Menudo does contain tripe, cut up in small pieces floating in a thick soup. My Mother made tripe soup often, perhaps once a month, using beef tripe. Tripe is actually the stomach, which has a weird, striated surface on one side, smoothish on the other. I suspect the Slavic peoples ate tripe just as the Spanish seem to specialize in doing. Frank
@Chrissy Cross "Pozole (Nahuatl languages: pozolli Spanish pronunciation: [po'sole], pozole), which means "hominy", is a traditional soup or stew from Mexico. It is made from hominy, with meat (typically pork), and can be seasoned and garnished with shredded cabbage, chile peppers, onion, garlic, radishes, avocado, salsa or limes." Sounds quite good, interesting mix of ingredients. Frank
I saw members of my Astronomy Club eating Menudo at a Star Party Observing Session once, and I thought the sight of that swill was sickening. My mother was from a Slavic country (The Ukraine), and she never served anything like that, but her Pirogi's and Stuffed Cabbages were delicious! Hal
@Hal Pollner Not sure if Ukraine spelling is different, my Polish heritage recalls wonderful Pierogi being made in several different ways, having different fillings. My first wife, being Polish, usually made them filled with sauerkraut and small pieces of meat, often bacon. Delicious! I see where our big stores here have frozen Pierogi, but I'm hesitant to try them, commercially-prepared. (by non-Poles!). Frank
"Mrs.T's" store-bought Pierogis are not bad, You can get them in either Onion or Cheddar Cheese, and they can be boiled or fried. Mama used to make them with a more interesting and flavorful ingredient mix. She came to this country as an 11-year-old girl with her father in 1923 on the RMS Olympic, the sister-ship of the Titanic, launched a year earlier. Hal
There is actually a mystery surrounding the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, and some people think that it might have been the Olympic that sank and not the Titanic. The Olympic had been in a collision while the Titanic was being built, and since they ruled that the Olympic was at fault, the insurance company refused to pay for the extensive repairs. According to the story, the names were exchanged on the two ships, and the Olympic was slightly remodeled to look like the Titanic, and it was plotted to sink the ship disguised as the Titanic, and then they could collect insurance money for the sinking and loss of the ship. People on the ship were supposed to be rescued, but the rescue plan went awry, thus causing the loss of so many lives unnecessarily. Meanwhile, the real Titanic was finished, and continued life as the Olympic, and was used for many years afterward. If this story was true, then your mother would have actually come across on the Titanic and not the Olympic.
@Hal Pollner Thank you! My Mother, her two brothers, and their mother, came across the pond aboard the Carpathia in 1911, 14 months before the Titanic sank. Carpathia achieved fame for rescuing folks who were aboard Titanic. My Grandpa had preceded them to America to first find work. They wound up in Lehigh, Iowa, where he worked for a big plant which produced clay pipe. My mother was born in 1906, the year of the big quake in SF. At 5, she remembered quite a bit of the trip to America. Frank
The accounts I've read about were that the actual Olympic remained in service until 1935, when she was broken up for scrap. Hal (Take over, Mr. Lightoller, I'm going below.)
I have cooked pork liver many, many times, fresh from the hog. You slice it kinda thin, lightly salt and pepper it, dip it in flour and fry it in lard until it is just done. Like @Yvonne Smith said, if you cook it too long, it's like shoe leather. Serve it with collards, baked sweet potato and corn bread. It don't get no better than that. We had a family gathering yesterday and somebody brought a batch of fried chicken livers from a restaurant. They were sooooo good. I 'bout made a pig of myself.
Same here. I was practically forced fed that gawd-awful beef, calf, and (even worse) pork liver as a kid, and developed such a hatred for it I never touched liver til about ten years ago. Had breaded and fried chicken liver and smoked brown onion at a restaurant...love at first bite. I now fix my own, and do a better job. Still cannot stand beef or calf liver (it has an aftertaste chicken liver doesn't have), and both are tough. Nothing a meat tenderizer gavel wouldn't fix, but why bother when there is chicken liver?
@Neville Telen Knowing of your own (I think) penchant for things technical, I imagine you already know of the "good-bad" aura liver presents. One of nature's most-perfect foods nutrient-wise, most unhealthful OTOH because of high cholesterol content (if that truly matters, I'm divided on it). Frank