I'm scared of spiders - please help me

[Kay]

I don't have to write a review. I'd wanted to do something for my food blog, but it ain't going to happen.

Hmmm, China. Have to say I'm mostly not very keen on Chinese food. Sometimes it can be useful to pretend to be a vegetarian as a way of avoiding being obliged to eat weird food. Or invent/adopt a religion that prohibits you from eating certain things.

[grynge]

Kay I know they say it's a myth but I think you have probably already eaten a spider and just not known about it. How many times in your life has a bug flown into your mouth? Didn't you sleep through an ant biting you? Would it really be a stretch to think that at night a spider has crawled into it as well? Especially in the parts of the world you have lived in. When I lived out bush I have woken up many times with spiders, ants, bugs, milipedes and the worst was a centipede crawling over my body and face.

A Funny true story, when I was younger I was riding my motorbike, and something itchy was in my hair, so I grab the jaw of the helemt and try and scratch the itch but it kept happening, just as I was pulling up to a set of lights a huge huntsman crawls down from my hair and tries to bury itself into my nostril, a lovely feeling I must admit to hating, I dropped my bike throw my helmet of and do a mad dance face mashing excercise to get it out of my nose. I have checked my helmets everytime since.

On a serious note my sister in-law is Arachnaphobic to the Nth degree. So to try and lesson the fear she kept live spiders and placed spider stickers near stuff that she has to use all the time, on top of her toilet, the light switches, the fridge, she still jumps but its not the panic that it caused before.

[Kay]

If I ate one by accident and don't know about it, then it's not bothering me. I'd not really class myself as having arachnophobia. Heck, we lived alongside a huge spider for ages without even trying to kill it. It's just that spiders give me the creeps and I wouldn't be able to bring myself to touch one, far less try to eat it. Urgh, grynge! A Huntsman up your nostril. If I were you, I'd seriously consider giving up that bike of yours. Too many weird things happen to you when you're on it.

BTW, that ant thing wasn't "an ant". It was a whole swarm of them! Darned painful it was too. Even so, I don't mind ants so much. They're quite tasty when cooked in chilli and garlic. I can handle that no problem.

[grynge]

If I ate one by accident and don't know about it, then it's not bothering me. I'd not really class myself as having arachnophobia. Heck, we lived alongside a huge spider for ages without even trying to kill it. It's just that spiders give me the creeps and I wouldn't be able to bring myself to touch one, far less try to eat it. Urgh, grynge! A Huntsman up your nostril. If I were you, I'd seriously consider giving up that bike of yours. Too many weird things happen to you when you're on it.

My wife and kids don't like me riding but I love it. No matter all the bad things and funny things that have happened to me on bikes I still love to ride.

BTW, that ant thing wasn't "an ant". It was a whole swarm of them! Darned painful it was too. Even so, I don't mind ants so much. They're quite tasty when cooked in chilli and garlic. I can handle that no problem.

Maybe you could just think of an big 8 legged hairy ant when you taste it lol

I would try a spider, as I have tried most things, snakes are quite nice, but tiny slim fillets, croc, emu, witchety grubs, earth worms. My mum used to tell me how can you know you don't like something if you never try it.

[JJMcClure]

My mum used to tell me how can you know you don't like something if you never try it.

That's true but this isn't so much about whether or not we'd like the taste of fried spider, it's more about whether or not it would stay down.... I've had an alligator burger and I couldn't finish it, not because it didn't taste nice (it was Cajun and tasted pretty good) but because of the thought of eating something cold and scaley and reptilian, it just put me off.

Also, that rule only applies to things that we wouldn't consider unreasonable (like eating fried spider but not drilling a hole in your head) and that can vary from person to person and culture to culture.

[Nidec]

I'm slightly concerned about what our hosts are going to feed us while we're in China this week.

I wouldn't worry about it. I'm quite a fussy eater (I wont consider liver, kidney, tripe or strong-smelling fish) but have never eaten anything in China that I wouldn't eat again, including dog which is just like bacon.
Don't ask them to translate the meals name, often the name describes what it looks like, not what is is made from. Examples I can remember are a fruit translated as 'smells like man, tastes like woman', and 'ants climbing the tree' which is a green vegetable with black beans.
If in doubt you could always ask for your food to be spicy, that will hide the taste for you.

[JJMcClure]

I wouldn't worry about it. I'm quite a fussy eater (I wont consider liver, kidney, tripe or strong-smelling fish) but have never eaten anything in China that I wouldn't eat again, including dog which is just like bacon.

The idea of eating dog doesn't bother me actually, it's whole seafood like shellfish and insects that I struggle with. Last night we had a meal that included jelly fish (crunchy and not that nice) and things that looked like eyes but which are a delicacy sourced from the Yangtze river, although I wasn't sure if that was a recommendation or a warning, I dread to think how polluted the Yangtze is. Everything else was delicious and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

So far no spider on the menu...

Kay, did you get any good advice on how to deal with your phobia, have you tried hypnotism or NLP?

[Kay]

I don't really have a phobia, JJ. I was playing it up a bit when I started the thread, in the hope of all you rufty-tufty blokes taking my side and leaning on Dave to do it. Sadly, my little trick didn't work and you let him off the hook. We've now left Phnomh Penh behind and the opportunity to visit that restaurant. Sure, we could easily find another place selling creepy crawlies as food, but it wouldn't be the same. I particularly 'wanted' to go to that one because it's a charity to help Cambodian street-kids.

Yeah, I've eaten jellyfish too. People in Malta on my expat forum were complaining about there being too many jellyfish on their beaches. I thought I was being smart by saying it was a free source of food and that they should harvest them and eat them. Inevitably that led to people asking what jellyfish tastes like and I ended up having to eat jellyfish for a dare. Like you, I didn't think it was that great - more of a vehicle for whatever sauce or dressing it's served with.

Eyeballs, hmm. I've heard that tuna eyeballs are a delicacy in Japan. I wrote about that and other weird foods, such as sloth meat, on Not Delia earlier this year. I'm OK with shellfish, even spider crabs, how irrational is that?

Are you having any opportunities to take some photos of your trip?