I remember one particular encounter with “mystery meat” when I was in college. I was walking along the serving line at the dining hall, and when I came to the entrée, I asked the server, “What is it?”

She replied quite succinctly, “Don’t know. Got beef in it.” I passed on the entrée that night, settling for salad and bread.

I would probably not have be a good candidate for membership in the Explorers Club.

The Explorers Club, founded in New York City in 1904, is a professional society that champions the cause of field research (1). The member list is impressive, including Teddy Roosevelt, the American President responsible for setting aside many of the most treasured public lands in the United States so that explorers have fields for research and wild places for adventures, Neil Armstrong, the first man to set foot on the moon, and Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard, the two men who descended into the Mariana’s trench to explore the deepest part of the ocean, among others.

In addition to a membership list that reads like a who’s who of science and exploration, The Explorers Club also has an annual dinner that for many years has popularized a menu of “exotic” foods (at least exotic foods from the point of view of the typical Midwest United States pallet). One of the club’s most celebrated dinners took place on January 13, 1951.

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