When I was a little kid, Mom would make breakfast for us which usually included basic Southern fare: eggs, cat-head biscuits and gravy, bacon or sausage, toast maybe or grits. We had oatmeal on occasion complete with a crust of sugar on top, melting butter and milk surrounding the warm mush like a moat with droplets of butter floating in it. By the way, stirring it all up wasn't the right way to eat this. Eat it as it is, like taking bites off a sculpture, waiting for it to crumble just like the walls of grain would break open for streams of butter and milk.
Some mornings, scrambled eggs came to the table and as I ate, there would be a chewy bite nested in the yellow mound. Momma fixed it, so it had to be okay. Well, I'll be darned if she hadn't put pork brains in the eggs! Yep! Pork brains. So, maybe those eggs did "come" to the table, *hooves and all. Still, it didn't occur to me that such fare was anything but normal. So, eat your brains and eggs, right down to the last neuron.
As far as I know, you can still buy pork brains, small chunks in a milky "sauce?" Locked up in a small tin can on your grocer's shelf, they come all ready for your favorite recipe. Now, I'm going to have to go look for myself and see if such is still around. If I find them, I'll let you know. I imagine I'll buy a can of the little oinkers, but not for eating. No, this will be for show and tell, especially when teaching. It's nice to be old enough now that culture has continued to evolve, revolve, dissolve and the "young'uns" aren't afforded some of the experiences of former generations.
So, what's the point? The point is that when we become aware of something that has always been accepted as truth, or the way things are or what's normal, such awareness can be quite the epiphany or it may be just a moment to dismiss, without guilt, eating pork brains.
Have you been eating pork brains?
Just some food for thought. :)
Timothy
*"hoofs" is also an accepted plural form of "hoof" - couldn't help it.
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