but the blood is drunk raw and often mixed with milk.
Since the cow is the most valuable animal in their culture, the Maasai people know how to cut an artery without killing the animal.
Blood is often consumed as a ritual drink at Maasai weddings - on these occasions, the cows are killed and the blood is drunk directly from the wound.
Inuit North Winds
The Inuit inhabit the northern parts of Canada and Greenland and have learned to live and thrive in some of the harshest conditions known to man. They cannot farm in these conditions, so they will eat everything from walrus to whale to polar bear to any fish they can catch in the icy waters of the Arctic.
Their diet is almost devoid of spices and complex cooking techniques: some food is eaten simply frozen. But there is seal blood.
Much of this is due to habitat rather than tradition, but there is one cultural peculiarity: for some Inuit, it is considered good form to let the air out after a meal as a form of appreciation for the food.
Inviting the dead to dinner
The Toraji are indigenous to the Indonesian region of Sulawesi. What makes them unique is their attitude towards death.
When any of the Toraja die, they are not buried or burned. Instead, their bodies remain with the family to continue participating in daily life. The corpse remains at home until the funeral - usually several months after death. The Toraji believe that the soul of the deceased is still with them, so the new life of the dead is not just a presence in the house. They are also fed: the body joins the family for breakfast, lunch and dinner and "enjoys" the meal with the rest of the relatives.
KFC Christmas in Japan
Of course, Japan had to be on the list of weirdness. And one of their amazing customs is the traditional Christmas dinner from KFC. It dates back to 1970 when KFC wanted to recreate the classic American Christmas dinner, only with fried chicken instead of turkey. By 1974, the so-called party barrel had spread throughout Japan, and since the Japanese themselves had no other Christmas customs, KFC successfully filled the gap.
Today, KFC's Christmas menu includes fried chicken, salad and the more traditional Japanese Christmas cake. An estimated 3.6 million Japanese families eat KFC at Christmas, with orders being placed weeks in advance - due to high demand.
Gloucestershire Cheese Rolling
It's exactly what you think of when you read the title. Every year at Cooper's Hill in Gloucestershire, participants race to catch a huge head of Gloucester cheese - about 3.5kg - being lowered from the top of the hill.
Whoever reaches the foot of the hill first gets the cheese. According to the organizers, this event is hundreds of years old and probably originated as one of the rituals to celebrate fertility.
The hillside is very steep and uneven, making injuries of varying degrees common in the race.
The cheese itself is usually brought from local cheese factories, except for the period from 1941 to 1954, when wooden fake cheese was used instead of natural cheese.
Freshwater sardine festival in Sitting.
However, the Gloucestershire Cheese Race is not the strangest British food-related festival. Perhaps the most unusual still is the Sardine Festival, held every year in Seating.
During the festival, crowds of people gather in the town and follow a few fishermen to the Thames, encouraging and supporting them in their quest to catch as many sardines as possible.
What's so strange about this? The fact is that there are currently no sardines in the Thames in any form. Maples set up a farm near Seating in 2005, though, and residents hope that someday the escaped fish will restore the population decimated by industrial activity.
After the sardines are naturally uncaught, everyone, dragged away by four giant guinea pigs, follows to a big barbecue with music, dancing and games, many of them dedicated to sardines.
Aro Wine Battle
Spain is not short of strange gastronomic events and rituals, such as the annual Bunol tomato battle, a legendary festival for locals and tourists alike. Less well known, despite being much cooler, is the wine battle in Aro, located in the northern part of the La Rioja region.
The festival is said to have its roots in the 13th century, when traditionally the inhabitants of Aro marked their property boundaries with their neighbors in Miranda de Ebro to avoid Aro becoming part of that town.
Today the revelers, dressed in white of course, join the procession and first take part in a religious mass and then battle each other for hours with buckets, water pistols, hoses and anything else they can reach. And after the battle is over, a gala dinner begins.
