but…
I believe my cat is due a share…precisely of those parts of a meat that I really don’t think are All That. The Top Chef finale involved somebody who got kudos for…stand by…duck neck? Gimme a break. That belongs to the cat.
I believe pets have a deep, deep place in human society; and part of the bargain is—they get things they like; and we get things we like and offer them things we don’t like.
Occasionally our communication fails. I once, living with my parents, had a kitteh greet the family, who were coming into a formal dinner with, yes, the preacher and his wife as guests of honor. Kitteh-san was standing on the finely-decorated table, next to the fall centerpiece, licking the butter. We were never sure about the turkey.
But duck neck? Pig’s feet? Chicken feet? Our ancient contract with our furry partners is negotiable: I happen to like chicken livers, properly prepared, and Jane firmly believes ALL liver is catfood. Out of deference, I do not serve liver or even cook it in the house. Steak and kidney pie? I once got so low on funds I once cooked a frozen kidney I had for the cat (who had a special diet), but after a while of cooking it, I called kitteh to come enjoy a special dinner. I know it’s a cultural thing, but that’s the state of culinary affairs in this household. Everyone otherwise opined, please enjoy my share! More for you!
Whenever my mom made liver and onions for my dad, she always threw on a strip or two of bacon for my brother and me. I blessed her for it. I grew up with a lot of ethnic cooking, and have since been exposed to a lot more, but there are a few things I still prefer not to eat.
Strangely enough, I have had le Chat M. Napoleon Bonaparte (‘Bony’) pull up his nose at bites of steak. Go figure.
My mom has always cooked up the gizzards for the dogs. Back when we were kids, she’d buy half a cow to put in the freezer for the next year’s meat supply (nicely packaged in butcher’s paper, of course), and the dogs always got the “icky” stuff.
The time I opened the hot crock pot and a cow tongue was in there scarred me for life. To this day, as far as I’m concerned, if it’s in a crock pot, it’s dog food. (Although I will make an exception for spaghetti sauce and meatballs, but I still shudder when I lift the lid.)
Now you see in our house a cow tongue got turned into scrapple or head cheese 😀 Still a shock to see it simmering away in the pot, I agree.
Yeah, it was pretty horrifying. Take a moderately squeamish teenage girl who was already anticipating seeing the hated pot roast dinner and have her lift the lid on a furry gray cow tongue just sticking out there like the biggest raspberry you ever saw. I wasn’t much of a squealer, but I’m pretty sure they heard me on the other side of the house.
Take that and add the time I went to wash the crock pot that had been soaking overnight in the sink and lifted the lid to find a drowned, grease-covered mouse… yeah, crock pots have *bad* associations for me.
Whenever I visit my mom and she’s made spaghetti sauce and meatballs for when I arrive, I always looks at it and say, “It’s the CROCK POT.” And she says, “Michelle. It’s a NEW crock pot. This crock pot has NEVER had a cow tongue in it.” And I say, “You wouldn’t tell me the truth if it had. You once made a cake for Grandma in an emesis basin.” And then I eat it anyway, because hey, my mom made me dinner!
It’s funny how that stuff stays with you though. You’d think it was last week instead of nearly thirty years ago.
You don’t know what you’re missing! My Mom is 100% German, and my all-time, no-excuses favorite homecooked meal is 100% traditional German… tongue. In a lemon caper sauce, over rice. Yum!
I was brought up eating whatever meat was on the table; liver (calf, beef, lamb), kidneys (sheep are best), tongue (generally lamb, it’s milder, but beef is good), brains (once again, sheep), oxtail, trotters, but the only thing I didn’t have to eat was tripe because Dad wouldn’t touch it. I still order sheep kidneys from a local butcher and when she has a set she calls me. I have to wait until DH is out of the house, however.
There’s a restaurant just out of town that serves “fries”, very popular, and certainly not potato. They’re good too.
…fries…? I’m kinda afraid to ask…
As an elderly female relative put it “turkey dingle-dangles”.
(hee hee snort)
Right. I’ll know to be careful ordering fries from now on. 🙂
Personally I have always considered the non-muscle parts of animals to be offal and awful.
Hey, take your cat (and yourself) to Dim Sum in Chinatown. Last time I was there the carts came around and I was offered “Duck Web”. Hey, I like duck, so sure, gimme the duck web. Turned out it was just that – batter fried marinated duck foot. Maybe the cat would like it better than I did.
I was in Tampere, Finland a couple of weeks ago, where a staple of the local cuisine is mustamakkara, a blood sausage made from various pig parts. So I tried it, steeling myself for something horrible. Turns out it was great, and it tasted SO familiar. My traveling companion identified it – it’s kishke! Just like my aunt used to make.
