I love to eat beef liver fried with onions (or "liver and onions") for dinner. Annette humors me by making this dish for me every few birthdays as my "birthday dinner." Annette does not like this meal. None of my kids have ever liked this meal. Annette tried to convince them to eat the liver by dipping it in mustard. Even I don't like it that way!
We raised a steer every year to harvest for beef. When we slaughtered a steer, Dad always asked the butcher to save the liver for us. Mom would cook the liver with onions (and sometimes bacon).
My earliest memory of eating liver was at age 7 or 8. Mom and Dad went on a trip and left me and Cade with Aunt Geneal and Uncle AC. I do not remember Cory or Keri being with us. However, they were likely there given my age. One night at dinner with them, there was a serving plate that had some food I did not recognize. When Cade and I asked about it, Uncle AC said it was fried "beaver tail."
SIDE NOTE: Uncle AC would visit the ranch in the summer and trap beaver for their hides. A few weeks before the dinner event mentioned above, Uncle AC and Kirk (my cousin) visited the ranch to check the beaver traps. When they were done, they stopped by the house and brought us all out to see a beaver they had in the back of their pickup.
Since I had seen a beaver trapped by Uncle AC, I knew what a beaver tail looked like. Thus, the story about the meat on the plate being beaver tail was (to me) believable. Cade and I both tried the meat. It had a different taste, but I liked it. So, I agreed to eat a small piece for dinner.
Later, I learned that what I really ate was beef liver.
As I was older and realized that Mom cooked liver for dinner each time we harvested a beef, I came to look forward to this meal. Mom would frequently cook macaroni and cheese to eat with the liver. Thus, my memory of liver and onions is closely associated with macaroni and cheese.
One of my favorite liver and onion memories comes from when we lived in Tallahassee, Florida. I served in the bishopric with Denis Roberts. During our time serving together, Denis learned that I liked liver and onions. He found a restaurant in Tallahassee that served "all you can eat" liver and onions. He took me to dinner at that restaurant!
When we lived in Oklahoma (i.e., the kids were little), Annette cooked liver and onions for my birthday one year. I think Tanner was about 6 or 7. He was kind of skeptical about the liver as "real food" but agreed to try some because he saw me eating it.
He cut off a piece of liver, put it in his mouth, and started chewing. Then, he promptly spit the liver out on his plate! This is when Annette introduced mustard as a dipping sauce for the liver.
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