red beers were a 10 am tradition down on the farm.

Buttermilk is a 'byproduct' of making butter - basically everything that doesn't turn to butter in the churn. Before good roads/milk trucks, farmers who couldn't sell milk made butter and sold that. They were left with a LOT of buttermilk, it was the drink of choice for farm-folk. The traditional crackers or cornbread in buttermilk (sometimes called 'clabber') was an affordable snack, when I was a kid in the ozarks this was what the old country folks offered children like me. It's nothing to write home about, but for po' folks it beats the hell out of going hungry. For those who haven't had it, buttermilk is not unlike plain yoghurt or kefir. It's pretty good for you, so far as dairy goes, and is more digestible than 'sweet' milk (as opposed to buttermilk). I like it mixed 40-60 w/OJ, tastes kind of like an Orange Julius - YMMV, of course. On our farm, extra buttermilk was mixed w/ground corn and fed to pigs, who fattened up on it until autumn when they magically turned into hams, bacon and sausages. Carrying the 5 gallon buckets of 'hog slop' (grain + milk + vegetable scraps from the kitchen and anything else semi-edible') was pretty hard work...and for you weight lifters, this is the origin of 'the Farmer's walk' that you'll sometimes see strength athletes working on. Just pick up 50lbs - 100 lbs or so in each hand and walk as far as you can.

Fried brains were a staple in the corner bars of St. Louis when I was a kid - I always assumed this was a germanic slaughterhouse-town treat, as everyone we knew back then was a German hillbilly who'd escaped to the big city. Fried Brain sandwiches or fried brains w/scrambled eggs are no big deal - think 'unseasoned sausage' and you're pretty close in taste/texture.

Coffee in the saucer is old-skool. In the olden days, coffee was a boiled product, and often came to the table too hot to drink. You add cream/sweetening to your saucer and pour some coffee in/slop some over. The wider circum/shallow depth let the coffee cool quickly. You drank this while your cup cooled off. No need to do this w/coffee-maker java as it's never boiled, never really all that hot.

Pickled herring/roll mops were traditional 'free lunch' bar food, as were pickled pigs feet, deviled eggs/pickled eggs. A lot of fellows my grandpa's age had lived thru the pre-prohibition era when the free lunch or nickel lunch was a good reason for a guy to go to the bar, buy a beer and gossip. If you've never gotten a free lunch (TANSTAAFL = There ain't no such thing as a free lunch/Missouri's own Robert Heinlein) then you may never have tasted these freebies, but there was a time when we had skinny, hungry worker bees in this country instead of obese cubicle rats. Eh, it could happen again. My Grandpa ate 'roll mops' and sardines every chance he got. I keep up the sardines tradition, but never really liked the rollmops.

Head cheese...if you carry those heavy buckets of slop every day to feed them damn pigs (and dodge getting eaten by the pigs your own self) then when the time comes you eat every bit, including the tail. Everything but the squeal. Headcheese is not half bad if it's well made. Likewise, beef tongue makes a great roast beef sandwich. But I'll admit you had to grow up on most of this to really enjoy 'em. Which reminds me of one of my favorite quotes...

"What is patriotism but the love of the food one ate as a child?" ~Lin Yutang

The cool thing is that this attitude is coming back pretty hard core in contemporary culinary culture. With the "snout to tail" or "nose to tail" movement. Butchering, sausage making, and eating organs is all coming back into vogue.

http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/food...ig_these_days/

There's a cookbook out on it as well:
http://www.amazon.com/Whole-Beast-No.../dp/0060585366

This explains why nose-to-tail is "green."
http://planetgreen.discovery.com/foo...at-animal.html

ketchup on cottage cheese

:shrug:

My grandparents make home made Pea soup and I ****ing hate it.

My Grandma said she loved squirrel brains. She'd fry them up like scrambled eggs. Sounds...well...it sounds nuts to me. My Grandpa used to love dipping cornbread in bacon grease. Had to stop that action once his health started to go. He always talked shit on my Grandma's cooking becasue she regulated what he ate later in life. Funny stuff. He was a quater Cherokee and talked about making some kind of bread/tortilla thing out of crushed acorns. They grew up in the depression so I'm sure that list of crazy shit is actually a mile long...

They were a tradition at the Aggie Lounge aka "The Lou" in Manhattan, KS. Loved that place.........:toast:

I doubt it. Filipinos are mammals.

