Interesting foods

[glatt]

When I was a kid we would eat headcheese on a fairly regular basis. What the hell were my parents and grandparents thinking?

Headcheese, for those who don't know, is basically like bologna. Except it's made of all the stuff that can be scraped from a boiled pig's head. The chunks are encased in gelatin. You know, that slimey jelly stuff you find on the edges of a canned ham.

[disenchanted]

Originally Posted by glatt

When I was a kid we would eat headcheese on a fairly regular basis. What the hell were my parents and grandparents thinking?

Funny you should mention that. Apparently, my grandmother used to make a similar thing, but under the insiduously-generic name of "lunchmeat". No matter what probing questions I'd ask, I never got a full explanation of what it was, but I did get some hints that boiling the cheap butcher leftovers (yes, including the skull) was involved somewhere in the process.

What I remember was uniformly grey, vaguely the same texture as bologna, clearly heavily flavored with whatever scandanavians seem to think is palatable (as in, I've never tasted a non-scandanavian dish that even comes close to that specific seasoning), relatively non-uniform in size, and while I can still vividly remember it, I'm not sure I can say I miss it.

But, then considering that I've discovered most of the recipes my mother once claimed as her own creations turned out to have their true origins on the back of food cans, box labels, etc., I'm more than happy to let the family food traditions lay fallow.