Oh, yeah, oxtails! In tomato sauce! You eat them with your hands, and by the time you finish you’re covered with sauce up to the elbows, but it’s delicious! And then you can use the remaining sauce for pasta the following day.
I’m going to ask my mom to prepare some of it the next time I’ll visit my parents. 
Bridget, I’ve never heard of tacos made with the head of the cow. I think you mean menudo?
Also, I don’t see head cheese around much anymore. (Not really a cheese). It’s great on sandwiches.
I hear you. The cooking school curriculum here in Quebec still has aspic technique as one of the required elements in the food decoration and presentation course. That, and its cream-infused cousin chaud-froid. Our teacher admitted that no one does it anymore, except for a few old-fashioned buffets, but there was no way around learning it.
I can think of a dozen places that sell gizzards and/or livers either cooked or raw.
Ha! Your lucky day. I live in Limburg, Netherlands, home of Stinky Cheese. Want me to ship you some? It might be confisquated at the border though, under suspicion of being a chemical terrorist weapon.
I saw oxtail “osso buco” in Wegmans just yesterday. However the description was “beef shanks,” so I don’t think it was the genuine article.
Few years back I recall seeing the whole pig heads in the supermarket near some holiday (Christmas? New Years?). They looked really, really gross, and I was about to make a comment about how disgusting they were and what kind of sick person would actually cook and eat that when the woman next to me at the counter put one in her cart!
Tacos de cabeza (head tacos) are also available at pretty much any taqueria in my neighborhood. Some go so far as to also offer tacos de ojo (eyeball tacos), along with the more usual tongue (lengua), cheek, and brain (sesos) meat. Sometimes these tacos are made with goat (chivo) and, at the local supermarket, during some of the holidays you will find whole goat heads on sale. I would consider tacos de cabeza to be fairly standard, although not so at the typical Tex-Mex joints. Wikipedia has a description in the main entry on tacos:
Gross! 
You’re right about the scarcity, though. Isn’t that the same as our ‘souse meat’? Boil the meat off of the animal’s head, season it (some say the hotter the better) and make a kind of pasty sausage meat. Kinda like braunschweiger. People in these parts used to make their own. Now it’s uncommon to find even in the store, and lots of kids don’t even know what it is.
Pig ears suffered a similar fate, although ham hocks are still all the rage.
Where’s your location? Round these parts, they seem to be getting scarce (although I did discover a Brazilian restaurant that served chicken hearts recently).
I’m pretty sure there’s no spinal tissue down there. I used to suck those knobbly cartilage ends all the way off, and there’s no hole in the bones for spinal tissue to go through like in cervical or lumbar vertebrae.
A lot of the local fried chicken places and some of the barbecue places around here sell deep fried livers and/or gizzards. Local chain Brown’s Chicken usually has both (depending on location). When I was a kid, their chicken livers were one of my favorite things.
Oh, speaking of chicken livers, weren’t those Japanese chicken liver and water chestnut wrapped in bacon things really popular in like the 70s or 80s or something? Rumaki, that’s it! My mom used to make those without the water chestnut when I was a kid, whenever we’d have a movie night. Loved those things. Saw one at a wedding this weekend for the first time in ages.
Nonsense. As others have pointed out, restaurants dedicated to fondue cooking (there are more than just the Meltin’ Pot) are all over the place. I asked for (and got) a fondue pot for my wedding, and my husband and I use it all the time, primarily with broth (we only do cheese and chocolate on special occasions). Not the most recent time (that would be just a few weeks ago), but here’s one example of us using it.
As for foods that really have fallen out of favor, how many people still use chicken feet to make their chicken soup? My mother and sister used to love sucking the skin off all the little bones. YUCK! For a time, they were outlawed here in the U.S. They aren’t any longer, but I don’t know a soul who’d ever actually cook with them.
Also, we used to eat these things we called “eggies” in our chicken soup. They are “unborn” eggs taken from the pregnant hens when they’re killed. Here’s an article about them, if you’re unfamiliar (and you probably are). And here’s a picture of one (cut in half) in a bowl of chicken soup. They’re apparently still being used in some places in Europe, and seem to have made somewhat of a comeback in some upscale restaurants and farmer’s markets in New York, but are still widely unheard-of, or only distant memories, here in the U.S.
In my folk’s estimation, the mark of a really good Dim Sum place is whether they have chicken (or better yet, duck’s) feet on the menu…
My folks used to cook with it, but I actually haven’t seen chicken feet in soup in a while. However, the international market down the street sells deboned chicken feet–in other words, just the gelatinous part. I don’t know how to use it, but I’d think it’d be great in a stir fry.
Rose water used to be used as a flavoring instead of vanilla (I just recently peeked in my daughter’s Laura Ingalls Wilder cookbook for this tidbit).
In keeping with this, in the book Little Women, one of the girls says that lobsters are considered “vulgar”.
Jello 1-2-3 was one of my favorite kid desserts–long gone.
Mock veal is non-existent now. (it was chicken, flattened, breaded and on a stick, IMS). This was back in the day when chicken was more expensive than veal–1970s.
I made a fruited aspic once for a luncheon and I’ve made tomato aspic. Neither were great successes.
I make a crab fondue every Christmas Eve and serve it with King crag legs, salad and French bread–nummy.
I’ll have to ask my father where he got it the last time he had an urge for it. I know he’s had some recently - I’d suggest trying specialty shops focusing on German foods. I know he and my grandfather both really enjoyed it.
I never got into it myself, though I’ve had some.
Tripe. I used to eat tripe all the time when I was a kid.
I’m not saying I actually miss it, mind you.
I thought I saw Limburger at Kroger once. Am I crazy? Let me rephrase that. Is this evidence that I’m crazy?
What is tongue like? I half expect it to be like pate but then, the tongue is a muscle (and a well-used one at that) so is it tough and stringy?
One thing I used to love as a kid was pickled herring. I know you can still get it but I haven’t had it in years and have never talked to anyone who has.
I love both tongue and pickled herring. Tongue is one of the most tender and juicy meats I’ve ever had – I’ve had it marinated in a sweetish glaze and in a vinaigrette, sliced very thin both times.
As for pickled herring, you can buy it in a jar at the supermarket near the Kosher foods section (if there is such a thing near you) – close to where you’d find lox and nova salmon and big jars of Bubbie’s sauerkraut and Kosher dill pickles. I love it, marinated with the onions and peppercorns – great on a toasted bagel or Ritz crackers. I also like herring in sour cream sauce and herring in wine sauce, both from similar jars. Of course, my roommates thought I was crazy and/or masochistic.
