About

My Offal Experiment is both literal and metaphorical.

Originally my aim was to document the development of my taste for the odder animal parts: liver, heart, brain.  The more I read, thought, tasted, the more offal bled into other parts of food culture.  The term, according to cookbook author Jennifer Mclagan, describes meat deemed so worthless that it was left on the side of the road if it fell off the cart on the way to market.  Odd bits and organ meats lost their value as consumers increasingly chose the easy to prepare prime cuts; cuts that challenged neither their cooking skill nor their palate.

This led me to wonder about the other food practices, cultures, methods we are throwing away as we speed towards an increasingly industrialized, standardized food culture?  What does it mean when our palates no longer appreciate strong, clear flavours?  When the same apple is found at a thousand of the same stores across the nation?  When our food no longer speaks of place or time or season or history?

These questions inform my desire to not only expand my palate but also my journey into the guts of food culture.