Mystery Meat

I was always raised in a house of "Eat it or starve". There was absolutely no room for picky eaters, and so generally speaking, I'll eat anything. However, I draw a line at cafeteria food. I absolutely give myself right to be picky in the face of food that is cooked with an emphasis on quantity over quality. Most of the time the food in our cafeteria is fairly normal stuff, but yesterday we had something a little different. Different enough that one of the girls from our lab group felt the need to warn me about it as we were waiting in line.

I got some interesting guesses on facebook: horse steak, liver, kidneys, pigs feet, chicken gizzards, escargot...But the winner is Jan for correctly guessing Tongue! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I ate cow tongue, and I liked it. In retrospect, I'm glad the girl warned me what it was because I'm not sure I would've known otherwise. It just looks like a piece of beef, and it really doesn't have a very unusual flavor. Furthermore, I would it eat it again. My labmates kept asking how I liked it, as if expecting me to be grossed out, but it really was fine. It was just like any other piece of beef. So I will echo Andrew Zimmern of the travel channel, "If it looks good, eat it."