Edible Animals

[ysabetwordsmith]

My inner teenage boy was deeply amused by this billboard showing a spectrum of pets to food animals.

Me, I'm a pragmatist.  Anything I can get into my mouth and digest safely is potential food.  In practice, I strongly prefer not to eat other sapient beings unless I am starving to death, so things like cetacean, elephant, and primate are off my list of edibles outside of that context.  There are a few things I choose not to eat because I disapprove of their production methods; farmed veal exceeds my personal tolerance for animal abuse.  However, historic veal is in the same class as buckling for me -- used to be, all the milk animals would drop about 50% male offspring that you didn't need, so you dressed them out right then and had the tenderest meat ever.  That I would gleefully eat if I had the chance.  There are plenty of things I'd like to try, haven't encountered yet, and probably wouldn't want to eat routinely; dog and horse are both in that category.  So are insects, a key indicator that I am not culturally an American despite living here.  My everyday category is wider too: rabbit, goat, and lamb are all things I actively look for and order when I find them.  I also enjoy some animal parts that most Americans do not, including tongue, brains, heart, gizzard, and testicles.  I loved haggis the one time I got it.  However, I have tried kidney and wasn't fond of it; I really dislike liver and would have to be ravenous to eat it willingly.

These are all things that vary widely by culture and time period.  What are some of your settings?

Comments

[kengr]

Horse isn't that different from beef except for being a *lot* leaner.

I bought ground horse all the time back in the 70s, because it was something like 1/3 the price of hamburger. and practically no fat.

Friends bought various cuts of horse as well and I got to eat some of those as well.

There was this one butcher in town that sold horsemeat. Very popular with the folks on food stamps.

Then the FDA decided that horsemeat wasn't fit for human consumption (read: beef producers were getting bent out of shape about it)

People keep trying to get the ruling changed but...

I've had brains, though at the time I didn't know it. When they slaughtered a cow on the farm, they'd mix brains in with the eggs before scrambling them. I might have been squeamish if I'd known beforehand, but finding out after the fact was mostly a matter of "oh, ok".

Don't recall ever having kidneys. Think I've had haggis and it was ok, I've had liver, don't much care for it. Mostly because it's way to easy to cook it wrong and have it taste awful.

Not interested in gizzards and while I've had tongue, I wasn't impressed.

Testicles might be interesting. though there's a definite "I ate *what*?!" factor in there.

[johnpalmer]

Haggis is really just a form of sausage-and; it's interesting that people have a strong reaction to it.

One thing about testicles: they contain testosterone, which is active when administered orally (but it can damage the liver long term, which is why it's administered medically yin gels, creams, patches, and injections). But I believe testosterone replacement therapy started life as Rocky Mountain Oysters.

[pandoraparanoia]

Interesting, let me think.
Rodents are a no (squirrels, mice, rats).
Amphibians, insects, arachnids, are things I will only ever accidentally ingest.
(I don't believe we have lizards or serpents here, but, no.)
I'm not keen on eating work animals (horses, donkeys, dogs, cats).
Game is hit or miss; I dislike deer, but love duck. Would probably try most game if given to me.
Birds in general I'm happy to eat.
I'll eat some fish to taste (salmon, cod, etc) but am generally not a fan of seafood or shellfish. (Despite being an island this is quite common here.)
I have no desire to try anything like seal, sea-lion, dolphin, or whale.
I find red and fatty meats harder to digest so I try to eat less of them, and less of mammals in general, but cow, sheep/lamb, pig are stables of diet here, very difficult to avoid.
Offal tends to be very strongly flavoured, or highly textured, and it is rare that I find myself liking it. (I'm a very-well-done kinda person.) Although if processed it can be nice, for example, haggis, white pudding, sausage can be delicious.
And there is always the preference to avoid the taste of animal cruelty, like you mentioned, veal is not something I want to try, and always choosing free-range or similar if possible.
I can trace most of these preferences back through culture, or as personal digestive limitations.

[pandoraparanoia]

I have eaten horse a few times unbeknownst to myself. There was a scandal a while back of some food providers thinning their beef products with horse. Being so close to France horse meat isn't unheard of, but there is a huge difference between farmed horse and what ended up mixed with our beef (mainly the type of medicines, steroids, and food each category is allowed to consume).

[thnidu]

«So are insects, a key indicator that I am not culturally an American despite living here.»

