I’m not yet 30 and have never eaten Jello. Or Spam.
However, I have heard food horror stories from boomer parents regarding the fare served to their parents. Among them, an eastern European dish containing pig feet in a gelatinous substance. You could actually see that they were, um, feet. I have never seen the word; it sounded like cochina. Maybe that’s from the French for pig; or akin to the Italian for kitchen...maybe not since the folks who cooked it spoke Hungarian and Russian.
Also, they were known to float recognizable chicken feet in pots of soup.
My WW2 vet grandpa made some horrific coffee, for that matter. They still talk of it now and then.
And people killed their own chickens, right on their laps.
Today you may have to go to China to pick out live food, unless it’s something you can’t relate to at all, like a lobster.
Back to weird stuff, my cousin born in the 80’s recalls “pop rocks,” which crackled in the mouth, and an uncle older than that recalls drinking candy juice from wax tubes, and wax lips you could eat. I’m not sure how that works. They don’t sound traumatized when they talk about such things, but frankly it’s a little triggering.
PS: Great-grandfather put tobacco wads in his mouth, took them out and left them lying around, put them back in later. He didn’t have to, being quite rich later in life.
The term you are looking for is “pickled pig feet” which along with pickled eggs, whole dill pickles could be bought at the counter of a country store.
I remember the juice tubes; there were also little wax bottles of the stuff. Heck, I’m old enough to remember candy cigarettes and bubble-gum cigars.
...recognizable chicken feet in pots of soup....
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Chicken paws. Full of collagen and gels the soup. Today most people remove them before serving, but some cultures love them.
They do look odd, unless you never experienced home-butchered chicken.
When I was a young child, we stood at the stove while Mom carefully ladled out the unborn egg (the big ones, looked like a just-cracked egg w/no shell & usually there was just one like that) and poached it in the soup as a treat. Wonderful and I still miss them, since we stopped keeping chickens. (Can’t stand to clean the coop).
Looked it up. Eyerlekh (little eggs). only I remember them as flat, like a cracked egg, not oval.
Back in the day, when there were independent butcher shops, pigs feet were shown up front in the showcase.
I guess they were quite the delicacy, yet.
And I have my Grandparents cleaver to prove it.
and wax lips you could eat. I’m not sure how that works. “
The wax lips were full of flavor and sugar. You chewed them until all the goodie was gone and spit out the leftover wax.