Titillating Tumbleweed Tastes

While shopping for groceries at a Walmart in Hattiesburg, Mississppi I saw this in the snack aisle:

The ingredients list liquid hot sauce.
Doesn't sauce imply it's a liquid?

Yes, a big ol' jar of lips, with the hair still on them.  They were in the snack aisle right next to 743 linear feet of various potato chip choices.

I'm not adverse to trying weird foods, even ones with moustaches, but I was unwilling to buy a whole jar of lips when I think one would do the trick, so I don't know what these taste like.  Also, I'm cheap.

One of the fun things about trucking is the ability to try lots of diverse foods.  Last week in Glenwood Springs Colorado, in a dumpy little Mexican grocery/butcher/gas station, I had really good tacos.  

It was one of those places that we wouldn't go to on purpose; we were in a black hole of eateries and in a time/space/trucking continuum that dictates that the only available food at the moment and space we had is either sandwiches or gas station food.

*Aside.  Sandwiches for dinner make me mad.

So I wasn't really looking forward to dinner at La Glorieta, the little diner attached to the gas station.  I wasn't expecting much from the place so I figured I'd try something different and ordered tacos de lengua.  Yep, beef tongue tacos.  

What a surprise they were!  Nothing like I had imagined, the meat was juicy, tender, flavorful, and it looked like roast beef.  In fact, it looked and tasted so different than what I expected, I thought they were just messing with me, giving the gringo boring old roast beef and calling it tongue, laughing at me behind my back.  (I'm not paranoid.  Why do you ask?  Do you know something I don't??)

I was so paranoid intrigued, I looked up tacos de lengua online and found lots of pictures and recipes that described what I had been served.  But remember; just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.  

I didn't have my camera so I stole
this from Gourmet Magazine, where
you can also find a recipe. You know, for the next
time you have a 3lb beef tongue on hand.

Other foods, in the non-face category, I have tried during our trucking adventures are:

Liver pudding, which I wrote about here.

Snapping turtle, another roast-beefy looking thing but not so tasty, which I wrote about here.

A whole fried quail.  What was weird about this was that it was the whole bird, all bird looking and stuff, but without the bones.  It was in Louisiana. I'm assuming voodoo was involved.

Pickled quail eggs. They were so tiny, like Smurf eggs only not blue. Because Smurfs are mammals, obviously.

Kentucky cornbread, which is not corn bread but a flat corn pancake. They should stick to bourbon.

Velveeta sushi, but not on purpose, which I wrote about here.

Once, in a truck stop in Texas I ordered beef tips over noodles and got what looked like a peice of pterodactyl spinal cord in the sauce.

To really illustrate my adventuresome appetite and show you that I will eat (almost) anything, anywhere, I give you this:

And

Surprisingly, these murals on the side of a truck stop in New Mexico didn't spoil my appetite.  I ate here despite the "art", titillating though it may be.