Liver-Palooza…..not for the faint of heart or lily-livered.

The urban dictionary defines palooza as “an all out crazy party.”  One of the tweets referred to palooza as “a big Norwegian festival.”  Not sure either of those are entirely appropriate but this week was a Liver-Palooza for me after a long liver hiatus. I do have a lifetime of liver memories. When I was a child one of my mother’s requirements was that we cleaned our plates. That was not a bad thing if you liked what was on your plate. But that wasn’t always the case. Like when she decided to serve liver and onions for supper. My dad will not eat liver and I know for a fact my mother never required him to clean his plate on liver nights. I remember her putting strawberry jam on our liver to help it go down. I’m probably correct in assuming that I am the only remaining person in my family that actually voluntarily eats liver.

Anyone who was on Weight Watchers in the early 70s like I was will remember Jean Nidetch decided that, to lose weight successfully and to get the body’s requirement of vitamins and iron, one meal a week had to include a serving of liver the size of a deck of cards. By then I was able to eat it without the strawberry jam.

My husband frequently tells people about one of our first dinner dates in Chicago when he took me to the Italian Village, a favorite place of his, and I order liver and onions.  As I recall, the Italian Village did a great job on the liver!

This most recent liver palooza came about as a thank you to a good friend for a huge favor he did for me. I typically don’t cook liver because it is one of the very few foods my husband won’t eat. Liver and Lima beans. (I don’t cook Lima beans either.) I invited our friends to dinner Saturday night and cooked liver and onions and bacon for him and for me and I made some pretty awesome chef salads for his wife and my husband. The liver tasted great. The trick is to not cook it for so long that it looks and cuts like a piece of shoe leather. It should be a little pink in the center and tender. I soak it in milk for about a hour, dry it off, dredge it in seasoned flour and fry it in my cast iron pan in some of the bacon drippings.

Lots of onion and good quality liver.

Tuesdays are grocery shopping days and we stopped at a little Amish market for organic milk. My friend and I both spied Koegel’s Braunschweiger in the cooler and we both purchased a piece. It’s been a couple decades I think since I had Braunschweiger. Which brings me to today’s lunch.

Braunschweiger is a German word that, in America, refers to liver wurst. I started to read how liver wurst is made and then I stopped. You might not want to read about it either.

Today for lunch I made myself a sandwich.

Sour dough bread, Hellmans mayo, red onion, tomato, lettuce, and, of course, my liver wurst. Some assembly required.

I ate my sandwich along with a nice hot cup of coffee on the back porch. A solo picnic. In honor of Jean Nidetch I substituted lettuce for the top of my sandwich.

After this week I will probably have another long liver hiatus. Except perhaps for the occasional crackers and pate.