Dromond wrote:
Now Head cheese, that sounds as nasty as it oughta!
(For the uninitiated, it is little pieces of brain and whatnot, molded into lunchmeat form, but so much more colorful than bland uniform pink bologna!
EEEWWWW!!!! My gag reflex has just found another trigger.
And on the subject of offal, has anyone tried brains???? My husband loves them, so much so that while on our honeymoon we went out to the only seafood restaurant on Norfolk Island that had brains on the menu. Now what's up with that!!!!
He ordered them, ate them and remarked about how delicious they were. 2 hours later we were back at our room and good old Chuck Chunder was heaving up his guts in the bathroom. He shoulda had the fish. Well I shoulda insisted he have the fish, let's put it that way.
Despite that he still eats brains to this very day.
I generally stay away from organ meat, once in a great while I'll have liver. I've heard no good reports about brains, even from those of my friends who will eat organ meat.
Over here one would be most likely to run across brains on the menu in a Mexican restraurant. As for me I'll stick with steak or chicken for my burrito.
*gag* One of my friend's parents are butchers... BLECH... She was eating rocky mountain oysters one day and she didnt know what they were. We explained it to her and she sat there, thought about it and then dug in again. yuckyuckyuck
"It is not the literal past that rules us, save, possibly, in a biological sense. It is images of the past. Each new historical era mirrors itself in the picture and active mythology of its past or of a past borrowed from other cultures. It tests its sense of identity, of regress or new achievement against that past.”
-George Steiner
At a bar in a town near me, the day before Thanksgiving, they have a "Turkey Testicle Festival" where they fry up large quanities of the item in question.
From the Chicago Tribune
And you thought giblets were gross
By Robert K. Elder
Chicago Tribune staff reporter
November 27, 2002
Huntley, Ill., village trustee Terry Hoeft has never missed one of
the town's Turkey Testicle Festivals, this year celebrating its 20th
anniversary.
So, the obvious question is how do they taste?
"I won't eat 'em," he said. "It just doesn't seem right for a man to . . . "
Floured and fried, the turkey organ tastes like a salty chicken
gizzard or liver, said fest founder and head cook Mark McDonald.
About the size of button mushrooms, a male turkey's sexual glands are
found in its chest cavity, lending to its tender texture in this
northwest suburban town.
"It's like the beef tenderloin; it's in the middle of everything and
it doesn't get much use," said McDonald, who also owns Parkside Pub,
home of the Testicle Festival.
The trick to preparing them, he said, is the breading.
"You don't want to overcook them. They're $3.89 pound, so it's not
like you're eating hamburger," McDonald said of the delicacy. "It's
like you're eating steak."
When he heard about a similar fest in California from a customer a
couple of decades ago, McDonald started his own event with some
friends and 5 pounds of bird parts on Thanksgiving eve. Similar
festivals celebrate this culinary peculiarity -- some diversifying
with sheep and beef bits -- in places such as Byron, Ill., and
Fromberg, Mont., although few are linked to holidays.
As if turkeys don't have enough to fear around the holidays, the
success of McDonald's pre-Thanksgiving fete has commanded an
increasing amount of gobbler innards -- and he still expects to be
sold out of this year's 1,200 pounds by 9 p.m.
"People throw 'em up in the air like popcorn and eat 'em," McDonald
said. "A lot of people dare one another to eat them."
Cups of fried reproductive apparatus are $3, and a $5 admission will
go to area charities such as the Huntley Jaycees and Lions Club. In
its past 15 years, the Turkey Testicle Festival has raised more than
$50,000 for non-profit groups.
"It was a local attraction 20 years ago, now it's a multistate
attraction," Hoeft said. "It fills our town for one night. I have to
show up earlier every year."
It's a homecoming of sorts for Huntley natives visiting for
Thanksgiving, but McDonald attributes the festival's success to the
novelty and unique taste of the fowl-ic sexual organ.
"It's an unusual dish and we only do it once a year," McDonald said.
Then he added: "And I don't want to have any left over."
*gag* I'm now a vegitarian, for two reasons. #1: I'm too scared to eat meat now. #2: All the resturaunts here serve "meatloaf surprise," and it doesn't taste like any kind of meat I've ever tried and known what it was, so see #1
Next time when you go out west and drive up the Northwest Tollway towards Rockford, duchess, you'll know not to stop at the Parkside Pub in Huntley the day before Thanksgiving.
Well I shoulda insisted he have the fish, let's put it that way. 