I’ve seen lots of little children gnawing on what looks like chicken feet at dim sum restaurants. They look so happy I’ve often been tempted and may well succumb at the next opportunity. Then there was the market just over the bridge on Shamian Island, in Guangzhou, where they had lots of ingredients offered to the discriminating cook – all kinds of fowl, dried mushrooms of every description, scorpions, dried seahorses, kitties, puppies, you name it. I am glad in hindsight that when I was there with my children they were far too young to realize the fate of the adorable little creatures in the cages.
On the topic of kitties licking the butter, we’ve stopped apologizing for cats (live, of course) on the table. When I’ve got the table all set up for a fancy feast, with the table cloth and all, I do try to brush out the evidence before the guests arrive. Our cats walk with some heft and you can see the footprints (usually not on the plates). But as a rule we can’t keep them off so we don’t try very hard.
My mother made liver all the time when we were children. We all hated it, even my mother, but she thought it was part of her motherly duties to get us the iron. She did try to smother it in gravy and onions, but that is one dish I have never ever had since I’ve had control of my own diet, and I’ve never inflicted it on my young. Pate, however, is another matter. I used to make chicken liver pate with green peppercorns for dinner parties with some regularity. It was quite good. :)lots of butter.
And for the record, I will eat snails: I view it as an excuse for garlic and butter and puff pastry. [I’m allergic as heck to onions in any form whatsoever, also to leeks, green onions, chives, etc, but can squeak by now and again for real garlic…never preserved or powdered: ironically, the problem in that case is the preservative they use on garlic.]
I’m also fond of some sushi—sushi more than sashimi, which is a bit much of a good thing, imho. But I draw the line at eel. I know where they live.
Ironically, recently, a friend asked me to try chicken or turkey neck, with rice etc. Hmmm… Well, okay, I’ll try it. Er, this was not good. Not enough, IMHO, to eat, and the spicing was odd to me. My grandmother’s cat, an avid hunter, apparently agreed, At lesa because of the spices. I was game to try, but thankfully, my friend didn’t see my reaction. I was especially surprised, because she’s a very good cook.
I used to avoid asparagus as well as liver, but I got better (mostly) about them.
People eat strange things. — My paternal grandma couldn’t bear the idea of eating shrimp. She was old time mountain folk. Shrimp were completely foreign to her experience.
Deer and elk liver… excellent, mild and sweet, when fresh. Deer heart, when fried in butter. That’s what I’m after next week, up in the Palouse, as happens.
I think there was a lot of strange meat around during and after WWII, what with rationing and all. My mother used to cook tongue, but it was NOT furry. I have vague memories of her asking the butcher to skin it. I don’t remember how she cooked it, but it was delicious. We also had liver which was universally disliked. Many years later I had sauteed chicken liver in wine and loved it. I can’t remember a time when I did not like avocados, asparagus, lobster, and cheese, and tea.
The year after college, I and my best friend/roommate were dead broke (I think she was on food stamps at that point, being unemployed). The local supermarket sold “chicken backs and necks” for some 14 cents/lb. We would buy a big bunch of them, bag of carrots, onions, potatoes, etc. and make chicken stew with dumplings. Delicious if boney! We also got 29 cents/lb “cold cut ends” from the deli (what they had leftover after doing slices for the more monied public), which we bought and cooked up with rice or macaroni or whatever, similar to using bacon or hamburger for a one-dish dinner. Salty but again tasty (and nicely spiced). Huh, what did we feed the cats? My friend’s family bred Siamese so we had three cats and sometimes kittens around. They certainly got canned cat food and crunchies and pots/plates to lick. I can’t remember if we gave them the off-cuts or not. Certainly I do now for my cats: they get the heart, gizzards and liver (but the chicken or duck neck goes into my freezer bag of left-over bones, veggie trimmings, etc. and into the stock pot when I have enough to make a fine broth/soup base).
I can’t get my cats and dogs to eat liver at all! I had a pregnant cat once and all she would eat was beef, raw, cut very fine …
I remember one evening coming home to discover Angel (Golden Retriever mix) running the street because the buckle on her collar had broken and she got out. I ran to the closest Walmart and got her a new collar and fried chicken livers. Then when I got home, I was carrying the small container calling out, “Angel! Chicken livers!” It only worked when I turned around and ingored her.
Momma only ever cooked tongue one time. It looked nasty. She and Daddy liked fried pork brains and eggs. I refused to touch them. I don’t want to know what’s in sausage or baloney.
I think it was Otto von Bismarck who said: “Laws are like sausages. It is better not to see them being made.”
Having watched way too much Alton Brown, I sometimes ponder making my own sausage. It seems relatively easy to do.
