I love livers!
I will admit it, I am a lover of liver, I swoon over sardines, and I rally for raw oysters.These foods are the trifecta of goodness to me and are the trifecta of grossness to others.
I always feel as if I have to go to the grocery store in disguise when I procure these items. A wig, sunglasses, maybe a fake mustache, and a long beige trench coat would be the outfit of choice when buying a quart or two of chicken livers. I don’t want anyone to recognize me because I don’t want to talk about my purchase. Without fail every time at the grocery store’s check out I get the look from the cashier as she has to pick up the mini vat of raw chicken livers to scan. They look at me, they look at the livers, and usually the expression on their face is one of utterly disgust. The last time I went to the store, the cashier wrinkled her nose and stated she didn’t like livers. I just stared at her and smiled. On the inside I was thinking, ” I am not buying them for you! Just ring up the damn livers.” On another occasion, as I was going through the line, the lady scanned the liver and then asked me if I was going fishing. I guess the thought of chicken livers purchased for human consumption was a little foreign to her. Of course, I had to answer her intrusive question about my purchase. I think there should be some kind of law that cashiers should not comment on food that you purchase. I don’t like playing the inquisition game to defend what I have in my cart.
I don’t remember not liking liver. My mother would make liver and onions at home and I would eat it. When I discovered it on menus at restaurants I put that entree in my wheel house, along with my super favorite: spaghetti. Waitresses were always taken aback when this little girl would order the liver and onion meal. So I had a worldly palate, sue me. I was being raised by two people old enough to be my grandparents. I could have had young hippie parents and been raised on a hippie commune,( my dream ) but I didn’t get that type of parents. These two were from another era- the depression. I think they stayed depressed for their entire lives. Their pantry reflected that depression. I don’t think the items found in my mother’s cupboard had changed much from the 1930’s to the 1970’s. She kept an array of canned and jarred items that would make Harry Potter think he could concoct some kind of polyjuice potion. Potted meats, canned fish, dried meats in jars lined the shelves. It was like have our own version of c-rations in our pantry.
But we always had something to eat whether it was canned, fresh, or frozen. When my mother would serve something I didn’t like, her response would be, “Then I guess your just not that hungry because if you were hungry enough you’d eat it.” So I ate it. I knew I would not be allowed to obtain a substitute. Take for instance sour kraut and sausage day at our house. First of all, one is forced to smell fermented cabbage waft throughout the house for hours on end, as it simmers in the crockpot. To a small child it stinks. It didn’t matter what the temperature was outside, on sour kraut and sausage day- I played outside all day. I’ve never met a little kid tell me his/her favorite food was sour kraut. When we all sat down to our meal, I would pick out the sausages only and boiled potatoes. I learned to eat the small thin strands of kraut that stuck to the sausage. It took too much time to pull those off and I wanted out of the smelly kitchen as quickly as humanly possible. It took years for me to finally eat the kraut.
Something that was even better than being forced to breath in kraut air were the little stories they told that revolved around the food. So if we had sour kraut and sausage 5 times during the year, I would hear this same story retold each time. It was my parents version of saying grace, except more useful. The story connected to the food and you learned something. So for the sour kraut the story was that if you had a tape worm back in the 1800’s, they would make a big bowl of this for you to hold your head over and the tape worm would crawl it’s way out of your gut!
Now eat up!
Oh the food trivia my parents would present at each meal would make Alex Trebek blush and his stomach turn.
LAH LAH 