Day 59

Blood & Tongue Head Cheese: After looking at my last few days of posts, I decided today that it was time to shake things up a bit. I met a friend for coffee today over near Buford Highway, so I decided to swing by the BHFM afterwards to see if I could find anything out of the ordinary. I strolled past the Eastern European deli counter, since I'd noticed a lot of great looking meats/sausages there last week. And then, I saw it: blood & tongue head cheese. Awesome. If you've paid attention to my past postings, you know I love stuff like this, so I told the attendant to slice me off a quarter pound.

If you don't know what head cheese is, do yourself a favor and look it up online. Let's just say it isn't cheese. This one was comprised mainly of congealed blood (not sure if it was pork or beef) and thin slices of tongue. I also noticed some nice chunks of fat mixed in with the rest. I was really excited about trying, so I brought it straight home and tried a slice. Really tasty, believe it or not. Imagine a more savory piece of mortadella or bologna, with a lot more flavor than both of those. I know you're probably thinking that anything made with blood as a primary ingredient couldn't possibly be good, but this definitely was. If you put it on a sandwich, you wouldn't know the difference between this and bologna, texture-wise.

I've learned over the years that appearances and names can be deceiving when talking about food. Sure, blood and tongue head cheese sounds gnarly, but if you can get past that, you'll be glad you tried.