Eh? While there's a bit of a fad for insectivory, ISTM quite alien to American majority culture, greeted with a "Ew! How can you, how could anyone eat that?"

[gingicat]

I put dog, octopus, and pig in the “too sapient to eat” category.

(Cats, too, but I understand they’re not actually edible.)

I would certainly eat rabbit or guinea pig if they were kosher and widely available. (However, since I don’t like duck, I might find I also don’t like rabbit.)

Well ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

Rabbit isn't a lot like duck, although wild rabbit is more like duck than it is like chicken, which cage-raised rabbit somewhat resembles. I find rabbit closer to turkey myself. I like all of those.

Frog is nothing at all like chicken, I don't know why people compare them. Neither is alligator, although frog and gator are similar to each other. Both are more like fish than like chicken.

[technoshaman]

Second octopus and cat for "too sapient to eat". Pigs.... dangit, PIG MEAT. But not the little potbellies. Those are pets. There's a pair of them - Basil and Borage - at my favourite OMG-this-is-multiple-benjamins-and-SO-WORTH-IT restaurant, out back; they're the ... compost processors. And they love it when the patrons come and feed them the kitchen scraps (which are had from underneath the counter at the coat check, between courses)...

Duck and rabbit are both very greasy. I've had excellent duck, done rather slowly on a charcoal grill... slow enough for the excess fat to drip out and thus smoke the duck... I wasn't really super impressed with rabbit, but if I had to choose between rabbit stew or taters again for the fourth time, Thumper's getting a load of #6 from Old Betsy.

Agreed on frog. More towards duck than anything, but more tender. And not much of it.

I always thought gator was more towards chicken or turkey m'self. Loves me some gator tail.

As for kosher animals: Outside of the usual menu, venison and elk are both yummy... for as big an animal as it is, elk is quite delicate. Oh, and goat is yummy too. Our motorcycle gang foodie group with a motorcycle problem roasts one every June and has a big shindig... NOM.

Foods and preferences

[dialecticdreamer]

Before I learned about the sentience level of octopodes, yeah, I've eaten them.

When I was a kid, my mother was on a veal kick as a diet measure, but I won't touch the animals now because of the way they are raised.

Finding /real mutton/, not LAMB, would make my decade!

I've eaten roasted grubs, roasted scorpion (bland as paper, in both cases), cabesa (cow brains), but stopped that during the last mad cow disease scare. Chicken livers were a staple menu item when I was a kid, and I occasionally indulge in them deep fried, but usually in Cajun style dirty rice. I've had rabbit twice, but can't find a reliable source for it.

One of the dishes that youngest enjoys is steak and kidney pie, which appears on the menu here every few months.

Goat is delicious, and there was a local halal food truck that served it on weekends here. My kids don't balk at things like head cheese or braunschweiger. Yet, there's a delightful vegetarian/vegan restaurant that I am DETERMINED to taste through the entire menu available to me sans allergens.

Oddly, the issue of horse meat illustrates my biggest problem with the food chain in America today: I have involuntarily eaten it because certain fast food chains were proven to have meat which contained horse. Frankly, I may or may not be willing to try it voluntarily, since I do love buffalo, but I resent to the ends of the Earth the fact that I wasn't given a choice in the matter.

I haven't made any decisions about the relative intelligence of horses, but I'm pretty okay with pigs as food animals... even as I find the idea of eating whale or dolphin as upsetting as human cannibalism.

So, yeah, there's bias in there, all tangled up with observed versus unexplored assumptions. I love conversations that make me THINK about those assumptions.

Re: Foods and preferences

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> Finding /real mutton/, not LAMB, would make my decade! <<

I have on occasion, but not often.

Similarly, what is sold as goat is more often chevre (kid meat) and the two are not identical. Recipes designed for mature goat or mutton will overwhelm kid or lamb.

>>cabesa (cow brains), but stopped that during the last mad cow disease scare. <<

Sadly, I came to the same conclusion.

>>My kids don't balk at things like head cheese or braunschweiger. <<

<3 head cheese.

>>Frankly, I may or may not be willing to try it voluntarily, since I do love buffalo, but I resent to the ends of the Earth the fact that I wasn't given a choice in the matter. <<

That's an example of how America's food system is not based on safety or consent, but on money and power. >_<

>>So, yeah, there's bias in there, all tangled up with observed versus unexplored assumptions. I love conversations that make me THINK about those assumptions. <<

Yeah, and that's exactly why I need like-minded friends. Most people find my favorite conversations boring, scary, or offensive. I feel the same about theirs, especially when they won't shut up about the sex lives of people neither of us even know.

