Who would buy a Pigs head?

I like all that stuff. But I haven't seen brains for sale since I left the NY metro area. I don't know if that's because of prion disease or just that tastes are different around here. Calf liver can be delicious – too often it's overcooked to the point of inedibility. And tongue – I miss going to a kosher deli and getting a big tongue on rye sandwich. Never see that here either. And lamb kidneys are delicious, but no longer found. I may have to take a trip south.

Brains is something I don't really like. (Calf brains, that is.)
Calf liver has always been my favourite dish.
I do like some kinds of andouillettes as well.
And Saure Nierchen( "sour kidneys") are delicious ... obviously not for everyone but me.

How could I forget my second favourite dish:


Pork head in aspic (Schweinskopfsülze) with sauce tartare and fried potatoes.

You and Leopold Bloom could have happily dined together, I'll bet.

Sorry for the spelling errors Im trying to become more friednly with spellchex

You're probably right – what a nice idea!

Called souse here in the States.Yum!

We'd have to eat it on Bloomsday for dinner with some dark ale.

I'm up for it.

We teach food discrimination to kids. We can unteach it. Gently.

I told my kids that nobody has to like everything or eat any particular thing, but that they couldn't reject it without knowing why they disliked it and that took three bite to establish.

There is nothing unpleasantly unique in the flavor, texture, color of head meat. In fact pork cheek might just be one of the better cuts of pork! A lot of people prefer it and treat it like a gourmet item. I prefer shoulder butt roasts and pic-nic hams or fresh ham, oh and pork belly and .....but I will gladly tuck into the various offal meats from pigs, too, including head and tripe (parts of the intestine), trotters, but that's for the advanced swine meat addict.

It started because with me and a lot of us geezers because parents and grandparents were still on the farm and we'd go in the fall to butcher and do any final fruit and vegetable harvest. We'd go home with a half of a hog and a beef quarter and jars of jellies, vegetables, fruit, bottles of currant juice, Dandelion wine, blackberry wine, sour cherry wine.

Those day are gone, and the range of meat products has narrowed significantly. I'm old enough to remember when a chicken was never over 3#, it cost around a buck and often the A&P would throw in a pound of wings for free.

Pig's head carnitas are especially good.

As a youngster in Cleveland in the fifties, we lived walking distance to the West-side Market, I beg you: watch this with your kids

http://westsidemarket.org/

We were there almost weekly, but once in the middle of the week my dad and I went to the market to get a "good" chicken.

We went into the poultrier and there were cages of live chicken. My dad asked me if I wanted to pick out a chicken.

Of course I would - I was getting a chicken for a pet!

The clerk took the chicken I chose to the back.

"Hey dad, where's he taking my chicken?" with much concern.
"He's going to dress the chicken."

Great. Not only am I getting chicken but it's going to have a costume, too. I honestly hoped they'd dress him like a cowboy.

The man comes out with a folded sack. I kept the sack closed so the chicken would get away. And we drove home.

Imagine the reaction five year old Bobsal when my mom released the chicken from the sack.

Now I've been around the chicken harvests in the fall on the farm and I got what and why and how it was: a part of the farm cycle. But one I got to Cleveland, it seemed to me the cycle was broken. That a chicken who escaped the farm got to live forever.

Around this time I learned about feed lots. And hog confinements.

There is a good writer on food and how we get it, Michael Poulan

https://michaelpollan.com/books/

His book the Omnivore's Dilema is great, and he discusses some strategies regarding what and how we can get kids into eat more of the traditional meats most of us don't understand. I highly recommend this book and if I still had a copy, I'd send it to you.

Now I am hungry for some barbacoa!!!!! Cow's head for the uninitiated. But damn that cabeza de cerdo sure is looking good!

Ohh yeah, barbacoa tacos, mmm.

I understand my finicky nature but have no desire to change. We on the spectrum often are finicky with food and many of us never stop even into old age.

My wife and I follow all Jewish traditions, neither of us have ever eaten pork.

Yeah, some people's diets haven't changed since second grade.

It's pretty good, pork.

Some. Not me, however. I eat things now that were never available to me until later in life.

Ifen you're ever anywhere around Austin just let me know!

That's funny! jcboy's and your father stepped out of his marriage a few times but never out of his Jewish faith.