A Small Victory

Oh great! There goes dinner.

I don't know. Creative naming often seems to lead to people thinking they're eating something they're not. I can't tell you how many times I've seen people order Rocky Mountain Oysters because they like seafood.

Hey Grandpa! What's for dinner?

(oh, I guess they didn't show Hee-Haw to yankees, sorry, but you most certainly missed a huge slice of American Culture)

I once saw a tub of pork uteri for sale by the pound, in an Asian market.

Now I can't come close to topping those products, but my older sister told me about this item (which came in large tall can)that her store stocked when she was a food store cashier back in the 70's:

"Sweet Sue Whole Chicken in a Can"

There's just something about it that sounds really frightening. shudder

Good heavens! The Sweet Sue chicken product is on the Potted Meat Museum website.

I have to send the link to my sister. She is going to plotz!

You've never heard of Potted Meat? It's the single scariest food product ever invented -- so scary that they have to tell you right in the name, Food Product, 'cause otherwise, you might not know. I have to admit, I've never seen Pork Brains, but that's pretty sketchy, too. Still, at least Pork Brains, you know what's in it. Potted Meat, all you know is it's something(s) that came from animals.
Also on the list of scary foods... Vienna Sausages. I don't know what's in them, but they look sorta like preserved children's fingers.

Michele, this is a regional thing, as well as an "acquired taste." (A REALLY acquired taste.)

In parts of the South (including the part of Tennessee where I grew up) "brains and eggs" were served as a dinner entree'.

Lifelong northern denizens will never fully understand, just as southerners can't understand those who would put sugar on their grits, instead of butter and salt.

Michele, read anything by Florence King. She explains why young women who put dark meat in their chicken salad are forever banned from the Junior League, and other important facts.

You'd love Florence King. I mean you'd just LOVE the woman!

Respectfully,

Charles

My dad only liked the cheapest head cheese and bologna. None of that quality stuff with no offal or fillers just the stinky varieties that had every cat in the neighborhood running toward our house.

I like grits with butter and salt.

Nothing on my plate something has been thinking with or mating with either.

Being German and Scots, it seems that anything a German can stuff into an intestine, he will make a sausage out of it. I guess the Scots had a shortage of intestines when they invented haggis which is a sheeps stomach stuffed with barley, lungs and other less appetizing fare... no wonder the Scots drink so much.

Perhaps you don't recall this, found at Lileks first:

Mr Brain's Faggots

I blogged it on my birthday, July 31.

Has nobody ever heard of prion disease? Sheep carry it, cattle carry it, why not pigs? Eating brains of "anything" is there on my list right above shellfish at red tide.

Potted meat tastes exactly like deviled ham. When I was poor I made "ham salad" sandwiches of the stuff (little mayo, little relish) and no one knew the difference. It's the ramen noodles of meat.

I don’t know about sheep tongues, but pickled lamb tongues are okay. They were almost as popular with my family as blood (or black) puddings fried in fat. Throw some wonder bread into the fat, make fried bread, serve it all with a blob of oatmeal and you have an Irish breakfast.

Czarnina...or duck blood soup. Try that one.

My mom grew up on a farm outside of Tishomingo, Oklahoma in the 1940's. She said a big breakfast treat was scrambled calf brains.

She also used to eat potted meat on crackers as a favorite snack.

Despite these two facts I still love my mom, proving blood is thicker than pork products.

Got to be british, with a spelling like "Armour"?

"Potted Meat", which you used to get from a butcher, is also known as "Potted Heid", where I come from.

Best of all, my mother used to fill my school-lunch sandwiches with a sliced cold-meat called "roast hazlitt".

I made the mistake of looking it up in a dictionary. Once.

How about my favorite "processed chesse food"? I'm sorry, but anything that you have to identify as food on the package as food can't be too good.

BTW, speaking as someone who's actually tried them, Rocky Mountain Oysters don't taste too bad - despite the fact that they're, uh, well, you know.