Re: Foods and preferences

[technoshaman]

I'll be after havin' the recipe for chicken livers in cajun dirty rice. NOM.

Seconded on goat, NOM! And pig meat.

I couldn't find kidney, so I figured out how to cheat: Use chicken livers instead of kidney. Makes a damn fine pie. First time I made a GF crust, too - dead simple, rice flour and shortening, I don't remember the proportions but it turned out just fine.

Oh. Best vegetarian restaurant in Seattle? Kosher Chinese place called Bamboo Garden. Kashrut certificates visible from outside the door. Neither meat nor milk enter the building; it's all veggie, and they can do things with tofu and mushrooms like you would not believe. This certified carnivore took home leftovers... and ate them happily!

Re: Foods and preferences

[gingicat]

If you like liver and kidneys, I thoroughly recommend chicken hearts. Our local Asian market sells them in the kind of trays that are often used for ground beef.

[siliconshaman]

I draw the line at eating people... cats, cetaceans, octopuses, elephants, primates, corvids, otters and canines, count as people. [although some humans I have my doubts about!]

Pretty much everything else is fair game, unless it's fish or eats a lot of fish.. I have an allergy. Alligator is ok, but it tastes fishy which is just off-putting. Rabbit is good, and was kind of a staple around here until a few years ago, ditto lamb and mutton. [venison is tasty, ostrich and kangaroo too. Snake is just blergh!]

Anything that's essentially a carrion eater,is usually nasty and carry bacteria that would not be good for you.

Kidneys you just have to know how to cook, but you can't go far wrong with a curry. Actually, pretty much all the organ meats you can cook up a tasty curry with, which should make you very suspicious of cheap curry houses!

[zeeth_kyrah]

If you're counting all those as people, I think horses should be on that list. Despite being delicious. Elk, on the other hand, is not really much more intelligent than any other deer. I might eat caribou (reindeer by any other name, eh?) but I think I'd treat them more like horses most of the time.

Killing wild animals for food... well, if that's the situation you're in, that's what food looks like. Might as well.

[snippy]

I'm not very adventurous now that I'm older, largely because so many of the things I tried before I was 30 didn't taste good to me. Prime example: jellyfish. I've had extreme negative reactions (taste and/or texture) to insects, eggplant, and coffee. I feel slightly squicked by most non-muscle meat; OTOH I love chicken liver pate. Most of the meat I eat would be defined under kosher, except I like pork and crab and lobster and scallops. I've had horse and didn't hate it; same with goat. Then there are the vegetables that I like but don't agree with me: most legumes and brassicas. I sometimes have hives after eating tropical fruit.

Well ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

Basic dietary rule: If eating the thing makes you sick, don't eat the thing.

If you don't like the thing, don't eat the thing, provided you can get a varied and healthy diet elsewise.

Me, I like trying new foods even though my digestion is iffy. I'm more likely to have a bad reaction to artificial stuff than to single natural ingredients like a new fruit or meat. If it tastes bad or bothers my guts, I don't have to try it again. But sometimes I find new favorites.

I keep forgetting

[dialecticdreamer]

Reading everyone else's comments helps me remember things like, "Ooh, I tried that!"

Beef liver is delicious to me, but hubby can take or leave it and kiddo hates it-- and all three of us cite the texture as a reason! Laugh. Oddly enough, Italian wind-dried beef doesn't appeal nearly as much because it's so greasy feeling.

I've not tried ostrich or kangaroo, but alligator jerky was a lot of fun. Crawdads are a LOT of work for the amount of food, frog legs were extremely stringy and salty, which I think was more about poor cooking skills than the food itself.

Duck was, again, very, very greasy compared to chicken or turkey. I can see why it's fallen out of favor in the US holiday season.

Re: I keep forgetting

[gatheringrivers]

Ostrich is much like beef in flavor, just very very lean. It really needs to be "medium rare" or "rare" for best flavor, not more "done" than that. I like it for the novelty, but it's not something I'd eat on a regular basis because I prefer fattier cuts.

Kangaroo is also tasty, though I don't recall anything memorable about the flavor. Just a mental flag of "Sure, I'd eat that again!"

