#524 Rotgut

So the other day I chanced across the term “variety meats.”
The name “Variety Meat” is the original food product euphemism.
Variety meats are the parts of the animal people usually don’t eat. Unless they are very poor, or unless they got fooled by the names variety and meat.
Cause really, it’s not like people would have ever eaten this stuff if they had a choice.
Oh, I’m tired of this New York steak. Perhaps I’d like a slice of chalky, putrescent-smelling liver.
Chop up a couple of small intestines for me, would you. I’m sick of this PRIME RIB!
It’s crazy. Now I know, supposedly, some cultures prize the alternative parts of the animal. The English love their kidney pie.
One of the first reasons Americans felt like revolting.
And I know a favorite in Mexico is menudo. Not the original rotating pretty-boyband. The soup made out of tripe.
Tripe is a “variety meat” made out of three of a cow’s four stomach chambers. Andoille sausage is also made from tripe.
Sausage is a good thing to make with weird stuff. All the little formerly icky inedible bits of butchered animals. Crammed in any available tube of intestine.
Mmm mmm.
Native American tribes on the plains were big lovers of eating a freshly-slaughtered animal’s liver and heart—often raw, warm and still pulsing.
Gave them protein, iron, and spirit. Nothing like a little extra animal spirit with your food.
Keeps down the gas.
Or at least makes a good excuse. Okay, who let a spirit out?
I suppose in nutrient-deficient societies liver is a good source of iron and Vitamin A. And as the largest organ in the body it’s a powerful piece of meat to ignore for hunter-gatherers.
But really, it’s also the organ in the body responsible for filtering all the toxins you get from eating, drinking, and whatever. Filtering, concentrating, and depositing them—in the liver.
You know, I’ve had enough of this roast beef. I need some variety.
Could someone please pass me a portion of poison pate?
America ya gotta love it