Replying to another post raises this question. Probably all of us have a cultural background, probably from Europe. When you were growing up did your family have any, at least you thought at the time, unusual cultural foods?

Two I remember were chicken head and feet soup (with veges and noodles) and, for my Dad, pork brains and scrambled eggs. On the first a nut cracker would be used on the heads and the brain and tongue eaten, plus the skin off of the feet. I settled for the soup.

Mom said when she was a girl and they butchered an animal on the farm the warm milk would be caught and drank straight away. I suspose it had some nutrition.

-- Ken Scharabok (scharabo@aol.com), July 23, 2000

Answers

When we had sandwiches,they were with no meat! We had fried potato sandwichs, pineapple sandwichs and apple & peanutbutter! I thought everyone ate them but when ever I had/have company they think I have flipped! They are great and my kids now love them.

-- Debbie T in N.C. (rdtyner@mindspring.com), July 23, 2000.

My mother's younger brother told me when times were lean on the farm, such as winter in Minn., they went to school with a home-made bread and lard sandwich. In slightly better times grandmother would give them a couple of eggs each to trade at the country corner store for something for lunch on the way to school.

-- Ken Scharabok (scharabo@aol.com), July 23, 2000.

Don't think this is a cultural food, but when we were young we ate peanut butter and pickle sandwiches and also mayonnaise sandwiches. On cultural foods, my Irish grandmother used to make springerle cookies which a German friend gave her the recipe for and she also made Jam Cake, which I don't know where she got that recipe. We still make them every year at Christmas.

-- Annie (mistletoe@earthlink.net), July 23, 2000.

A couple of things I recall are what Grandma called boiled dinner. She used smoked ham hocks, lots of fresh cabbage, potatoes, peas, beans, lots of onions and whatever else was getting ripe in the garden. She was almost 100% Irish so I guess thats where this comes from. Another one is rocky mountain oysters!! A vet friend of ours introduced these "delicousies" to us after castrating pigs!! Surprisingly they were kinda good!

-- Barb (WILDETMR@YAHOO.COM), July 23, 2000.

Ken, yes. I grew up on a sour Latvian dark rye bread that ferments a long time before being baked into a loaf that makes bricks jealous. On top of that rye bread went sour cream and often sliced radishes or tomato. With salt and pepper, from toddler age on, this was a staple food. Also, farmer cheese with caraway, hung over the kitchen sink in an old nylon pantyhose leg. This cheese was served (get this!) sliced, with butter on top !! and salt. Several vegetable dishes with sour cream and dill. As a matter of fact, pretty much dill all over the place.

From the other side of the family I got matzoh brie, which is like matzoh crackers soaked in scrambled egg and fried. Then there is the matzoh ball soup, the potatoe latkas (potatoe pancakes), blintzes, challah (a sweet egg bread), etc. Not a lot of kids like gefilte fish with horseradish on top of matzoh. (I do/did) There's an apple/nut dish (charoset) served at Passover that my kids ask for for months preceding.

My family wasted no food. My mother had a rough childhood, and as a survivor of WWII, she insisted we take what we wanted and ate what we took. I sat for hours staring at peas when I was little, but now there is hardly a food that I can't appreciate.

Like others have mentioned above, I thought this was all normal, and it was what others ate. I remember the first time a neighborhood kid offered me a sandwich. I could barely eat it. It was white bread with Miracle Whip and thick slabs of Velveeta (so not) cheese. I was probably 7 years old. Yikes!

-- Rachel (rldk@hotmail.com), July 23, 2000.

This isn't European ethnic, but growing up (in Oregon and Alaska), we always had milk gravy, usually with meat in it, on our potatoes, and honey on our cornbread. My husband hates milk gravy, most of the people I know now have never had it, and a lot of people seem to think honey on cornbread is strange. I *think* that these may be southern dishes (those of you from the south can help me out here), and I know some of my family came from the south before they ended up in the far west. Alas, I can't eat either one on my current diet -- maybe someday for a treat, I hope.

-- Kathleen Sanderson (stonycft@worldpath.net), July 24, 2000.

Headcheese,served re-fried with pancakes. Fried mush. Oyster stew every Christmas Eve. (still do that!)

-- Rog (flanders@probe.net), July 24, 2000.

Ken, You brought back so many memories. I wrote an article once in Countryside about the uses of a goose. One thing we did was put goose grease on rye toast rubbed with cloves of garlic. I remember going to school with goose grease sandwiches much to the embarassment of my mother she didnt mind that we ate it at home but didnt want other people to think we were that poor. Actually we almost were. She always put the chicken feet in soup and loved pig brains with scrambled eggs. She could remember crawling up on her fathers lap when he cracked open the the cooked goose's head to eat the brains. A real treat for me was the egg yolks taken from a butchered chicken and put in the chicken soup. I still try to cook like my ethnic back ground I call it Czech soul food.

