Weird foods I have eaten recently

1. A super-sized croissant with each tip dipped in chocolate and which, in retrospect, was in fact suspiciously heavy. Kind of like those fake rocks that you pick up and Surprise! they’re super light and made of Styrofoam. Only the opposite. Too heavy to have been filled with chocolate, which was of course my fantasy. But my heart really nearly did stop when I broke it open to find what appeared to be sausage inside. But never fear, it was instead some sort of glob of sweet paste that tasted like bubble gum.

2. A chocolate bar that was flavored with mustard. Not some kind of special exotic chocolate-flavored mustard. But a yellow “wish I had a hotdog handy” kind of mustard.

3. A dessert confection that was shaped like a bowler hat and filled with cottage cheese. It said cottage cheese on the menu, but I assumed, as anyone would, that it was some kind of loose translation from the original Hungarian. Nope, cottage cheese.

4. A pastry, shaped like a cannoli, with what appeared to be shredded coconut on each end. Filled, I was sure, with some kind of creamy filling. True enough. But as I put it to my lips, I heard my husband, who had just that moment bitten into his, exclaim with some urgency, "No, don't do it!" I realized that it was creamy, yes, but also salty. And the filling was some sort of smoky white cheesy substance. That shredded stuff on the end? Dried bits of cheese. Had this been presented with a beer at about 5 PM, perhaps it would have been consumed. But over breakfast with my latte, well, I'm afraid not.

5. Cold fruit soups with a yogurt base. These are actually very tasty. One even had a scoop of ice cream in it. Pour it in a glass, and you’ve got yourself a smoothie.

As you can see, I have been doing a yeoman’s duty in sampling local desserts. I leave the various local dishes made of goose liver to others. Until, of course, it turns up in one of my chocolate-dipped croissants.