Roadkill Cook-Off and Spam Jam

(CNN) — Thousands of people converge on the small town of Marlinton, West Virginia, each fall for a feast whose main ingredients were unlucky enough to crawl, slither or lurk too close to a speeding car.

Unusual food festivals include BugFest in Raleigh, North Carolina, where a young visitor tries a stir-fried scorpion.

It’s RoadKill Cook-Off time, where past years’ crowds have sampled dishes like Pothole Possum Stew, Fricasseed Wabbit Gumbo and Smeared Hog with Groundhog Gravy.

Welcome to the world of unusual — dare we say weird? — food festivals.

Sure, you can find plenty of culinary celebrations dedicated to everything from rhubarb to seafood, but there are also options to satisfy your cravings for rattlesnake, fried pig intestines or garlic ice cream.

The RoadKill Cook-Off is so popular that it fills all the motels and hotels in the county when it takes place on the last Saturday in September, said David Cain, who runs the event and samples all the dishes.

“There are some that are better than others, but I’ve never really had anything that I really didn’t like,” Cain said. “But there was one year they cooked a rattlesnake in some kind of stew, and … there was no way I could taste that one.”

READ MORE: Roadkill cook-off, Spam Jam lure bold foodies

SOURCE: http://www.cnn.com/2009/TRAVEL/05/14/food.festivals/index.html

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