Latest Moan From You and Me 2025

Oh lord alive, I too remember the smell of them cooking for the pets along with tripe. Mother liked sweetbreads, never dared ask what exactly they were as was sure I was not going to like the reply.

 

I remember lights, the dogs always got the giblets out of the turkey at Christmas, I draw the line at tripe, there is just something I cant stand about that stuff.
If you watch the wildlife programmes the carnivores always seem to go for the guts first rather than the meat.

 

I have and it don't, may be they can't read like me

 

Lights, tripes and other offal was used in making Humble pie.

 

Of course in those days pre battery farming, chicken was quite expensive in comparison to today.
I always think of my daughter’s god mum when talking about eating chicken. God mum was a cordon bleu cook and went out to Nairobi when she was relatively young to be the cook and housekeeper to the British ambassador.
Upon arrival after meeting her new boss she asked him what he would like for dinner. He replied he didn’t mind, anything which she fancied cooking.
She decided to ask one of the other staff to despatch a couple of chickens and do a roast chicken dinner. Unbeknown to her, the chickens were for producing eggs and were an expensive breed quite difficult to source in Kenya and the ambassador’s pride and joy. The dinner was enjoyed until the ambassador enquired where she had sourced the tasty chickens…… she was not in his good books for a while! Whoops.

 

Growing up we used to have brains, generally sheeps; banned these days due to scrapie in sheep.
Calves brains disappeared with BSE. Sweetbreads were the thymus gland or the pancreas from a calf.
Tripe I never liked.
Liver was great and heart was and is also good, the same goes for kidneys.
When I've made steak and kidney pudding, I've bought shin of beef and kidneys separately as the pre made mix never has enough kidney for me.l

 

I cannot get good steak and kidney pie anywhere these days.
Always the same story - nobody wants it.
Well, I do!

 

I had braising steak and lambs kidney in the slow cooker yesterday, I always prefer the kidney to the meat but it all goes to make some nice gravy.

Slightly different, but cant get decent herring roe these days, I sometimes see cod roe but never tried it.

We had an old fishmongers in the town when I was a kid, but they did game type stuff as well, always had rabbits hanging up on hooks along with foul of different kinds.
The place was open right across the front, just a shutter to put down at night, my memories of how cold it must have been working there with wet hands and the floor running in water, how they did it I dont know.

 

I had veal kidneys for lunch while out shopping with Possum in Nantes on Friday. Done the usual way here with Dijon mustard lardons, mushrooms and cream. OH likes them too. but won't touch offal and doesn't like stewed meat so we never have steak and kidney pie.

OH and I like chicken liver salad but, for some reason, I can't get chicken livers here to I can get gésiers/gizzards. Lamb's liver is rare here and calves' liver expensive.

We both hate tripe tho OH happily eats andouillettes which are sausages made from tripe, lights and other unspeakable bits of innards with loads of garlic. They stink so he's forbidden to eat them in my company.

 

We had three of those in a row in Boston (Lincs) when I was growing up, they were built at the same time as the Assembly Room which was over the top of them, there was a set of public toilets at the end of the block. The River Witham flowed along the back of them.

 

Cod’s roe is really tasty if you can get it. I think it comes in 2 different forms, something tells me this but could be wrong. The harder roe is really nice sliced into portions and fried with say bacon and egg. People don’t think of including fish with a fry up but the only way to eat smoked salmon to me at any rate, having run a smoked salmon business, is fried, none of this cold with black pepper and lemon juice, yuk!

 

The cod roe I see is usually orange in colour, not sure if its hard or soft but it looks like compressed eggs, so I assume hard?

I agree about smoked salmon, cant stand that wafer thin raw stuff, but a nice chunk of hot smoked is really tasty, I can get it down Dungy(ness) smoked on oak but mostly end up with what I can get in Morrisons, which to be fair is pretty good.
I especially like their sweet chilli smoked salmon, its really very nice.

 

I remember that too @shiney. I think you must be younger than you have led us to believe .