CHORIZO...

I've gotten in the habit lately of looking at food ingredients and origin (trying to buy locally...at least on the west coast). I typically put foods back on the grocery store shelf that are too processed, contain high fructose corn syrup, artifical sweeteners, etc. Well, last night I was gathering ingredients for a Southwestern Chicken Pot Pie that I'm making for co-op dinner tonight. The recipe called for 3/4 pounds of chorizo (pronounced chore-EET-zoh). Until yestderday, I loved chorizo. If you aren't familiar, it is a spicy pork sausage seasoned with paprika. The spanish version uses a smoke pork and the Mexican version uses fresh pork. This sausage often comes in large links which you can break apart or leave solid to cook. Sounds good, right? I guess I've never looked at the ingredients before because I'm certain I would not have ever even tried chorizo if I knew that it contained parts of the animals head such as cheeks, salivary glands or lymph nodes. Lymph nodes??? Blech. I almost barfed right there in the store...then threw the sausage into my cart. Lymph nodes act as filters or traps for foreign particles and contain white blood cells, you know? John assured me that not all chorizo is prepared like this. I'm pretty sure that this is grosser than hot dogs or regular sausage. John reminded me that in days of yore, the entire animal was eaten or used. Today we only eat a small percentage of the animal by comparison. Typically, I would say eating/using anything less than the whole animal is a waste. If an animal is to be slaughtered, why not use the whole thing? I think for me, chorizo may be an inspiration to become a vegetarian.