Liver!!

So with Daniel's many, many food allergies, we have been eating a lot of the same old foods. Chicken, potatoes, green beans. Oatmeal. Beans. More chicken, more potatoes, more green beans. Needless to say, I'm ready for a little variety. However, my primary concern is finding fattening foods that Daniel can, and will, eat, especially since he is currently not even big enough to make it on to the growth chart. Choices are limited when you can't have any dairy products, nuts, or wheat, all of which are the standard fare for fattening food. I have instead found myself reaching for animal fat and various meat products to try to bulk up the calorie count in Daniel's diet.

One of the new foods we have recently tried, which I have discovered is chock full of all kinds of vitamins and minerals, and fat, and protein, is liver. Yes. Liver. I know, it's not a food highly esteemed in today's food culture, and there are toxicity concerns especially when eating industrial liver, but I think it may be unfairly despised. Following some reading (library books and, of course, the internet), I purchased, at our lovely local farmer's market, a pastured pork liver. I thawed it (it was frozen when I bought it), and luckily stumbled upon a recipe for liver in a book I just happened to be reading.

I can honestly say I have never cooked liver before, and I have never handled a raw hunk of liver, that is, before I sliced open that package. It was squishy and slippery, and a sort of burgundy red color. I chopped my (farmer's market) bacon and cooked it, rendering the bacon fat into the pan, cooked my chopped onion in the bacon fat, and as the wonderful smell of bacon filled the kitchen, I took my knife and started cutting the liver into slivers. It was a little bit like trying to chop up a very large oyster, the same soft and slippery, yet textured feel. Finally I finished cutting and scraped it into my cornmeal coating, then the pan. The cutting board looked like I had butchered an animal on it. (Apparently the liver is a very bloody organ, which I find funny, as I have never before thought of my liver as being rich in blood.)

I got my dish assembled; we were ready to eat. I tasted it myself. Not bad! The generous taste of bacon fat only enhanced the deliciousness of the dish. Even better, Daniel ate it, and he actually seemed to like it. Nathan, on the other hand, tried one bite and then said, "Mommy, I don't like it." Over the next two days, I cooked liver two more times as we finished off the package. The liver was delicious, as long as it remained pink. A couple of pieces reached the gray, rubbery stage. Those nasty little chunks made me understand how liver probably got its reputation as a gross food. I came up with a little ditty to solve all liver eating dilemmas.

Liver cooked right,
Eater's delight.
Liver overcooked.
Better overlooked.

Love your liver!