Odd bits & offal
There is something unusual here. Here I am, discussing all the ways in which I'm different from everybody else in the world because I so strongly dislike various things that other people eat, and I'm going to come up with something I like for a change — something some people don't like.
But not very much.
Offal includes heart, kidneys, and liver and these are parts of animals that some people in this world — and I refer here to some carnivores, not to vegetarians — apparently dislike! I'm not sure who. Fine. But one reason some dislike them is perhaps the “tubes” left in the meat. Well heart, kidneys, and liver are in the live animal all about blood, and the tubes are the blood vessels. So they are unavoidable in the whole organ but they can be avoided — more or less — on the plate. I like liver paté, which is mostly guaranteed to have no tubes in.
So, I am not one who avoids those three, under the right conditions (braised with onions, say); but I avoid all other odd bits. The term offal applies only to internal organs, and as I write this the Wikipedia article on Offal defines offal as “the entrails and internal organs of a butchered animal”. However, it then says further down the page:
“ In some parts of Europe, brain, chitterlings or andouilles (pig's large intestine), trotters (feet), gizzard, heart, head (of pigs or calves), kidney, liver, "lights" (lung), sweetbreads (thymus or pancreas or both), tongue, snout (nose), and tripe (stomach) from various mammals are common menu items.”
Now, that list rather mixes up internal organs and extremities of the outer animal. Yet it doesn't matter. I do not eat any of those bits — or any not mentioned there at all — except heart, kidneys, and liver, and perhaps tongue, bought (of course) already cooked, cold and sliced and eaten only after carefully removing any jelly from each slice. Tripe? forget it. Yuck.