My Mom was at the grocery store the other day buying beef tongue and attracted attention of some older lady who told her that her kids were recently asking her what people ate during the Great Depression; seeing the tongue in my Mom’s cart reminded her about eating it in her childhood.
Today Consumerist brought up the subject of increased demand for organ meats in the U.K. What people eat always fascinates me mostly because our acceptance of different foods is not a matter of taste but of a cultural upbringing. People who just a minute ago were describing the delicate taste of snake will make puking noises when they see me eating tongue. Someone who likes possum, turtle, armadillo will cringe when they see me eat beef liver and so on.
In this country organ meats are often more expensive than regular beef, pork and chicken, so calling them “Depression Foods” is somewhat of a stretch, they are more of a delicacy for us.
There are not many irregular food stuffs that I will eat: beef or chicken liver, chicken gizzards, beef tongue; nothing else too weird comes to mind. I like duck, I eat turkey and rabbit but very rarely. I tried a brain sandwich once without knowing what it was and it was delicious, but I will probably never knowingly volunteer to eat it again. I recently got a comment about eating smoked but otherwise uncooked bacon. I like salt-cured uncooked fish, smoked fish and dried fish. I can drink a raw egg. My Dad ate beef lungs, kidneys and whale meat when it was still sold in the USSR. This is probably as exotic as it gets in my family. I don’t have any valid reason for not trying other things except always popular “it’s disgusting!”, but I will understand how you feel about me grimacing when you talk about eating snails or whatever else you like, I get the same look when ordering tongue taco at the Mexican restaurant. Maybe some day I will become more open to eating other things, hopefully by choice and not by necessity, until then I am interested in what unconventional foods you find irresistible.
Note:deer meat is pretty conventional around here, unless you eat some non-meat parts of the deer it doesn’t count.
It may surprise you but I am not a huge supporter of the Kansas City E-Tax which is just a modern version of highway robbery. But this post is not about my feelings about the tax, which is already well-covered on this blog. I was always interested in how it was originally sold to the prehistoric Kansascitians back in 1963, when it was only .5%. So I made a trip to the library and spend some time looking at women spinning microfilm. I bet not too many of you have seen any of these.
*note: I am not a fan of PDF files, and this is probably a rare time you’ll see them embedded on my blog, but I think they would actually make some of these newspaper clippings more readable; they are fully scrollable and magnifiable. Others were converted to image format, they are clickable and linked to better readable versions. Let me know if you encounter any problems.
This open letter to the property owners was printed in the Star/Times the day before the elections – December 16, 1963.
Sunday’s weather cooperated and, as I as was anticipating, we were on the way to Lawrence to attend Kansas State Fiddling and Picking Championships. Last year we attended this festival just looking for something to do (for free) and we liked it so much that this year we were actually planning on going. There was a pretty good-sized crowd, unlike the other notable music event, proving again that location matters. The festival had two stages where competitors and performers such as O’Shea Sisters and DeLancey Trio took turns entertaining the public. We spent around 3 hours listening to the music, wandering around and taking some photos and videos. Most of these have heads and other parts of people who decided to park their fat obnoxious asses in front of me, so I forever have memories of these inconsiderate morons. Click on the cover to see the rest of the photos.
Another unexpected and pleasant surprise was waiting for us in downtown Lawrence where The Lawrence Busker Festival was taking place. My daughter and I are big fans of buskers, although until yesterday I didn’t know that they were referring to themselves as “buskers”. I always thought it was “street performers” or whatever. There were quite a few of them – magicians, jugglers, musicians – and downtown Lawrence was alive with crowds. We didn’t leave Lawrence until after 5, after eating at Rudy’s Pizza and finishing with Ben and Jerry’s Ice cream.
And that, May, is what I did this weekend.
Day tours to Colonia available for purchase in Argentina from a variety of sources such as Buquebus include a round-trip on a ferry, a dinner, a tour and transportation around the city. There is not much of a tour (luckily our guide was fluent in English), dinner is average and the transportation is hardly necessary – the historic part of town is perfectly walkable and is close enough to the port. The big difference is the ferry: a newer ferry can make the trip across the river in one hour and the older one takes 3 hours. Since we bought our trip the night before, the faster, more expensive boat was sold out so we took the three-hour tour. My suggestion would be to get on the faster ferry if possible, forgo the dinner and the tour, and explore the town and find food on your own.
The ferry is nice and comfortable and due to a sell-out we were upgraded to the first class seats automatically and for free. Interestingly, at the passport control in both ports the Argentinian and Uruguayan border officials are sitting side-by-side, stamping your passport with both exit and entry stamps (no visa is required for the US citizens), so you don’t have to go through the procedure again upon arrival.
If you have a free day in your itinerary, I would highly recommend a trip to Colonia. There is something charming (I am pretty sure this is the first and likely the last time the word charming is used on this blog) about this town with old cobblestone streets leading to the river; with brightly painted ancient buildings; with a weird mix of trees lining the streets where palms, cacti, and aloes are just as common as European varieties; with numerous restaurants and souvenir shops; with antique cars parked on the streets just for looks, and even nicely preserved Soviet cars. Colonia beckons you to wonder around, explore, take photos, see the sunset, have a coffee at one of the outdoor tables near a restaurant, or just relax watching the boats on the river. On the day we visited Colonia the weather changed from overcast to rain to sunny and the following photos reflect that. Overall, it was probably the most enjoyable side-trip during our visit to Argentina.
My Mom was at the grocery store the other day buying beef tongue and attracted attention of some older lady who told her that her kids were recently asking her what people ate during the Great Depression; seeing the tongue in my Mom’s cart reminded her about eating it in her childhood.
