Oh, God, WHY did I read this thread while I was eating breakfast? 
“The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance – it is the illusion of knowledge.”
–Daniel J Boorstin
Stop it, you’re all making me hungry.
“You know you talk so hip man, you’re twisting my melon man,”
Crusoe Takes A Trip
There are at least two different things which are sold as pork scratchings (in Britain). The light and fluffy one is, I think, a kind of corn-based snack food with bacon flavouring. Basically, it contains no real pork. The tough one you break your teeth on is your genuine pork rind, roasted, I believe, rather than fried.
I think we might have the lead in weirdness. They still sell TRIPE in grocery stores. A lot of people like BOILED TRIPE and COLLARD GREENS. (Ah, man! I have no words to describe my opinion of that pallid, loathsome stuff.) I mean, I consider anyone who actually eats and enjoys collard greens as a bit strange anyhow, but to add TRIPE to it is insane! Not to mention that some people serve up a great mass of boiled, pale TRIPE along with a great mass of boiled macaroni! (UGH!)
I went into a ‘MEAT HOUSE’ with a friend once. A MEAT HOUSE is a place the poor go to buy meat. You’ll find them in ghettos and low income areas, usually staffed by people of Middle Eastern or Black persuasion – Asians, curiously enough, don’t run this type of place. The quality of the meat is dubious and the aroma inside usually makes one wonder just how much the health inspector is getting in bribes.
There was a HUGE refrigerated bin among the carnage with a glass front, piled high with great rectangular chunks of pig. Not all of the pig, mind you, but mainly the hide and corresponding layer of lard with very thin little strips of meat going through it. People would buy those great hunks of pure cholesterol and use them as seasoning meat when they cooked.
I’ll never forget the time I was in a “real” Italian restaurant (on Federal Hill, Providence RI). I was sitting next to a lady who ordered tripe (in tomato sauce) over spaghetti! It looked horrible (like worms writhing on her plate). I got positivley nauseous looking at it! UGHHHH!
The Japanese are, hands down, the kings of grotesque snack foods. We process a lot of fish here in Alaska, and the Japanese buy just about everything. F’rinstance, the pacific grey cod makes very nice fillets, perfect for fish and chips and fish sandwiches, but there are a 1001 uses for the rest of the cod. Like the pig in Iowa, nothing is wasted.
The roe (fish eggs) are highly prized, which considering how they look when they are processed, defies understanding. The egg sacks (skeins) are gross, pink blobs that look for all the world like a big pale kidney, complete with nasty looking veins. They have their own unique smell.
Think that’s bad? How about pickled cod stomaches? Thats right, the stomach is separated from the rest of the guts, then turned inside out so that all the partially digested dinner can be squeezed out. Apparently, the stomaches end up being pickled, and sit in big glass jars on the bars in Japan; the drunk businessmen snarf’em down like Slim Jims.
But the best is saved for last: the Japanese are crazy for cod milt, which is the equivalent of FISH SPERM!! I don’t know how it is prepared (what would you do with a load of cod gizzum?), but it looks like runny scrambled egg whites and smells like a fish head inside of a gym sock that’s been sunk at the bottom of an outhouse for a month. No matter, it is shipped out fresh by the ton via air freight, so it’s got to be expensive.
The Japanese put a whole new meaning on the saying, “There’s no accounting for taste”.
TT
“It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.”
–James Thurber
Well, now we know why the Japanese have something like a 95% recycling rate.
They eat their garbage.
My grandmother used to make tripe all the time. She would cook it in tomato sauce and peas, and serve it over spaghetti. The peas used to get stuck in the little ‘pockets’ in the tripe. It was like chewing on rubber bands. She also used to make peas and macaroni, which is good, as long as you like peas. She would always save some peas for the second course, which was poached eggs with peas. She would crack the eggs into the frying pan with the leftover peas. The peas would get imbedded in the edges of the eggs, and since there was so much liquid in the pan, the eggs would be all runny. We eat that with toast to dip in the yolks. My husband turned a wonderful shade of green when he was over for dinner that night.
When I was a little kid, my grandfather would share his pig’s knuckles with me. I loved them, and couldn’t understand why my grandmother yelled at him for it. I mean, I knew that pigs didn’t have fingers, so how could what I was eating be actual knuckles? Once I realized that those were actually pig’s feet, I stopped eating them.
Rose
I told you not to be stupid, you moron.
I am so glad someone mentioned mushy peas. My mother brings these foul things back from England everytime she goes.
For those of you who have never seen these things (or more appropriately, this thing) let me enlighten you. From what I understand, there really are peas in this mess but instead of being “pea green,” they are neon green. Very similar to radioactive waste in cartoons. I feel quite certain that mushy peas are the only thing on the planet that can claim to be that color (naturally).
And, of course, as the name indicates, they are mushy. Imagine a radioactive-green pile of guacamole–this is what these “peas” look like. The smell is another topic entirely. Nothing compares to the fetid smell of this dish.
I always try to do things in chronological order.
Did somebody say, Pork Brains?
In MILK gravy yet! UGH!
My aunt used to cook string beans for her late husband in milk with a little sugar added. (UGH! also.)