A sampling of topics that came up at my friend Chad's birthday dinner last night:
1.Kopi Luwak coffee, which is harvested from catshit and sells for $600 a pound. The civet cat will eat only the finest, ripest coffee berries. The beans aren't digestable, so they pass through the animals relatively unscathed before someone has to dig around in their droppings to harvest them.
2. Maggot-infested black-market cheese from Italy. I won't go into it here; there's an old article about it here if you want to learn more. (And you know you do.)
3. The technique of steaming strawberry milk for use in espresso drinks, the deliciousness of avocado pie, and the medicinal nature of Starbucks' new seasonal beverages.
It was an informative evening.