Depression foods

Meesha, of Kansas City With The Russian Accent, mentioned beef tongue in an entry today, and it took me back to the 1970's, when Cliff worked in a country butcher shop and we lived hand-to-mouth. Or should I say paycheck to paycheck.

If a customer took his own animal in to be butchered, he got the whole animal: tongue, liver, heart, tail and all. However, if people went in to buy a half- or quarter-beef from them, the butcher shop kept all those things. Those parts of a cow or hog are called offal, which the butcher-shop employees pronounced "all-fall" or "aw-fall".

Anyway, there seemed to be an excess of organ meats at the shop most of the time, and we were welcome to all the liver, tongue, ox-tail, and even brains, that we wanted, at no charge. I will tell you that I only cooked brains once. I loved the taste, but somehow I couldn't get past the idea of what I was eating. Which is strange, considering it never bothered me to eat mountain oysters. (If you don't know what that is, check with mr. Google.)

Back to beef tongue: I had a big pressure canner, and the book that came with it explained how to process tongue. I'll admit it was a challenge to boil and peel the rough skin off the tongue (which you did before processing), but once you had it in the jar, that was the best sandwich meat you ever tasted!

We had ox-tail soup regularly back then, and liver-and-onions often. I rendered lard, which was actually the only shortening I kept on hand. Lard makes the best pie crust! We could have all those things at no cost. I milked cows and made all our butter at the time, too. All those foods probably contributed to Cliff having heart problems years later, but we sure thought we were eating high on the hog then.

I could eat all I wanted, and never gain weight.

Liver is on the list of things Cliff shouldn't have, especially fried; but I may have to buy a package this week. I sure would like to have some liver-and-onions.

I've just triggered another memory, a joke Cliff played on me when I was about six months pregnant with my daughter: Cliff brought home something packaged in white butcher paper, sat it on the table, and told me to check it out, that Richard (the boss) had given us a ham.

"Unwrap it and take a look," he said. "It's a nice one."

I loosened the butcher paper that encased it and found, not a ham, but a hog-head, minus the skin, staring at me. Yes, staring. Its eyes were still it its head. Cliff thought that was the funniest practical joke ever.

I told him, "It's a good thing I'm not superstitious, or I'd be worrying that you marked the baby!"

And that's today's trip down memory lane. Thanks, Meesha!

The crazy things I save....

June Carter Cash wrote a book years ago called "Among My Klediments". In the book, she said, ""Klediment is mountain language for anything that is precious and has earned a right to be a part of things close to you."

Well, that sounds nicer than "junk", so there you go. Rummaging through old pictures and keepsakes the other day, I found a yellowed page out of a small-town newspaper from 1977. They had done an article about the butcher shop where Cliff worked for some twenty years. That butcher shop closed a long time ago.

This may be of no interest to anyone else, but I think our son will enjoy these pictures; he worked at that butcher shop part-time as a kid. It was his first job.

That's Cliff, caught in the act of butchering. If you click on the picture, it will be big enough to read the print.

Here are the pens where the cattle and hogs were unloaded.

And what did I do with my cast iron skillet yesterday?

I glazed some carrots!

Along with green beans with kielbasa, you have a meal chock-full of veggies, vitamins, and flavonoids. My first Internet friend, Lona, told me about cooking green beans this way (you can cook potatoes in there too, if you like). I buy the turkey kielbasa, so it's low-fat, and a much better alternative than ham, ham hock, or bacon. Thanks for the idea, Lona. This is one of Cliff's favorite dishes.

A face from the past

We had a surprise this morning: a visit from someone we had not seen in several years.

Back around 1969, Cliff was working in a metal-plating place in the city. We became acquainted with a man named Richard who was just going in business for himself: he'd opened up a butcher shop about three miles from where we lived.

Cliff mentioned to the guy that he wouldn't mind learning to butcher, and before long he had a job. He worked at the Country Butcher Shop two different times, for a total of perhaps ten or fifteen years.

Later on, after Richard's kids grew up and the butcher shop closed down, Cliff worked for two of his boys on their construction company.

We've always had fond feelings for Richard and his boys; we've stayed in touch with Tom, the oldest, through the years. But we hadn't seen Richard in a long, long time.

This morning he and his wife were just out for a drive, they said, and decided to stop by.

Don't you love it when someone special out of the past lets you know they remember you?