I don't know if my mom had a weird sense of humor or what, but we frequently had rabbit for Easter dinner. And around Christmastime, she would sometimes make this delicious cold roast beef, and serve it with mustard and crackers. I found out years later that it was beef tongue. She waited until my brother and I were out of the house to strip off the tastebuds.
This year we're eating the best kind of holiday meal... food cooked by someone else.
Happy whatever-holiday-you-celebrate!
(update-ish): I just noticed the twisted little Easter visual vignette going on here at the top of my blog...half chewed chocolate bunnies and a cute yellow fuzzy chick carrying a pistol. Hee.
10 comments:
She might have just had a touch of pagan sensibility, as a meal including rabbit and eggs was part of the original spring equinox celebrations in honor of the Saxon fertility goddess Eostre (one of many spellings). Apparently there used to be quite the lively argument between overlapping pagan and Christian populations concerning whose festival was the original and whose was the pale imitation.
Personally, I think agricultural populations in temperate climates just have a sort of demi-urge to celebrate around the winter solstice and spring equinox, first with lights in the darkness and then with feasting and early flowers...
We're having tongue today, too.
Oestara is also the Wiccan name for the Spring Equinox. It is amazing how many holidays the church adopted as they moved into norther Europe and the Celtic Iles. . . was easyer to tell the pesants that the holiday was right, just got the God wrong and off they went. . .. kind of a neat history.
ok, so I can't spell, on a friends PC without spell check. . . .
um, so, did you LIKE the tongue? Do tell. I'm curious.
Love that bunny illo - it's cute.
labrat & JD - the pagan sensibility might explain a few things...
phlegmmy - I guess I did like it, until I found out what it was. I haven't had it since I was a kid...I wouldn't mind trying it again.
The Mexicans do some lovely things with lengua; try the lengua tacos at Mi Pueblo.
And the Easter bunny does NOT taste like chicken; far dryer. Good fried though, and it seems to fill me up faster than other meat. I'm behind on population management, though...if you ever get a hankering for an old-fashioned Easter, give a holler and maybe we can make a deal on some home-raised bunny meat.
Breda,
As a member of The Tribe, I do not celebrate Easter. Having said that, we Jews eat lots of tongue. I prefer mine on rye or pumpernickel with spicy brown deli mustard. Ummmmmm.
The tongue was as advertised: tender and tasty beef. Stingray found the thing rather aesthetically horrifying to deal with in its pre-peeled-and-trimmed state, but hunger makes up for a multitude of grossout moments when the payoff arrives.
We'll probably do it again, but next time with a recipe that delivers more flavor than the jumped-up mirepoix and garlic we used. I'm definitely slating the leftovers for sammiches.
After hearing many stories of your families culinary adventures, I am quite certain that the idea of sitting at your mother dining table...scares the pants off of me.
Cold tongue w/mustard was the
occasional sandwich treat at our
house, too. I was dubious (age 11)
watching it prepared, but the
deliciousness made it a favorite.
Anon, Don
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