I like chicken livers. Saute them with a little fresh asparagus, some soy sauce and a dash of basalmic vinegar, and that’s my “spring is here” dish. I don’t do most shellfish, except for shrimp. There’s something about the texture, more than the taste. I’ll eat lobster bisque (a pureed soup), but put a lobster in front of me and I will choke some of it down and fill up on the rest of the food. I like the taste and the butter, but there is just something about it. I’ll eat cooked tomato products (sauces, stews, etc.), but not raw. Peppers are right out. Surprisingly, I like brussel sprouts. Never had them growing up because my dad hated them, finally decided to try them as an adult (after hearing all the horror stories about them!) and decided they are quite tasty. Then again, I also like red cabbage dishes (the sweet-sour Pennsylvania dutch dish, not just anything with red cabbage), but didn’t like sour kraut growing up. Hmm… it may be time to try that again. My mom used to make potato-onion soup, which was my indication to either make a PB&J or go hungry. I wouldn’t even touch that. Now, I love potato-leek soup. Go figure. And my mom used to make gizzards and gravy, which I just loved. Served it up over rice, mostly. I tried making it from a recipe recently, and couldn’t get through more than a bite or two.
Unfortunately for me, most of my pets are not food-oriented. My Rana-cat will eat vanilla milk-based products (pudding, ice cream, cereal milk, that sort of thing), but that’s about it for human food. Little Pyret won’t even do that. Trinkett will happily lick any plate put in front of her, but doesn’t get large chunks of food because I like to cook with onions, which are bad for dogs. And she is pretty much meat-oriented. Although my vets can’t say for sure whether that is just raw or if cooked are just as bad. Katie, on the other hand, will eat just about anything in front of her in her safe place. Surprisingly fond of the ends of cucumbers that I bite off before eating the rest of it. Carrots, too. Unfortunately, really fond of peaches and apricots (the pits contain cyanide, and thus are not good for dogs to swallow).
I cannot bear fresh tomato Anything. Mayhaps it was because I was terroized in the garden as a child by tomato horn worms. My grandma assured me they were not going to damage me in any way but I suspected treachery. I mean, have you SEEN those things? Also hate onions. LOVE cake with extra frosting flowers. Funny ’bout that, huh? I have a cat who likes popcorn, one that likes hamburgers and one that likes anything that costs more than $1.50 for a small can. They should make catfood made out of 60 -dollar koi so that I can spare myself the trouble of cleaning up remains and wet paw prints from the floor following a fishing trip.
Reading this, I’m going to be sick. Very, very sick. I’ll never look at a crock pot in quite the same way again. It is surprising no one has yet mentioned “Rocky Mountain Oysters”. (Bull dingle-dangles)
BTW, Carolyn, I have some old metal…ummm, “medical collection implements” should you want to bake a cake. One of them, while not suited for baked goods, would work admirably for soup: said white enameled metal “device” is already complete with a handle and pouring spout.
I like Rocky Mountain Oysters. But then, I was brought up eating most everything.
oh, OSG, one is so overwhelmed by the generosity and thoughtfulness of such a gift that one can but implore you to keep it for your own culinary use at some felicitous festive feast.
Aggg..glug.
I’m intrigued by the note that onions are bad for dogs. They’re in almost everything—Jane and I, unrelated for several centuries in genealogy, are both quite allergic to them; and I think more of the world is allergic to them than knows it. One often develops an addiction to the allergic ‘buzz’ you get in your nervous system when you’ve just eaten something you react to…mistaking it for a pleasure sensation. You can also get it just before you break out in spots.
Onions and garlic in large amounts cause hemolytic anemia in dogs and cats. It’s probably not a danger for my 60-pound greyhounds, because of their size and the fact that greyhounds run abnormally (for dogs) high red blood cell counts (packed cell volume for most dogs rarely goes above 55%, in greyhounds it can reach 70%), so any anemia from a small amount of onion would probably be asymptomatic, although detectable on a lab test. But for a small dog or cat, the amount needed to cause symptoms is correspondingly lower. Raisins, grapes, and chocolate are also bad for dogs. Once again, for grapes it depends on dose, so a small dog runs more risks than a larger one.
Apologies, OSG, for ruining your view of crock pots.
My mom (nurse) has one of those white enameled metal devices holding a spray of silk flowers at a somewhat rakish angle. NOT used for cooking, thank god…
Things I was introduced to since moving out to the islands…
Deep fried tiny baby squid.
Malasadas — Portuguese donuts.
Gau or mochi — rice flour confections.
Pinacbet — Filipino vegetable stew
Squid or chicken luau — cooked with taro leaves and coconut milk into a thick green stew.
Laulau — a chunk of pork, wrapped together with a strip of fish in several layers of taro leaves, the whole then enclosed in a banana leaf wrapper and steamed.
Taro — also known as poi. I prefer the fresh version, before it’s had a chance to ferment. Taro can be used for many things (see the preceding); it’s versatile.
Now I stay hungry!
It’s funny, it seems as if the whole world IS allergic to something or other these days. I remember as a kid that you really didn’t hear about people being allergic to peanut butter, and now kids can’t take PNJs to school for lunch because of allergy fears. Wheat allergies are another thing I hear quite a bit about. I’m not sure if more people actually have allergies, or if histology has just advanced to the point where allergies are easier to identify. I know I’m not allergic to onions – I simply loathe them.