[mount_oregano]

I'm an omnivore and proud of it, but a dairy farmer convinced me not to eat veal because of how cruelly the young animals are raised. He loved cows.

I've eaten octopus, various fish, assorted seafood, venison, bison, goat, rabbit, pigeon, duck, rattlesnake, frogs, and various cuts and organs of beef, pigs, and chickens, and I like them all.

Still, for health reasons, I try to eat relatively little meat, sometimes only as a flavoring to a dish, and happily eat vegetarian and vegan some days.

I have yet to meet a vegetable, fruit, or legume that I don't like.

Bugs? If I get the chance, why not?

As I said, I'm an omnivore. Or maybe just a scavenger.

[gatheringrivers]

Other than cats, if it walks or flies, I'm willing to TRY it once. (I don't *normally* do seafood on account of parental stupidity. The exceptions I *can't* have often because they're very high in mercury - things like Tuna.)

I may ONLY try it once, and a lot depends on how it's prepped (because food sensitivity issues) these days.

I don't like a lot of commercial feedlot practices, and I *really* dislike people/groups who abuse/neglect the animals before killing them, so I buy most of meat from small farms now.

I've HAD kangaroo, camel, and a couple other oddities (one of the grocery stores in the outer "boonies" (a/k/a countryside) actually stocked some exotics, and we picked up "one of each" in ground meat. We still have froglegs that we haven't done anything with yet, I really need to look up how to cook them...

Had tongue, heart, liver and kidney. I prefer fattier cuts of meat. I use gizzards as stock fodder. Have NOT had the opportunity for "critter nuts" or "rocky mountain oysters" :) but willing to try if they're available.

The "hard lines of NOPE NOPE NOPE!" for me are: (1) cats, and (2) food that's still alive when it's on my plate.

I don't want something like octopus trying to crawl BACK out of my throat, and I don't want to chase it around the table.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

I prefer farm-raised anything to factory-raised anything, when I can find and afford it. Often I can't. But we get things like eggs and meat from small farmers when possible. Harvest Market and the Farmer's market make it easier to find, although they're so expensive we have to be sparing.

[technoshaman]

No: Carnivorous land animals, horse, octopus (didn't like it before I knew how smart they are, now *really* no); not a big fan of summer squashes (though okra, fried or in gumbo, is good), picky about brussels sprouts, green veg need to be still screaming (once they've gone limp I'm not a fan); not a fan of strong onion or either end of the pepper spectrum - chipoltle, ancho, serrano are good; don't like the sour of bell peppers, and once you get too far up in the Scoville range, it's just PAIN, not flavour... don't like cauliflower atall, or jicama. I never liked SPAM, and outgrew things like potted meat and vienna sausages... most cream of anything soups by themselves, not so much, although cream of mushroom with garlic is good in Skillet Algorithm or as a base for chicken pot pie.. and of course there's cream of bacon soup with potato and clam, aka really good clam chowder ;) Oh, and tilapia... ptui.

Yes: Most things from the water. I'll pass on farmed Atlantic salmon if I can; the way they do that is pretty gross... the Norwegians, OTOH, have gotten good at it, nearly as good as wild-caught Pacific. Most whitefish, except the tilapia, baked with butter and lemon pepper; snapper is particularly good this way. Cod or haddock in a good beer batter, with proper chips... OMG. Copper River Sockeye Salmon (everybody goes nuts over king, but IMNASHO Sockeye is better) is to DIE for. Pretty much any shellfish, bivalve or crustacean - gimme a plateful of assorted water bugs and a ramekin of garlic butter, and I am a happy bear... and also squid, but NOT octopus. Oh, and catfish and eel, too. (Funny, the one you'd get in a BBQ or other Southern place; the other is most commonly found in sushi joints... unagi, mmmm... but they're sorta similar...)

Birdie: Most fowl, from game hen to goose; I've not had a lot of exotics here. Goose a couple times, duck a couple times, like the duck better. Turkey is yum and dead easy; just takes a while. Chicken's rather a staple hereabouts.

Four-foots: Cow, pig, lamb (not had mutton, wouldn't mind trying), goat, deer (YUM!), elk (also yum), buffalo (is good, but I don't actively go after it, partly price, partly there aren't many of'em left anyway, farm or no)... did NOT like kangaroo the one time I had it... gator, frog, turtle (in order of decreasing enthusiasm)... rabbit... not had squirrel, but my dad has, probably one he shot himself at that... see above remark about taters again...

