Long, wet, and full of blood

You know, this day wouldn't have been bad in the least if I'd had the sense to get a decent night's sleep. But my staying up late exploring Southern German cuisine did pay off in the end: I have found a meat dish I will not eat! Yes, you heard me right: As of yet, I have no plans to nosh on Bavarian stuffed spleen.

Apparently, whatever the spleen does, it's a big depot for red blood cells, so in theory this would probably taste something like a blood sausage, which I love. But between the nauseating pictures in my Culinaria Germany from Könemann and my own associations with "spleen" as something toxic which needs to be vented, it's not an organ meat I'll be wrapping my tongue around anytime soon. Cow's udder is also probably something whose time is not yet come as far as my palate is concerned, but I could perhaps be talked into that.

We did spend a lot of time talking about food yesterday. I ran into Uncle Betty and Santo picnicking on the grass and catching up quickly turned into an exchange of culinary tips. Later, they joined me and monshu on the deck for a drink and we picked up where we'd left off. Much dissing of Midwestern cuisine ensued (although there were a few licks taken at those asparagus-worshipping nuts-in-everything freaks on the West Coast).

From time to time, we were buzzed by a large, low-flying army plane. Any idea what that's all about? The Air and Water Show isn't for another three weeks, so we jokes about smiling and posing for our snapshots on Google Maps.

Finding my head again or losing it completely

While we're on the subject of German food, here's something fresh and light that should get that spleeny taste out of your mouth:

I can't tell if I'm closer than ever to rediscovering one of my favourite dishes from my student days in Germany or if I'm only mired deeper into confusion. One of the regular side-dishes as the Mensa (university cafeteria) I regularly ate at in Freiburg was a salad consisting of entire heads of lettuce. They were small--bite size, in fact--and consisted of smooth-edged, spoon-shaped leaves. I remember this being called Kopfsalat ("head salad") and assumed it came from the fact that the heads were eaten whole rather than being plucked apart.

But an article I was reading on Badener cuisine mentioned Nüssli (Standard German Feldsalat) as a popular local green. A trip to Wikipedia informs me that this is a dialect name for what in the States I've always heard called mâche. But I was startled to see in the pictures of it the closest similarities to this aforementioned "Kopfsalat" I've ever seen. It's been so long, I can't remember the taste well enough to confirm that it had the "nutty" flavour supposedly associated with mâche (the Badisch name actually means "little nut"), but that would explain why I ate it so readily. If I've had mâche in this country, it's only been as leaves in a mix, never as whole heads, which is why I would never have made a connexion earlier.

But, so far, my research hasn't turned up any instances of "Kopfsalat" being used to describe Valerianella locusta, only Lactuca sativa var. capitata which is--of all things--a close relative of iceberg. Now you know that the tasty green I've been pining for all these years couldn't possibly have anything to do with nasty old iceberg, so I'm vexed. Where to turn now? To a friendly greengrocer who will sell me whole heads of mâche for a pretty penny for a tableside taste test, I guess.