Bravo. :clap:

i have picked more hog brains that anyone on this bb. Little kid hands make it an easy job.

we would work in the garden or fields startin at around six, by ten is was time to start drinkin. :)

You and i seem to be cut from the same cloth. Did your grandpa get his beer in a bucket? Mine walked across what is now kansas exp. in spfld to dinkledine brewery and get him a bucket of beer after his shift at the frisco workin as a blacksmith/cable splicer.

My grandma really never ate any weird stuff that I know of. Beets is about the only thing she ate that I can't stand.

However, nothing went wasted from this lady. We would drive up to her house once or twice a month (she lived in Butler, MO) and have lunch/dinner with her. We'd find things in her refrigerator that had formed their own little colony of life. She'd try to use things that had expired 2 or 3 years prior. Her response was to always cut the mold/green crap off and use the rest.

I remember several times where all of us would have terrible stomach problems after eating some of her meals that she'd prepared prior to our arrival. I think it's the reason I have an iron gut today.

I've had buckets of beer in Hermann back when they first started their Oktoberfest, but I don't remember Grandpa drinking anything but Stag or Falstaff from the can (opened w/a churchkey).

One thing my grandparents liked, that I like too is sassafrass tea. We had to go dig up sassafrass saplings 'as the sap started to run' which is late winter. They used to tout it as a health tonic, it's the 'root' that flavors root beer. But they've found one ingredient (saffrole?) that can cause cancer so it's no longer touted as a healthy drink. You can buy 'Pappy's' brand of sassafrass extract - which has had the saffrole removed - and use a little of that with boiling water instead of simmering your freshly dug roots for half an hour or so. Dang, now I want a cuppa this stuff. Might have to go drink a root beer instead.

Liver and onions was a lot more popular when I was a kid in the country, we ate it probably twice a month. Doctors used to encourage people to eat calves liver as a way to get minerals and iron (in those days you couldn't buy vitamin pills at Walmart, you had to 'eat weird stuff' if you were low on this mineral or missing that vitamin). My Mom would soak calves liver in milk (or buttermilk) for a few hours before she fried it, took a lot of the blood and 'bad taste' out of it IMHO. I won't eat liver and onions just anywhere, but I like it if it's done 'like mama used to make'.

Your father is obviously a man of exceptional good taste.

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1225/...b19f55fa05.jpg

:drool:

Back when I was a kid in Baltimore, you'd see men carrying a gallon jug up to the corner bar after work for a draft beer fill up.

Simpler times.

More evidence of the butchering trend:

http://www.salon.com/food/chefs_and_...utcher_parties
Chefs and Cooks
THURSDAY, MAR 11, 2010 11:01 EST
Meathead fad? The rock star butcher
Sexy tattoos! Butchering parties in trendy bars! The latest hip food trend already faces a backlash
BY SARA BRESELOR

Andrew Lin
Ryan Farr at a butcher party
"The first butcher party," Ryan Farr says, "was called 'Hop, Hop, Hop, Into the Burning Ring of Fire.' That was on Easter last year, and we did rabbits."

Farr is the star of San Francisco's 4505 Meats, "Home of Revival Butchery," and he is taking his gospel to the barroom. He is one of a handful of young practitioners across the country who are staging bacchanalian "butcher parties," where they bring whole carcasses -- from rabbits to steer -- to bars, hang them up, take them apart, and cook them while wide-eyed partiers wash down the resultant meaty snacks with cocktails and beer. The resurgence of artisan butchery is supposed to be about respect for traditional craft, an emphasis on ethical, sustainable meat eating, and a renewed awareness of where our meat really comes from. Do blood-and-booze-soaked butcher parties cheapen these ideals?

Farr doesn't think so. "It's very educational," he says. "You get to see the whole animal, it gets processed in front of you, and then you eat it. And at the same time you get to have martinis or beer. It's just a good time all around."

But Tom Mylan, one of the butchers at The Meat Hook in Brooklyn, is not so sure. "It's a real double-edged sword," he says. "It's popularizing and getting people interested in butchering, and I think that's of value. On the other hand, it's one of those things that's so inherently flimsy that it's feeding this sort of fashion trend of butchering."

And the gory craft is becoming ever more stylish. In a trend piece, The New York Times called both Farr and Mylan part of a cadre of "Rock Star Butchers," and Mylan says "dozens" of television producers have approached him about a reality TV series based in his shop. "It's a fashion trend of the most hollow and irritating sort," Mylan says. "That sort of hyperbole just doesn't make sense to me."

