It's true. I just remember growing up that you could find all sorts of that stuff at the grocery store, but now all the Piggly Wigglys and whatnot have closed down, at least in the greater Raleigh area. I mean, I know a few places that I can find it, but it's not nearly as ubiquitous as it used to be. And there are many, many barbecue/fried chicken places all around, but, in my mind, that hardly qualifies with the odd stuff you used to see. (I used to eat lunch at least twice a week in a cinderblock shack that served basically nothing but those two items.)

Then again, the Triangle (Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill) and the Triad (Greensboro, Winston-Salem, and ... High Point?) are very different from much of the rest of the state (Charlotte included), so I might just be a little isolated these days.

Well, I was joking about the ``delicacies''. I would never eat any such thing. I do remember people finding the bullet in their meal and that being considered good luck. Weird. However, check out the entry for Big Ed's here. They specifically mention brains. Too bad I can't find a full menu for Big Ed's. It's an excellent down-home country restaurant, right in the middle of the city.

I saw it made by jamie oliver on food TV the show was olivers twist. They don't have the recipe listed on their website but they re-run the shows about every week so I am sure it will be on again soon.

The little taqueria down on the corner by my house sells calf brain tacos. Never been drunk enough, yet...
Most of the Mom n Pop Mexican restaraunts around sell all the "strange stuff" as it's part of their culture to use the entire carcass. Menudo from tripe, beef tongue, etc. Barbacoa is a traditional BBQ dish made by wrapping the head in burlap and slow cooking in a hole in the ground full of hot coals overnight. Then they scrape the meat off the skull. It hought it was rather sweet, kind of weird tasting to me. But the iguana I ate in Trinidad was the weirdest thing in taste and origin I ever ate...

But the iguana I ate in Trinidad was the weirdest thing in taste and origin I ever ate...

Well, Dave, living in Texas, you must be familiar with the delicacy that Texans
call "calf fries" and other parts of the American West refer to as
"Rocky Mountain Oysters."

Pretty good, actually. But then almost anything fried tastes pretty good.

I used to go eat them at a place called, I am not making this up,
"Betty's Truck Stop" which was in fact, a truck stop.

Also, some of the "good ol' boy"-type fraternities will hold a "Calf Fry" as a
fundraiser occasionally. And, yep, they are only serving a small portion
of the overall animal. And said animal was probably unhappy to be separated
from said portion!

Calf fries, heard of them, but never see them available around Austin...
That's right up there with the beef brain tacos, I'll try 'em when I'm good and drunk...

I've never seen calf fries in Austin although I have in Fort Worth or out in west texas.

Even in the deep south, you don't see uber-fatty cooking so much as you did twenty years ago.

That's ironic. Just yesterday I saw a news report on CNN that the average colorific intake of the US population has increased by 200 over the same time period.

That's because sugar has taken its place.

Just yesterday I saw a news report on CNN that the average colorific intake of the US population has increased by 200 over the same time period.

Yeah, you can always tell US advertisements on British television, because they use much brighter colours. What the colorific intake must be of someone subjected to such saturated colours day in and day out, doesn't bear thinking about...

Peter

http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mspotteddick.html

here's the recipe

http://www.foodtv.com/foodtv/recipe/0,6255,22405,00.html

sounds scary

As long as this thread has been bumped... I had some Heinz spotted dick the other day. It was pretty good but maybe a bit too sweet.

I had to heat it at my parents because the heating instructions call for a 650W or 750W microwave with times varying greatly between them. I have an 1100W microwave that I didn't feel like exploding spotted dick inside of.

I read in yesterday's Daily Telegraph (18 - 09), that a health authority in Gloucestershire has returned, on their menus, to "Spotted Dick" having decided three years ago to describe it as "Spotted Richard" to avoid embarrassment.
Apparently it avoided embarrassment, but nobody had a clue what they meant. The workings of the public sector mind are always puzzling!