I was about to say this. I miss red meat. Lousy Lone Star tick!
Here’s another take on the anatomy lesson inherent in eating certain parts of certain critters:
Agree the OP has a particularly bad case of skeleton anguish. Back in college I bought a sheep head at the Latino grocery store, cast it in clear fiberglass resin, and used it as a doorstop. It was quite a “conversation piece”. The older it got inside that hermetic plastic block the more interesting it got.
…or because I was tired and didn’t proof read the word “salmon” was left out of the paragraph…
And here I thought you liked it because it has the word “cheese” in the name…
Well, OK, I get that it’s not something you find pretty and I’m not going to argue with that. Butchering meat is a nasty, bloody chore, too.
But, you know, refried beans and tootsie rolls look somewhat like varieties of poo, yet I don’t feel repulsed by seeing them. Likewise, yes, a butchered/cooked animal with the head still attached does look like a “dead thing” but it doesn’t bother me either.
But because I’m aware others feel different I try to be sensitive towards my dinner guests. Especially since my husband was squicked out by any food that had recognizable anatomy, so nothing on bones, much less with heads on.
Ooops, sorry.
Still, for a few hours I was in Total Envy of what seemed to me like God’s Gift to Kitchens! Roasting entire sides of beef at once… having the cooked meat put on a tray-table with castors and rolled into the kitchen for to be put on the large presentation plate for final garnishes and seasoning… and then rolled into the dinning room where the plate is placed on the table between two candlesticks and in front of your dozen guests!
Three bottles of the exact same wine opened at once to fill all of their glasses.
For the sides, their choice of crisp green beans, asparagus, or to take what they wish from an entire pasta-pot of mashed potatoes ( with your own secret ingredient beef gravy ).
(I was just imagining to myself, "Wow… now These guys know how to live…!)
I actually have been to an honest-to-goodness ox roast at a county fair in Michigan. Which is just what it sounds like: an entire bovine turning on a spit. Yes, it was recognizable as a former bovine (gender not apparent, but I took their word for it that it was an ox). It was quite a production, and the biggest spit I’ve ever seen.
I beg to differ with you. Head cheese, aka souse meat, is delicious stuff, either fried up for breakfast or sliced on a cold sandwich.
I live in a mixed neighborhood so you see all sorts of interesting things in the meat aisle like the time I found a whole pig’s head cut and wrapped on a tray and chased my brother and mom around the store with it like it was coming back from the dead …
actually, when I’ve had pork or beef brains it was scrambled with eggs …my foster parents in the 80s were old enough that he served in WW! and 2 so they were used to having to make do with “scraps”
in fact because of said foster parents I’m immune to watching live animal butchering …
one incident was the Mrs was away because her relative was ill … So he walked over to us and told us he needed wood for a fire …we gathered the wood and he filled a couple of pots with water and began boiling them and says " hey boys I need some help in the coop … so we walked over and he goes " so which two would make us a good fried chicken dinner … The one I pointed to was sort of old and fat but mean as hell and had clawed and bit me more than once …so he picked her up and we pointed to another one which he had me and my brother hold…
.walked over to the tree stump and just chopped the head off casual as can be and let it run around for about 3 or 4 minutes and did the same to the 2nd one plopped them in the water pans and started us digging a hole
when we dug one to his satisfaction he handed us some pliers and told us to start plucking after he pulled the chickens out and put them on a board … best and freshest chicken I ever ate,
Now the rabbit version of this story was somewhat a bit more traumatic tho…
Wow! What do Martians taste like?
I had some distinctly odd culinary experiences in Japan, but I have never seen Martians on any menu.
I’ve been trying to forget for the past 36 years, but as I recall, suspiciously sweet for a piece of meat, yet with a skunky undertone. Chewy to the point of being unpleasantly soft.
Andrew Zimmern (Bizarre Foods) ate brains at times but in one show he had to turn down something with the spinal cord as it was against his contract to consume it.
I think you mean
… but in one show he got to turn something down with the spinal cord …
That had to be a relief for him. Eating weird is one thing; eating dangerous is something else.
People eat ox tail soup. That’s spinal cord.
Are you sure? No doubt there’s a nerve in there somewhere, but it’s quite small. I think it’s just a peripheral nerve and not true spinal cord.
This reference says no spinal cord:
Are oxtails safe from Bovine spongiform encephalopathy? (usda.gov)
Well, I’m 0 for 2 today.
Don’t let it bug you. I was wrong earlier in the thread. You admit you were wrong and people move on.
Mike Rowe went to a fish processor in one “Dirty Jobs” episode, and one of his jobs was to separate out the stomachs, because in IIRC Japan, cod stomachs are a popular ingredient in soup (and he found a just-swallowed cod in one of those stomachs!).
The oxtail probably contains the filum terminale, which all of us have in our own tailbones; it’s a ligament that anchors the spinal cord in place.
I’ve had pork neck bones, and the spinal cord is visible in the canal. I don’t remove it, but I don’t deliberately eat it either.
This is a classic scene from “Babette’s Feast”, one of my favorite movies.
I saw it when it was in its theatrical run in the late 1980s, and had worked the Evening From Hell at a pizza place. I got off in time to catch the late show, and as I walked towards the theater, people were getting out of the early show, and EVERYONE was raving about what a great movie it was, an experience I have never had before or since. And they were so right!
I was unclear: I have prepared oxtail soup several times. I’ve never seen anything that looked like a spinal cord. And I have sometimes found bits of spinal cord attached to lamb chops and beef ribs – I’m pretty sure I know what it looks and feels like.
I’m sure there is some nerve running through the tail, since the animal can move it. But it must be quite a small nerve, since I’ve never noticed it when handling ox tails.