Yes indeedy, baby mice wine.  It’s wine with, well, baby mice in it.

Found in China and Korea, this deliciousness is believed to be a cure-all health tonic.  Koreans in particular believe it can cure anything from asthma to liver disease.

This wine isn’t just baby mouse flavoured, or have one baby mouse inside.  Oh no, it has a whole pile of them, only a few days old, floating around at the bottom of the bottle.  Nasty huh?  Well it gets worse – the mice are plucked from their mother’s teet, placed in the bottle alive and drowned.  Perhaps that improves the flavour?  

Baby Mice Wine

One thing I haven’t clarified is whether the mice are eaten/drunk along with the wine, or just filtered out.  Surely if they are the source of the ‘goodness’, they should be crunched upon and ingested along with the wine.  

Baby Mouse Wine

If you squint a bit, you can see on the label:

Cholest. 3500mg 1170%

Yes, that does say 3,500mg of Cholesterol, which is 1,170% of your recommended daily intake. This product also contains Sodium Nitrite, a colour fixative and preservative for meat products – but interestingly, four grams are lethal to you or me, yet it can also be used as an antidote for cyanide poisoning.

And there’s not just one brand of Pork Brains in Milk Gravy, oh no.  You get a choice between Armour and Rose brand!

Oddly, the only recipe for Pork Brains in Gravy I could find (it seems that Pork Brains are also popular in their uncanned form in Asia, but we’ll cover that in a separate post) was submitted by The Honorable Howard Coble, United States Congressman, North Carolina to the Congress Cooks site.  Here is his recipe!  It even contains bacon grease in case the brains didn’t have enough cholesterol in them!!

When I was a youngster, my mom used to prepare Brains N’ Eggs for breakfast. It was a fairly regular breakfast, not at all unusual. So that’s when I started eating them. I’ve enjoyed them ever since, but I can’t find any on Capitol Hill. I’ll admit the name of the dish is not the most appetizing, but try ‘em, you might like ‘em!

Ingredients

2-1/2 Tablespoons bacon grease

4 eggs

1/3 cup whole milk

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 can (5 ounce) pork brains in gravy (Rose Brand preferred)

Melt bacon grease in an iron skillet on low heat. Add pork brains to heated grease. Stir with a fork. Add salt and pepper and stir. Whisk eggs and milk together. Increase heat and add egg mixture to brains. Scramble to desired consistency. Serve immediately over toast. For a truly southern dish, serve with grits and apple butter.

Serves: 2