I saw head cheese being made once in my best friends kitchen. I must have been about twelve. I'm convinced my friends dad was Leather Face from Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I also remember him eating raw hamburger several times. Maybe he was just an idiot...

Natalie
You had relish, you must have been rich. Obviously most of you folks have never been "really" hungry, I could make a feast out of the items you mention. Ummmmmh Good.

Oh man! I've saw the page and the pic and felt sick;((( Buuuuu....It's disgusting! How can you ever eat this? I'm not a vegetarian but I can dare say I won't eat it!

Just hazarding a guess here, but... I suspect that this dish may not be Kosher. In the Literal rather than Figurative sense, that is.

Anyway I've just filched it for today's Brain article on my blog.

What wimps!

I suppose you'd recoil from a plate of fried "water bugs"? Or cat? Or dog?

I must say, though, that I just can't find, even on-line, a recipe for those pig uteri and bull penises (penes, if you pedant). Any pointers? I'm not sure they're an Oriental treat, though; seems more like Central American, at least in my neighborhood ethnic market.

Nothing's worse than being in the South and seeing a big ol' jar of pickled pigs feet on the convenience store counter. The mind...just boggles. Thank god they also give us chicken fried steak, fried okra and cornbread!

Pork liver, so that's what Potted Meat is. My dad always said it was made from spotted opossums.

; )

Er I like tongue...

Infidels! You will eat anything, won't you?

From Charles Compton: In parts of the South (including the part of Tennessee where I grew up) "brains and eggs" were served as a dinner entree.

See now, that's why people make fun of the south. Everyone knows that brains and eggs is a breakfast dish.

As for the rest of you city folks, you don't know what you're missing (and I'm not talking about the canned crap). Before you die, you need to try:

Scrambled eggs and brains
A truly proper headcheese
Dove pie
Fried gizzards with milk gravy
Liver done right (not the shoe leather most people think of)

and my personal favorite (be still my heart!)

Heart

I will never eat another Slim Jim after reading the definition of mechanically separated chicken.

Ever.

Potted Meat Food Products! my gawd, me and my ex, when we'd go to the store, would always always ALWAYS make the trek to the canned meat aisle to gross each other out. every time.

people thought we were weird. now, i can include you.

I remember a trip to the grocery store with my dad back in the early 80s (I would have been 13 or 14 at the time. He was born in 1919 and so grew up during the depression - when people "ate what was set before them", apparently.

I remember him being SO EXCITED that they had "pork brains" in the meat cooler (store packed, not Hormel - it was a small town with it's own real-life butcher) & he bought a quart-sized container & took it home.

He then proceeded to SCRAMBLE the pork brains with eggs and then ate it all up.

I remember the horrible, horrible smell of the cooking. I remember the beige color the whole concoction turned. I remember being extremely disgusted at the whole episode.

::shudder::

Oh, I suppose I should mention that this was in south-western Ohio.

on the topic of cheese...

an old roommate of mine was so cheap, he would pass the 'processed cheese food' & head straight to 'sandwich slices'
the word 'cheese' was nowhere on the packaging.

Robyn, you should try living in the South and downwind of the Salley Chitlin Strut. Y'all do know what chitlins (chitterlings to you northern folk) are, right?

Boiled or fried pig intestines. Yes, and I live right down the road from a town that has a fried pork intestine festival. Ain't life grand?

Tongue?

I never eat something that can taste me back.

C'mon, how bad can it be? I think there's a pair of slices of white bread that's yearning to have pork brains in milk gravy oozing between it. Mmmmmmmm.

I'm sure prune juice is the appropriate beverage to drink with such a delightful meal, as well.

I grew up eating potted meat, and I still love to make sandwiches with it, but the bread has to be super fresh. But what do you northerners know. A lot of you wouldn't eat crawfish, and here in the south, we live for crawfish season!!!