Showing posts with label real food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label real food. Show all posts

Sunday, July 08, 2007

Mystery Meat

The other day I had a craving for some real Mexican food, so we went to a little taqueria in town for burritos. I ordered my favorite, lengua. "Lengua" is Spanish for "tongue." I love tongue burritos--the tongue is rich and savory, and so tender it just melts in your mouth. Tongue burritos are the best.

When we got there, I saw a sign that read "Posole y Menudo--Sabado y Domingo." That translates to "Posole and Menudo--Saturday and Sunday." Since it was a gray and rainy (though not chilly) day, I ordered a bowl of posole. The waitress came back in a couple of minutes, and told me that they were out of posole, but that they still had menudo. I told her that menudo would be fine.

In case you don't know, this menudo isn't the boy band from Puerto Rico--it's stew made from tripe. It's alleged to be the best hangover cure in the world, although I can't testify to that use. It is good, though, so I asked for a bowl of that instead.

When it came out, there was (in addition to the delicious tripe), a bony chunk of mystery meat floating in the stew. It looked like this:


As I poked around in the stew, I noticed that the mystery meat had skin on it. Then I noticed the part where the hoof had been. Then I realized that there was a pig foot floating in my stew. Yum. Here it is, in all its rich, footy goodness:

Friday, February 02, 2007

Real Food, the book

I've just started reading the book Real Food, by Nina Planck. I'm only in the first chapter, but it's an interesting (and easy) read. It's about the benefits of eating real foods, and the pitfalls of eating industrial foods.

She's very high on fermented foods; I'm looking forward to reading those bits. Fermented foods fascinate me--you take some nice, normal food like milk, or cabbage, or barley, and you let it rot for a couple of weeks. Make one little mistake, and you've got garbage. But get things right, and the results are magical--cheese (or yogurt), sauerkraut, or beer. It will be interesting to find out how good these foods are for you.

I'll keep y'all posted on what else she has to say as I read.