Kind of going back to the first part of this thread, but nevertheless on a tangent.

Coming from a wartime, immigrant, European and large family...Whew!...though we didn't raise our own stock, we nevertheless ate lots of bits and pieces which were at the time, quite alien to Aussies...either alien or dog meat.  lol

Pigs' feet.

Beef and pork Cheek.

Lungs from some animal, no idea which.

Tripe.

Many of these things are served up nowadays in gourmet restaraunts.

Dad went fishing a lot in those days, and brought home lots of flathead, which was used for bait by the Aussie guys.

Mum would cook the heads and skeletons to make a beautiful soup, and the heads would be placed in a bowl,  in the middle of the table to help ourselves.  yum!

Now it's $35.00 a kilo!

Koko, Dad use to kill a sheep, and we would use most anything on that sheep, not much was left, we didn't eat tripe, but to add to your list was tongue, and brains, (I hated the brains Yuk)  but that of course was back in the early 50's, I couldn't eat anything like that now, I guess I've got too woosy LOL

Never ate dog meat, don't think I could come at that......LOL

Boy, nothing like a little light conversation to improve the digestion. As it happens, you and the pancreas bloc are both right. There are two kinds of sweetbreads: stomach sweetbreads (also known as heart or belly sweetbreads), which are an animal's pancreas, and neck (AKA throat or gullet) sweetbreads, an animal's thymus gland. (The animal in question can be a hog or calf or just about any other large mammal, I gather.) They're called sweetbreads for the obvious reason that if you called them thymus glands or whatever you couldn't give the damn things away. The art of euphemism goes back a long way.

From http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/395/what-are-sweetbreads-really

Greek friends used to cook pig lung, liver, heart and kidney in the pan with tomato as a hearty treat. That was the only use of lung in the domestic kitchen that I knew of.

It was common for Australians to insist on getting the giblets of slaughtered chooks for stuffing or separate soup.  Come to think of it, the British and European culinary heritage of many Aussies included all sorts of offal, brains, tripe, pigs trotters and so on.  Then there were the sausages, pressed meats (tongue) and brawn, that included all sorts of trimmings from pig, sheep and bovine heads - ears, lips you name it.

Regarding food, the method preparing from base ingredients was rapidly lost post WW2 and anything that took a bit of preparation time was dumped.  Soon, no-one knew how to make sausages, brawn and whatever. Blood is another good example - yet it is essential for a tasty pie.

For Deanna's benefit, the only animal I tried to sidestep butchering was sheep.  Hold on, camel is now on my list. Well, if it goes beyond the removal of the best cuts that is.  No whole camel feast or the best bit of the hump for me either.  Not waiting to see it served whole in restaurants.

Give it a few more years and population pressures will make offal popular again, but most people will be buying it extended with flavouring, corn starch and other even cheaper ingredients.

Yep, forgot about the heart, had that as well, as I said, not much went to waste, don't remember the term 'sweetbread' but I was very young at the time.

Australians eat a lot of heart.  It is the meat that makes co-called 5 star mince 'lean'.

Nautilus, no I never had to kill our sheep but when I got older Dad would kill and I would skin and gut and next morning would cut it up into it's respective cuts.  Couldn't do it now though, been away from the farm too long.  Haven't touched camel, (that I'm aware of) not on my 'to taste' list

Camel - prime cuts only from a young camel.  Tougher, drier and gamey.  Cook long and slow in a casserole.  When done, eat the camp oven instead.  No, only joking, just slow cook.

Deanna,

You can buy lean whole topside (most topside is lean) very cheaply because it is a bit dry for frying.  Of course it is dry, that is because it is low fat.

The bulk pack is normally vacuum packed so it can age for a couple of months in your (cold) fridge if you don't put a hole in the cryovac pack.  A bit of ageing and it is like butter in the mouth for casseroles and the like.

Buy the $100 electric mincer from Aldi and go for it for premium mince.  You know what goes into your mince (no added preservative for instance) and you can package it , deep freeze and use later.

koko,

Thanks

Yep got a mincer Nautilus, just not an electric one. LOL. We take cryovaced meat away with us when we go holidaying, all done up in meal size is handy and great.