Offal: Love chicken livers, ever since I was a kid. Like beef liver enough to order it occasionally at diners. Had steak and kidney pie in Blighty, liked it. Gizzards are too chewey. Why my ex likes'em, I dunno. The only other weird stuff I eat like that with gusto is pork rinds. NOM. (It's what you grow up with.) Hearts, too, though they're kinda hard to get...

Oh. This is my privilege showing, I know, but if at all possible, frozen or fresh, not canned veg. Meats, I'm okay with, especially since they're usually either going to end up as an ingredient rather than by themselves on a plate (ham, chicken, fish and shellfish) or already are in something (roast beef in gravy, corn beef hash)... exceptions are sardines and oysters, which I'll happily eat straight from the tin.

Oh, and I like my soup CHUNKY. With a couple exceptions. Egg drop, making that chunky would just be wrong, and the matzoh ball soup I just had for dinner, which was essentially one big damn matzoh ball in a bowl of good strong chicken broth. Now, if I'm making the soup myself, I make ping-pong-ball sized balls and otherwise make the soup the usual way (though if at all possible I use kosher chicken, because let's get as close as we can, shall we?), but just chunks spooned out of that softball-sized hunk and good broth was just what Dr. Brown ordered today. (I was COLD from the ride in...) Oh, and chili has beans and beef, unless I'm feeding vegans, which case it has TVP, but still beans.

That reminds me. I rarely partake of the wily tofudebeest, but will forgo that restriction for a particularly good preparation. Fake cheese, I'll skip; that includes Ch**s* Wh*z and that orangey sliced stuff that's more a lab experiment than an exercise in culinary arts... OTOH, a mild bleu is about as far down that road as I want to go either. (That's an acquired taste, as is feta.)

I had haggis, once, in one of the better restaurants in Edinburgh. Not impressed. The venison, however, was *excellent.*

It occurs to me that I might be able to *make* a haggis I liked. It's essentially meatloaf only with odd ingredients. Sheep's liver, oatmeal, onion, spices, suet... there's a butcher down south called "Proper British Bacon" (OMG do I miss a bacon butty) that could probably set me up. Hmmmm! Hey, I've got eleven months to master it... (Burns Night being 25 Jan...)

Sooooo... what are Rocky Mountain Oysters like?

And how old *is* your inner teenage boy? Mine hasn't grown up quite that much. He's ten. But he's really smart, and gets all the dirty jokes. ;)

For haggis

[dialecticdreamer]

See if you can find uncured pork cheek for your test haggis. It needs slow, moist cooking like heart or tongue, but it freaking MELTS. It's also a little bit greasier than I expected, but in a meatloaf type dish, the fat is a huge flavor boost.

[scrubjayspeaks]

I think I hit all the "too sapient for food" notes that others hit. I ultimately gave up octopus and squid readily but with sorrow, as those are flippin' delicious.

My regarded-as-eccentric rule is I won't knowingly eat any type of animal--beyond just specific individuals--that I've kept as a pet. Which rules out...most rodents including squirrels, possum, quail, duck, goose, frog, snail, lizard, cat, dog, horse, and rabbit. I think that covers it. My brain just seems to require "pet" and "food" to be circles with zero overlap.

My best friend has Chinese parents who liked trying to gross out the white kid when we were growing up. It never really worked, so long as they didn't tell me what it was in advance. (With my friend serving as a spotter for my known restrictions.) And I've had chips made from insects, but I haven't had a chance yet to try them whole. The texture might be a problem for me, but I'd be keen.

I did stop eating beef, because raw and rare beef reminded me too much of horse meat in the form of "dumbass foal found the only sharp object around and decided to skin himself alive, quick, somebody put him back together!" A distinctly unappetizing association. Raising animals has put a few kinks in my dietary habits. XD

On the subject of animal husbandry and food vs pet, anyone interested might like to check out Comrade Shepherd (@NeolithicSheep) on Twitter. She talks about raising heritage breeds, the ethics of food, and why snotty vegans need to get bent.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> She talks about raising heritage breeds, the ethics of food, and why snotty vegans need to get bent.<<

1) Because each individual makes decisions for themselves, and has no right to force theirs on anyone else.

