We had ravioli for dinner tonight. It was tasty. But Willow, who raises hell whenever she's served anything that isn't in nugget-form, insisted that it was the "grossest thing ever."

That's right, a child who turns her nose up at ravioli. Couldn't you just box her ears?

Instead of doing that, we got on the subject of some of the foods that are far nastier than ravioli. As usual, the internet proved a valuable resource. Here are some of the culinary nightmare's we've just read about:

• Black Pudding is also known as Blood Pudding. It's a sausage that's made by cooking pig or cow blood until it congeals and then ... doing something else, but I keep turning away from the screen as soon as I've read that first step.



• Scrapple is simple to make. Take pig liver, heart, head, and basically any pig parts you might have around, and boil the hell out of them. Boil them with the bones attached. Then take the goop and mix in cornmeal and allow it to gel. Then begin the costly, prolonged therapy sessions that you're going to need in order to get over having made scrapple.



• Livermush is considered by many to be a mild and preferable alternative to scrapple. Personally, I consider hari kari to be a mild and preferable alternative to scrapple, but that's just me. Anyway, the primary difference between livermush and scrapple is that livermush, in order to be official livermush, must be made of at least 30% hog liver. The secondary difference is that "Livermush" would actually be a far crueler and more memorable grade school nickname than "Scrapple."



• Mountain Oysters is a dish that's also known as Rocky Mountain Oysters and Prairie Oysters and Tendergroin and Bull Balls. Bull balls is the most accurate name.



• Souse is also known as Headcheese and is a sort of lunch meat loaf that's made of scraps of meat from the head, heart and feet of a pig and is sometimes pickled in vinegar. Why pickle it in vinegar? Why the hell not? Pickle it in kerosene for all I care. I ain't eatin' it.



• Balut, which is a delicacy in Vietnam and Cambodia, is the kind of thing that one should only eat in public, on stage, as a form of angry performance art. Balut is a fertilized duck or chicken egg that has been allowed to develop until the chick inside is almost ready to hatch ... and then boiled and eaten in the shell. It's considered to be an aphrodisiac and is sold by street vendors in the areas where it is available. The drug "ecstasy" is also considered to be an aphrodisiac and is also sold on the streets ... and I bet it's far tastier.



• Chitterlings is pronounced "CHIT-luns." But since chitterlings are the boiled, stewed and/or fried intestines of a pig, it is pronounced around here as infrequently as possible.



• Haggis is the Scottish queen mother of repugnant foods. If you don't know, haggis is made by taking the heart, liver and lungs of a sheep, mixing them with suet, onions and oatmeal, and boiling them for hours in the sheep's stomach. The recipe was conceived of by a Scotsman who, having killed a sheep, felt that he needed to somehow further degrade the animal. Haggis is traditionally served with potatoes, turnips and unconcealed spite. If you're tempted to try it for some reason, the Food Network's Alton Brown has posted his favorite recipe for haggis. Clearly, Alton Brown has joined the terrorists.

So, see? Ravioli really isn't all that bad. Hell, spoiled ravioli sounds pretty good right now.

Labels: Personal, Recipes, Trivial Matters