Olympus High School Class of 2000 Alumni Website

As part of my 101 in 1001 project, I’ve been on the hunt for meat that I’ve never had before. I’m a big time carnivore (going to the zoo makes me hungry) so the challenge of finding new meat was actually pretty difficult. After scouring the grocery stores and butcher shops here in Utah, I figured my best bet would be to wait until I was on the coast and then find a fish I’d never had.

Well, as it turns out, the coast offers lots of meats that I’ve never had before, as long as you’re shopping in the right place. When we got to California last week, we stopped in at an Asian grocery store to pick up some snacks and I was greeted with a whole case of meats that didn’t sound familiar. I debated long and hard about whether to get a pair of beef hearts or a pound of pork bung (don’t ask, I have no idea), but ultimately I went for the weirdest of the weird: pork uterus.

I’ll have you know, my family eats some really weird stuff and I usually only get to eat certain things when I’m in California, including fresh crab backs (the fat lining the shell is edible) and little fish fried up like french fries.

BUT, even though I would think of my relatives as being adventurous eaters, they were all grossed out by the pig uterus. Super grossed out. As in, tried to pay me not to eat it.

I would not be deterred, even when I pulled it out of the package and found out that it was even weirder than I thought it was. Apparently a uterus is a V-shaped organ attached to the cervix that sort of resembles a wrinkly tube.

Nobody else seems to be into eating pork uterus, because I couldn’t find a single recipe online, so I had to sort of wing it. I sliced it up, cleaned it really well, and then heated up some oil, ginger, and green onion.

When I added the uterus pieces, they immediately turned white and started to shrink up and harden. This part was actually a little gross, because as the tissue constricted it squeezed all of the blood out of the tissue and into the pan, so I had to drain it a little bit. After a while, though, it just started to look like macaroni and I only had to add a little soy sauce and cook it for about five minutes before it was done. I didn’t want to overcook it, since it was getting harder and harder by the second.

Once it was in the bowl, it wasn’t scary anymore and it smelled really good…sort of like liver, but with a strong pork aroma. And the taste? Delicious! I’m serious, this stuff was really good! It was like rich, salty, pork-flavored calamari and I ate up half the bowl before my stomach started to tell me that I wasn’t supposed to be eating that much uterus all at once.

Unfortunately, I did have the worst dream that night about giving birth to a litter of children. So I think the uterus was a one-time meal, but hey! One more thing off my list!

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Adventures in Pork Uterus

The letter of the day is A. A for Amazing, Awesome, and Amazon.

I was downstairs cleaning up the kitchen this morning, when there was a knock at the door. Well, actually it was a tell-tale knock knock THUD, which means that the UPS guy has come to the door, knocked with one hand, and used his other hand to throw whatever package he brought at the door. I get a bunch of stuff from UPS and it’s always the same…and no matter how fast I run to the door, by the time I get there the guy is in the truck and gone. It’s the equivalent of being doorbell ditched.

Anyway, I heard the knock knock THUD and assumed that someone in the house had ordered something, since I wasn’t expecting anything. When I got the package, however, I saw that it was an Amazon package addressed to me. This immediately caused me to panic. I’m a big Amazon user and sometimes I order things and then forget about them, but since we’re done with all of our holiday shopping (and freshly broke because of it), I was worried that I had pre-ordered something and forgot about it.

So I brought the box in and opened it, expecting to find a gift for someone that I had accidentally already purchased another gift for. Instead, I found a gift wrapped package. I never get things gift wrapped from Amazon, since I’m cheapo and would rather just muddle through all that myself, so this was my first clue that I didn’t send myself this package.

The second clue was the note on the top:

That’s right. The package came from Kate, who has been over in Iraq for more than a month now. My sweet, lovely, wonderful friend took a break from defending our country and sent me a Christmas surprise:

It was good that she wasn’t here to watch me open it, because I totally burst into tears and I have a feeling she would have found that unpleasant. I know this because we have a lot in common and the last time I gave someone a gift and they started to cry in front of me, I wanted to take it back and go, “uh…I didn’t know you were going to do that…so I’m just going to leave this over here and maybe you can open it later when I’m not in front of you and forced to deal with your emoting.”

KATE, I LOVE YOU!!!! And I love my prairie goodness! This is even better than a stuffed camel!

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The letter of the day is A. A for Amazing, Awesome, and Amazon.

The other day I went to the grocery store to get some ingredients to make cookies. And by get ingredients I mean pick up a package of pre-made cookie dough. I don’t have the time to make homemade cookies. Or the patience.

Ok, so there I am with two big tubs* of cookie dough and a bunch of other random crap I really needed** and I notice this display at the end of my aisle.

These displays were created for people like me. The spontaneous/impulsive shopper. Yes, my arms might be full of groceries, but I will put them down to go back and pick up two large packages of Skittles and NEW Gummy Starbursts. That’s right, I said NEW Gummy Starbursts. New products are my favorite. And they were gummies. I heart gummy candies.

I am also the type of person that gets in their car and opens up the delectable treat they just bought. I was half way through the package of my NEW Gummy Starbursts by the time I made the 0.5 mile drive back home. And you know what, they were delicious.

*I know you are wondering why I bought two tubs of cookie dough. And that answer is quite simple. One for the party I was attending that night and one just for me. Naturally.

**Spaghetti, cereal and bread count as necessities. It’s pretty much all I eat. Well, that and raw cookie dough.

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This is why I don't allow myself to go grocery shopping