A few months back we bought half a beef from my wife’s hairdresser. To be clear, Dawn doesn’t go to a meat locker to get her hair done, although that would be an interesting business model. “Moo-Mousse” perhaps? Maybe “Cowlicked”? I always found the old gibe, “he looks like he combed his hair with a pork chop” to be humorous. In the battle for clientele, “Cowlicked” could use it as a smear campaign against the hair-and-hock-hacks at “Moo-Mousse”.

Actually, we bought half a cow, but upon discovering that half a cow is not all that playful, we settled on half a beef. Maybe I should investigate my wife’s hairdresser a bit? Ensure that there isn’t any casual chit-chat going on regarding half a husband. You never know what they’re capable of when they get all hopped up on hair dye fumes.

We were asked if we wanted any of the offal, and being adventurous (idiotic), I said we would take the liver, heart, tail and tongue. I didn’t ask what the owner of the other half of our cow got, but through the process of elimination, I would decline any dinner party invitations from them.

There are a couple of reasons why I requested the offal, reasons that I will not entertain the next time my wife’s hairdresser calls for a hit on one of their cows. One reason is that I remembered opening the freezer at my grandparents' house to grab a green Fla-Vor-Ice freeze pop, and seeing a massive frozen cow tongue stretched out to its full length in plastic wrap.

Lacking the ability to resist idiotic inclinations, I held the tongue in front of my mouth and chased my brother around until Grandma Rose suggested otherwise. Oh, if I had a nickel for every time I heard, “Don’t run with a cow tongue in your mouth, you could choke.” A grandma must really question where she went wrong when she hears those words coming out of her mouth.

Knucklehead nostalgia aside, the other reasons for my offal request were academic and curiosity based. I teach a lot of health and nutrition courses, and offal is touted as healthy and nutritious, so I wanted some personal offal experience to share with my students.

Personal offal experience number one, was attempting to make my own liverwurst. I like liverwurst, what I made was not liverwurst. Possibly, liverworst, and most definitely awful. Our dog, who normally devours first and asks questions second, hesitated before helping me dispose of the grisly evidence.

Personal offal experience number two, was perpetrated by my wife. Inspired by the desire to create freezer space, Dawn pushed aside the heart and tongue to wrangle the last of the liver from the depths of the freezer. A liver and onion recipe was retrieved from our old friend, Chef Google, the very same chef that led me down the wayward liverwurst path. So it goes.

We reached through the steamy mist rising from our plates, clinked our wine glasses, tried not to think of Sir Anthony Hopkins suggestion of “fava beans and a nice chianti”, and dug in…sort of. The first few bites were overwhelmingly “ok”, and then the not-so-subtle taste and texture revealed itself, and the culinary experience began its rapid descent. We attempted to slow the descent by demoting our wine to mouthwash, but one can only ask so much from a bargain bin Riesling.

They say that when a pack of wolves brings down a prey that the alpha wolf gets the liver, and the rest of the pack gets the meat. That’s taking one for the team. Perhaps the alpha wolf is the wolf that was absent on the day the pack made nominations and voted for the alpha wolf position?

“Hey Wally, we elected you alpha wolf at the pack meeting last night.” Exasperated, Wally exclaims, “Meeting? What meeting?” “Oh, I guess you didn’t get the message, must have got lost in all the howling and such, but yeah, the vote was unanimous. Congratulations.”

Our dog won’t miss the next pack meeting.