2) Because any action that makes animals less accessible, appealing, and useful to humans is a vote that those animals should cease to exist. That's what happens to animals that humans don't care about. The people who drove elephants out of circuses probably doomed them to extinction. Look at all the heritage breeds we've lost. Gaited horses used to be valuable and numerous; we're down to a few rare breeds.

3) This conversation usually ends when the vegan's fluffy herbivorous totem realizes there is a wolf in the room. :D

[arlie]

I figure my food preferences are culturally British - not modern British, but British before curry was standard fare. Plus a lot of additions from living in Canada and then California.

I absolutely love beef kidneys. I prefer chicken liver to beef liver - much easier to mess up cooking beef liver, and produce something about as appetizing as the sole of a boot :-( But I used to stop at the same town every time I took a particular 6 hour road trip, just to eat beef liver and onions at a particular restaurant that did it right. Beef tongue is great. Hearts are OK. The idea of eating testicles squicks me, so I've never tried them.

While I enjoy a good steak, I'd rather have a slow-cooked piece of tough meat than an also-ran steak.

As a child in Canada, I used to eat raw beef hamburger; that ended with mad cow disease and a move to the US.

I'm happy to eat raw fish, and it doesn't have to be in cute little sushi rolls. Cooked fish too. But please don't serve something like trout whole, looking like a critter. I can't think of a fish I don't like, though there are some I avoid because of overfishing/endangerment. I love scallops. I'm more or less meh on other shellfish. (I eat them, but don't seek them out.) Lobster's fine, but taking a nut cracker to one is no fun. And a bit of squick for boiling them alive. I have a nice jar of pickled herring in the fridge right now.

I've eaten buffalo, and prefer beef. I've eaten rabbit, and it was OK. I eat all the standard North American meats - beef, pork, chicken, turkey, lamb. I like goose. Ostrich is tasty, but I've only had it a couple of times. I wouldn't seek out horse, or pick it from a menu, but I'd eat it if served to me. I've had goat a couple of times, and it was awful; I now actively avoid it on Indian buffets. But I'm not sure the problem was goat, it might just have been the way it was cooked. I love lamb, cooked according to recipes from approx. Greece thru India, but *not* the way British or traditional white Americans cook it.

Given a choice, I pick the more humanely raised meat, but don't put much effort into it.

I've never knowingly eaten insects, but I'd be willing to try.

Well ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

If you like lamb, you should like properly prepared goat. But they're both meats that are easy to wreck. One problem is if you get the wrong age of meat for your recipe, and another is that -- aside from very young kid -- goat meat will toughen and taste rank if overcooked or dried out. Look for a wet-cooked version like an African stew if you want to try it again.

[pronker]

Thanks for the new word, "buckling."

Haggis sounds interesting; I'm fond of heart, gizzard, and tongue; kidney is a pain, has great waste to its preparation with the fat and tubes inside the structure, and tastes nasty unless it's in a steak-and-kidney pie, which is a 3 hour project, so no thanks after the two or three meals I've prepared of it. Liver is great with onions and just barely cooked so that it looks like it might recover and get well, otherwise it's leather. All the rest of the list, well, I'm not adventurous anymore. It's okay.

Tee hee at the billboard. :)

EAD: lamb and goat, oh my yes! Rabbit is so so; I've not discovered a way to make it as tender as I like. Otherwise it's okay, all white meat.

Well ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

Among the more reliable ways to make rabbit tender: crock it until the meat falls off the bones, remove bones, shred meat, then add vegetables to make stew.

Another option is to section the rabbit, bury the pieces in a casserole or something else, then bake for a long time.

[helgatwb]

I will eat pig, cow and chicken. I have eaten and enjoyed deer, rabbit and squirrel. I am very fond of squirrel. I would probably try any other wild/game meat I was offered.

As far as offal goes, I love gizzards. I love chicken and turkey heart, and would probably try other types. I haven't had tongue, but I would like to. Liver is disgusting and I will only eat it if there is nothing else to eat. I would try other types of offal, but might not like it. Any sausage that tastes strongly of liver is a no-go for me.

I will eat all of the seafood, except the ones that are sapient.

No veal, or lamb, or fois gras, because of the way they are raised.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

I have enjoyed every wild meat I've tried.

Tongue is exquisite, so tender it melts in your mouth, but the texture is like nothing else. It's a giant pain in the ass to peel, though, and nowhere near as cheap as it used to be. I'd take tongue sandwiches to school, people would ask what it was, I'd tell them, and they'd scream. LOL