February is my least favorite month - it is cold and often dark and dreary. It is a perfect time to escape through writing (or a good book, but that doesn't pay the bills!) so I work on writing coursework or some creative writing when I feel inspired. Another thing I am trying to do during these dreary days is to keep a journal of what new tidbits I am learning, because I believe we learn something new every day, and I'm hoping to track that in some sort of consistent way. So I hunker down and settle myself in with the dogs and get to work. I don't mind being cooped up inside if I can get comfy and write in front of the fire, but often the time sitting idle and thinking leads me to noticing things liked chipped paint and dirty walls, so I start cleaning and redecorating and it distracts me from my work. At least I am being productive, I suppose, and it gets me through the winter blah's. Pinterest is another major distraction, but because of it I am getting my cabinets organized, learning how to make beautiful braids, learning how to live healthier, and finding excellent new recipes.
This weekend we decided to try a recipe for pate' that I found. I learned that liver is disgusting. I am sure that in the past I have eaten pate' and not been repulsed, but I should have known right from the start that trying to make my own would not end well. Our friends raise pigs and cows and chickens, so much of the meat we get is from their farm, and often the packages from the butcher contain odds and ends such as livers and such. So after staring at these packages marked LIVER for a while, I finally decided that I would do some research. There were many recipes with chicken livers, but I have pork livers, which didn't seem to be the preferred choice. My husband tried to contribute something he read about the liver being the place where the body filters out all the bad stuff, and so it may not really be something we want to eat, but after years of hearing how some people love liver and onions and liverwurst and chopped liver, I shut him out and pressed on. I finally found some articles that claimed the benefits of liver for it's high iron content, so if you have an iron deficiency, a snack of pate' and crackers would be okay. I chose a recipe and dove in.
The livers were pre-sliced, which was good because if I had to cut into this wine-colored bloody chunk I might not have continued. That said, once I had sliced it into one inch chunks the counter resembled a horror movie. I started onions and butter simmering on the stove (smells okay so far, this isn't going to be bad, onions and butter and then garlic make everything ok, right?) and once the onions reached that nice caramel color and everything was smelling delicious, I added the liver. Instant gross-ness is all I can say. Suddenly my kitchen smelled like the barn where the cows live (which is odd because this was pork liver...) and I knew there was no way this was going to end up edible. But I pressed on.
The recipe said that the liver was done when its juices were clear. I kept waiting for it to smell better. I'm not sure how long it was before I finally decided that no matter how long I cooked it there wasn't going to be a point when it smelled better, so I turned it off and left it to cool. The next step involved the food processor and cream and brandy, so maybe there was still hope!
After some debate with my husband about the size of our food processor (do you think this is really a small one? do they make them bigger? yes, I think the ones on TV are larger than ours? no we shouldn't try to fit all of that in at once...) we added half the contents of the skillet and turned on the machine. Once we had mush, we added cream and brandy, and more salt (salt has GOT to make this better right?) and we tasted. I wish I had a camera ready to catch my husband's face (and I'm sure mine) as it registered utter distaste. We added a little more cream, a little more brandy, salt, pepper, and tried it on fresh sliced baguettes... still gross. So we called the dogs, and the concoction went into serving-size mason jars to spoil the pups for a few days.
Overall it was not a total loss, I still have faint memory of the fancy pate' I'd eaten when I was younger that I didn't hate, and I learned a bit about livers and I have quenched the desire to ever cook them again. Another lesson this taught me is that I am so very grateful to live in a time and civilization where we do not have to rely on entrails for sustenance. While I appreciate the benefits of non-processed meats and poultry, I also don't feel guilty when the 'spare parts' are discarded. We are all in a better place.