-- akp (paulal@oplin.lib.oh.us), July 24, 2000.

Hey Kathleen, sounds like you do have some southerners in your family tree! My family is originally from south east Kentucky, and we always had fried chicken with milk gravy and made milk gravy with sausage too. Gee, I thought that was pretty common all over.:) We also ate (and still eat) honey on our bread, too. My mom always had sorghum in the house and she used to "fry" it. Heat up the sorghum, put JUST a dash of soda in it, and eat with biscuits. Really good!

-- Annie (mistletoe@earthlink.net), July 24, 2000.

Oh Yes ! Pickled Herring and Ludafisk (sp check). These two items have been known to kill the healthiest of mules. They are Scandanavian treats. My father would set milk out to spoil and eat it on cereal--he called it field milk. I always counted these foods as contributing factors to my "strong stomach" although I usually excused myself when they were served.

-- Joel Rosen (Joel681@webtv.net), July 25, 2000.

My dad is Cajun and my mom is just plain southern, so we always had rice (for my Dad) and potatoes (for my Mom) at suppertime. I was grown before I realized that most people don't eat both at the same meal.

-- Renee' Madden (RM6PACK@aol.com), July 25, 2000.

akp,

I had to read your post twice, the stuff we always called goose grease was the stuff we stepped in down by the pond!

Kathleen,

White gravy is a breadkast favorite here. Add some sausage and biscuits and it's hard to beat. Another favorite is chocolate gravy for breakfast, with hot, buttered biscuits.

Ok......now I gotta wipe the drool off the keyboard.........

-- Mona (jascamp@ipa.net), July 25, 2000.

Some of ya'll sound like you're from Arkansas. Sometimes if it's too hot for baking we fry the corn bread too. And there is nothing better than skillet fried potatoes and onion, with pinto beans and corn bread. A couple green onions and sliced tomatoes.Only problem with that meal is pushing away from the table.

-- Bonnie (josabo1@juno.com), July 29, 2000.

we always made headcheese and clabbered milk cottage cheese just drain the whey off of soured milk,dad didnt like any spices so we couldnt have getta /goeta or souse those are spiced headcheeses or use pin oats still basicly the same just taste better..lol. an interestingbook on the subject is Unmentionable Cuisine by Calvin Schwabe published by university press of Virginia; it explores food prejudice from religiouse and cultural views and is full of resipiesmany of which most people would not find objectionable but remember the hindu would be shocked at westerners eating beef and the moselem shocked at the idea of eating pork just as we are at the people who eat dogs ,cats or horses the cooking expert Beard also wrote a book on a similar line but i cant remember the name ,the subject has always facinated me..... at work i was having fried snapping turtle once when the office whinner noticed the bones were shaped different when i said it was turtle the people divided into 2 groops 1 begging me for part of my fried snapping turtle the other expressing discust that they couldnt finish thier lunch. goat also gets a lot of negitive reaction and i was leary of it the first time now i love it its great but lamb i dont like.

-- george Darby (windwillow@fuse.net), July 29, 2000.

I remember scrapple with fondness, altho most of the rest of the family does not. I would never eat the fried snapping turtle -- it was way too ugly alive to eat dead. My grandmother made a great Hasenpfefer (the family farmed potatoes and trapped the cottontails and snowshoe hares that ran in them and packed them in barrels and shipped them on the train to market in Chicago -- both potatoes AND rabbits. By the time I came along, they weren't allowed to ship the rabbits anymore. We ate anything that my grandfather caught in the way of fish (Muskys, Walleye,perch, suckers, Red-Horse; in Florida Mullet and Sheep's-Head & Flounders), or that my father shot. Wild boar is really good eating, slow roasted, so is mountain sheep and even mountain goat, moose, pronghorn -- no one could eat the moose liver tho, too rank. Even the dog refused.

Lutefisk comes from the 7th ring of Hell. There is even a song about "Oh Lutefisk...how fragrant your aroma...you put me in a coma". We also were forced to consume kruppkakor at the Swedish relatives homes. We called then Lead Balls. They were grated potato wrapped around sausage meat and boiled until they looked like grey, glutinous softballs. You were supposed to eat them with butter and cream. The dog refused those too. It wasn't until I went to Sweden to the home of a relative there and had the real thing that I discovered that they were really tasty.

-- Julie Froelich (firefly1@nnex.net), August 29, 2000.