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Rhonda Anderson[_1_]

(Victor Sack) wrote in
:

> Rhonda Anderson > wrote:
>
> Something seems to have happened with your line-length settings.
Could
> you check them, please? Too-short lines are nearly as hard to read as
> too-long ones.

My line length is set at 76 and I haven't changed it at all - not sure
what happened there. Will keep an eye on it.

They are sweetbreads,
> kidneys, tripe, chitterlings, lights/lungs, ears, tails, trotters,
> cheek, tongue, brains, heart, giblets, fries/testicles - all
considered
> to be offal/awful. They have very little to do with each other,
> culinarily.

Mm, tails, trotters, cheek, ears - I probably wouldn't class those as
offal in my own internal ramblings. While I don't know that I'd go out
and buy any of those any time soon, I wouldn't necessarily pass up an
opportunity to try them - though ears I'm more familiar with as a
rawhide treat for dogs so not seeming so appetising :-). I have seen
some recipes for cheek that looked very good.

>
> So, your "offal" generalisation for refusing to try certain things
does
> not really make sense culinarily - it must lie somewhere else, in
> semantics perhaps. Which makes you at least a somewhat picky, but not
> necessarily fussy, eater, I am afraid.

I would think more of internal organs as offal. Not necessarily
testicles, but don't particularly think of those as appetising either.
As I said, I have no desire to try these things so I'm not going to go
out and buy them. If someone asked if I ate them I would honestly answer
that I hadn't tried them and don't think of them as particularly
appetising. However, if I was at someone's house for dinner and they
served them, it doesn't mean I would flat out refuse to eat them. I like
to think I would at least attempt to eat them.

As to why I have this stumbling block over internal organs, don't know.
When I was studying agriculture we did 3 weeks of studying various
systems on the one sheep's carcase - not as well preserved as it should
have been, things weren't smelling or looking too good after the 3rd
week of yanking it out of the fridge - perhaps that's the key :-)
Perhaps having seen some very graphic photos of diseased organs doesn't
help. Though I didn't find apparently healthy kidneys, heart etc. any
more appetising when gutting a just slaughtered sheep.

The testicles - I can tell you they stick in your hair when other
students think it's funny to throw them (during a session of lamb
marking) at one of the few females in the course. Don't know what they
taste like.

Anyway, if that makes me picky, I'm picky. Would have to think it's at
the very low end of the scale though :-)

--
Rhonda Anderson
Cranebrook, NSW, Australia

Core of my heart, my country! Land of the rainbow gold,
For flood and fire and famine she pays us back threefold.
My Country, Dorothea MacKellar, 1904