Mylan fears that the people going to butcher parties will tire of it the way they tire of all fads, leading to a "butchering backlash" when people start, as he says, "calling bullshit" on the trend. He says, "Hopefully one out of the 50 people getting drunk at a bar, doing the latest thing, will stay with it and remain interested in it. But on the other hand, I think it's going to lead to self-parody." For people taken in by the fashion of meat handling, it will be "the thing they were into in 2010. Like, 'I was really into indie rock, and then I was into artisanal cheese, and then I got into butchering.'"

Farr sees butcher parties less as trendy events than attempts to recapture a more traditional mood around eating meat. "[It's] kind of the same thing as slaughtering an animal on the farm and eating it right there," he says. "It doesn't happen as often as it used to." He admits that some patrons miss the point. "There are always going to be people who are just coming to see a show," he says. "They usually are the ones that are getting drunk and pushing people around for chicharrones and hot dogs. But that's anywhere, you know?" He says that the majority of partygoers, though, come with questions about the craft and a desire to learn, and he encourages them to attend his intensive training sessions later. "The classes are for the hands on, face-to-face educational part. The parties are to have fun and to educate people at the same time, but it's not in a scholastic environment," he says. "You know, people are doing shots."

But this, according to Mylan, is exactly the problem. "It's kind of sending a message like, animals are like strippers, or animals are like whores." He doesn't consider himself overly pious about butchering -- his upcoming "Date Night Butchering" class at Brooklyn Kitchen, called "Lambs of Love", will feature "libations befitting a Saturday night"-- but he sees the bar parties as crossing a line. "It's not like we don't have fun at our classes, because we do," he says. "We drink beer. It's just not at a bar; it's not this group spectacle thing."

Bringing the animals and knives into a bar suggests transgression, a general sense of macho naughtiness that seems to undermine nouveau butchering's emphasis on respect for the animal. Many who trumpet the trend towards artisanal meat production note that some former vegetarians and vegans attend butchering classes, willing to eat meat that they take from the creature themselves. The point for many is having a personal relationship to meat rather than seeing it as a product under glossy plastic wrap. The point is to remember that it was a life. Hanging a steer from the rafters at a bar and cutting it while people slug bourbon and take pictures with their iPhones seems only tenuously connected to this concept.

Still, Farr urges doubters to look at the bigger picture. "I think it's disrespecting an animal when it's in a huge plant with ten thousand other animals, just going through a line, getting cut and going into Cryobags and Styrofoam," Farr says. "Packing a thousand pigs into a farmhouse that's supposed to hold 800 animals -- that's disrespectful."

He feels passionately that, no matter where he does it, "showcasing a beautiful animal that somebody raised," preparing it well, and using the entire animal is an expression of reverence. "I have the utmost respect for anything that I handle, be it a whole hog or a vegetable that came out of the ground, because I know the farmers and I know the ranchers," Farr says. And to him, the parties fill a gap in the public's relationship with meat -- getting to know their butcher. "Because that's the connection that was lost when the big corporations took over the meat industry," Farr says."There was no connection between the meat and the butcher."

Artisan butchery, still limited mostly to communities of food enthusiasts with money to spend on high-quality products, is not in itself a solution to our country's issues with meat, but Farr and Mylan are actively trying to untangle the knots of industrial meat production. They may disagree about details, but both men are remarkably passionate and articulate. They encourage debate and offer meat eaters thoughtful, and crucial, options.

"There needs to be something different," Farr says, "because there's a lot of bad meat out there."

Just had a Mustard and Butter sandwich. Very light butter and light mustrd. The old man wasn't that crazy, it actually tasted good.

Buttermilk.

This thread is barftastic

My mom was 40 and my dad 41 when I was born. Their parents were older (in that day and age) when they were born, so I only knew my mom's mom. My grandma was 76 when I was born and lived to 94. She ate all kinds of stuff I didn't like from the old country (Sweden). I think it was more nostalgic for her rather than great food. Pickled herring, hardtack, etc.. She never turned down a great burger or steak, though. Heh! It always puzzled me that she woke up at 5 am and ate two pieces of dry toast with black coffee and had nothing else until dinner.

Did he grow up in the great depression?? Most had to be creative with their meals and have big gardens to survive during the depression and WWII..

Yep.

He also said that in Japan they would capture and eat monkeys, specifically their brains.

