From The Joy of Cooking: Chitterlings, also known as "Chitlins," the small intestine of a hog, are most popular in the South or in places where authentic soul food is on the menu. Chitterlings are also the base for andouillette, a tripe and chitterling sausage very popular in France. To be specific, chitterlings are the small intestines of a young pig, which are emptied while still warm, turned inside out, and thououghly cleaned. The mucous covering is scraped away and completely removed. Chitterlings are very strong in both flavor and odor.
Basically Chitlins are the lutefisk of soul food. They smell like so strongly of pig poo I have to cook them outside of the house. Like Lutefisk chitlins are treasured by its fans. If your food doesn't scare you once in a while you aren't eating right.
Half the challenge of making Chitlins is finding good quality product in a reasonable sized package. Aunt Bessie's Pork Chitterlings are the best quality chitlins I have found. I found them at Coopers grocery in Chaska MN and find it funny that they are imported from Denmark.
Unlike the chitlins in a big frozen bucket from cub these needed little to no cleaning of the mucous coating.
When completely filled with water each piece held about 750ml of water.
After turning each one inside out to rinse and clean it I cut it open for the first simmer of one hour. To help with the smell I added three onions cut up.
The super strong pig poop smell forced a move to the garage. The second simmer is in new water with three new onions and for three more hours.
After four hours of simmering in two sets of water they are cut into 1 1/5 inch pieces to be sauted in ghee and olive oil.
Ghee is clarified butter that has been cooked a little longer and has a slightly nutty flavor. The liquid is extra virgin olive oil.
The chitlins were sauteed until light brown. I did this first batch a little hot and a little too long. They were still great and just like the last time I made chitlins they gave me a weird sense of euphoria that spread to slowly to each limb. Hot sauce is a must and I regret not having greens available as a side dish.
I sauteed another set of the cooked chitlins tonight with ghee and olive oil but more slowly and carefully. Wow. The experience is like perfectly cooked pork flavored squid. Not rubbery but rather like al dente pasta with a little crisp browning on the outside.
This video taken from the site Pink Tentacle is like Japan? metal, Primus, Rage against the machine goodness. It is safe for my work but not for Heath's.
Well it looks like the fancy pants culinary store Williams-Sonoma finally caught up with Ella's acute scene of gastronomic trends. They now sell a pancake puff maker. Of course they don't call their product a "pancake puff maker." No Williams-Sonoma needed a much more northern European sounding name to get their clientele to buy. Apparently Ella is in possession not of an "As seen on TV" pancake puff maker but rather a "traditional Danish ebelskiver." Of course Ella wisely chose her puff maker over the ebelskiver because of its seasoned cast iron construction, jelly and pudding injector, powdered sugar shaker and most important of all extra turing sticks. Because if you are serious about your pancake puffs (ebelskivers) your going to need them.
These two images are all around the net and you may have seen them already but they are just too powerful for me to ignore. Yes this is a real church and they are praying with SUV's up by the altar. The church pic is really much better full size with the caption in readable size. Click it to find out.
A pic taken from a good blog called dirt blog that has a lot of Salsa bikes on fun rides.
Shepard Fairey is the person who created this original image. He is also behind the OBEY posters I have been seeing around town.
The OBEY poster is a rework of his first work that brought him to fame. The Andre the Giant Has a Posse stickers.
Proof that 1986 skater culture is now in control of the world.
Humans have 46 chromosomes--22 identical pairs, and a pair of sex chromosomes (XX for women, XY for men).
I pride myself on being able to go with my girls anywhere they want to go in their topic of play and enjoy the process. Today I found my limit. After being with Heath and his family all day I was really excited about spending an hour or so playing with Ella tonight before bed time. We went to the basement and started good with a game where I throw a ball to her while she jumps on a mini trampoline. With the ball in the air I call out what body part she needs to hit it back to me with. It could be her hands, head, belly, bum, chin, elbow etc. Once done with this game she says she wants to play Princess's with me. Princes. The moment she said it all creative passion deflated from my soul like a popped balloon. I wanted to find an angle on the Princes world I could connect with her on but could not. As a result I have come to the conclusion that playing princes sucks and I can not connect with Ella in this area of her life. Some times a dad needs to watch football while his girl plays by her self.
These pics are not in chronological order because for some reason I can't work my blog program. As a result please view them as part of a space/time continuum merging.
This is Heath riding my Salsa La Cruz. He feels stretched out but sure doesn't look it.
This is under 494 as it goes over the Minnesota river.
This hike was a little over an hour long on the land between lake Ann and lake Lucy in Chanhassen a few days ago. 
Getting drenched in your pajamas is what you get if you dare venture near the tub monster.
I may not be in Iraq but I did wake up to gun shots two times this morning. There is a different kind of battle going on in the woods this week and I found a victim who escaped with her freedom but not her life. I would have shut her eyes like in the movies but was afraid she would suddenly get up and scare the chitlins out of me.
Unlike the chitlins in a big frozen bucket from cub these needed little to no cleaning of the mucous coating.
When completely filled with water each piece held about 750ml of water.
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