54
D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A M A G A Z I N E • S U M M E R 2 0 2 4
I
'VE ALWAYS THOUGHT OF
MYSELF as an interesting,
sophisticated man of the
world. But lately, I've been
worrying that I'm just a
real simple hick with no
taste at all.
Contrary to what
you might think
looking at me
now, there was a
time when I was
a very picky eater. I
gave my mother no
end of trouble, refusing
to eat most of the vegeta-
bles she had canned or jarred.
This may in part be due to the
fact that, when I was a kid,
canned vegetables were often
indescribably gross masses of
wet green, yellow, or red fi-
ber. All too often, that can was
opened onto a bed of lettuce or
cottage cheese, or encased, jig-
gling, into a block of gelatin—
mixed with some mayonnaise,
of course.
Since then, there have been
many improvements in the field
of culinary arts,
for which I am
grateful and to
which I owe my
decidedly convex
waistline. Inventions
such as the frozen pizza, the Big
Mac, Pringles, and Pop-Tarts.
So maybe I'm not a gour-
met. But I'm willing to try just
about anything, even if I know
I'm not going to like it.
For instance, I'm about to
eat a bunch of different kinds of of-
fal, and I'm pretty sure I'm not going
to like that.
In 1943, LIFE magazine
spent the better part of six
pages trying to convince the
American reader that he or she
ought to try to include some
offal, or "variety meats" as they
were euphemistically referred
to, in their diet. This was, es-
sentially, a patriotic endeavor.
The upshot was this: our
boys were abroad fighting the
Axis Powers, so we ought to let
them have the real meat. We
could hardly send them to the
OLD BROKE RANCHER BY GARY SHELTON
THE OLD BROKE RANCHER ASKS:
IS OFFAL
Awful?