The so called civilized world is full of pussies
we turn up our noses at stuff people had to eat or starve
but being pansy puts alot of people to work

My grand mother would only drink goat milk.I wouldn't try it for years and after I did,I was very sorry it took me so long to try it.very good IMO,but I haven't had any in years.

Man, my whole family (on both sides) as far back as I can remember are all picky eaters. They never ate anything really weird. At least not more than once.

I, however, am a big fan of things like sweetbreads and chicken feet. My family can't handle that.

cow brains .. chicken feet .. racoon .. all luved by me grand parents ....

At the risk of turning this into a "chicken feet thread" ... I love chicken feet.

I eat a lot more of the 'weird' stuff than my parents or grandparents did. Baccalau is one of the exceptions, though, since we don't need to salt fish to death in order to preserve it anymore.

Now, if you want to see some weird shit that people actually eat. there's always Hákarl:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A1karl

I love to try exotic dishes, but there's not a chance in hell I'd be sampling that stuff.

Most Asian markets will have chicken feet.
I find them delicious and weird at the same time.
Duck feet are very gelatinous but have a great flavor.

Ang

Can't say I know much about what my grandparents ate, but in moving to Mexico, have learned they let nothing go to waste. I have married a local Mexican woman, and normally eat authentic Mexican cuisine. I have now learned to have a strict don't ask don't tell policy about what I am eating. An example of why this has happened was when we were eating menudo (which I don't find too bad tasting) I bite into something so hard I can't even begin to chew it, so I take it out and place it on the table. She proceeds to tell me, I guess they left a tooth in there (I now make her prescreen my menudo for no teeth).

Very popular down here are tacos (duh), but not just tacos de asada (beef), they have (and people will order these before the beef tacos) cabesa (head), lengua (tongue), and a favorite of the wife tripita (stomach). I have watched them raise and kill the pigs, and yes, they cook all pieces of it, and don't even make bacon. So yes, Americans overall are picky eaters and only eat the best cuts.

Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention, chickens feet, also very popular down here, I haven't had any because I can't get past the way they look.

As Hog Farmer will tell you, the bigger hands are better served at the other end of the hog.

My paternal gramps' palette was tempered, rather than expanded, by WWI. There wasn't a chicken dish lovingly prepared enough for him to eat it after the unending rations of grey simmered chicken slopped on his plate in the War. The most 'out there' he got was salt on his Grapefruit or ice in his milk.

My maternal grandma was too good of a cook for there to be a call for anything but southern comfort food. biscuits from scratch with butter and blackstrap molasses, and a mix of breakfast meats. They did do head cheese [actually Souse, because it was spicier] but the local market made souse so tasty, we'd load up a few pounds to take back home with us.

Did have an uncle who LOVED mayonnaise on a saltine.

My own quirky taste is green olives on cottage cheese, delish.

When times were bad my dad would put together rice, miracle whip, mustard, and tunafish. It wasn't that bad.

For the past 5 years I have been practicing head to tail.

I make my own bacon, sausage and cured meats.

Head cheese when made right is fantastic.

Ang

My wife’s family is from the Ozarks around Plad and Wendyville close to Lebanon. They still get together every once in a while to enjoy biscuits and coco gravy. I love sausage, hamburger or even chipped beef but can't handle the coco. I guess it was a treat that satisfied the kids sweet tooth. They lived in a Army surplus tent for over a year so they didn’t have a lot. In fact you all talked about tripe, stomach, etc. well my mother in-law loves it all. Nothing went to waste when they butchered something.

Chitterlings! The nastiest crap I ever saw. It's smells like he'll when you clean and cook them and they look so gross when done.

lengua tacos are awesome, buttermilk and cracker/biscuits are a horrible southern tradition.

We have pickled eggs on occasion.

my grandpa used to take thanksgiving leftovers and put it all in a blender and make like a leftovers spread and would make sandwiches outa it. It actually wasn't that bad.

I had this once in the Navy. Granted, Navy cooks can **** up just about anything, but that was one of the nastiest things I ever tasted - like chunks of rubber in greasy vinegar. Oh the humanity.

:Lin:

I know. I keep trying to tell my Grandma we aint slaves no more, we don't have to eat that crap. eat another part of the pig

That sounds pretty superb. Any food that's poisonous unless it sits and ferments for months, and then causes involuntary gagging in most first-timers has to be worth the effort.

Get re-married and do what they never did before...