Mince Pies

I loves me a mince pie for Christmas, and I bet it's been twenty years since I've tasted one!! Now, as to whether the American incarnation of mince pie even deserves the name, I can't say.....American is all I've seen.But the black pudding I once had in Aberdeen was mighty tasty, so you can't say I'm not game to try other folks' cuisine.

I once saw "pork organ fried rice" on a menu in Singapore. What bothered me was that the previous ten or so entries had been for fried rice with pretty much every pig organ that I would have even briefly considered trying.

Grits is made from hominy, which is made by soaking dried maize kernels in a lime solution. It's one of those foods that people either love or hate, with no in-between.I love grits, hominy, and posole, which is just Mexican hominy.A cousin of my wife's from Monroe, Louisiana was sent to Boston, Massachusetts at the age of three for some delicate heart surgery. The day after, he told his nurse, "my tummy hurts!" She replied that that was because he was hungry, and that the hospital would fix him whatever he wanted to eat because he was such a brave little patient. He thought a minute and said, "I want deer meat and grits!"They had to fix a second choice.

Tripe and tripas both. The latter is apparently udder, not intestine. And it's delicious.

Youngest Daughter did that, more or less, with a couple of other girls - she said Hungary was wonderful, and that you MUST SEE the church made entirely of the bones of Black Plague victims. (It might be in the Czech Republic, though.....)

That's what daughter said, too. Creepy and beautiful.

"Hey where did you get that photo of me from?"'I would have told you, but you ended your sentence in a preposition... 'The proper reply here is, "Let me rephrase that: Hey where did you get that photo of me from, asshole?"Be sure to tip your waitstaff..............