This is the name of our family's Christmas party each year. It is actually the name of the drink that is made at the party.
So, I called my mom and got the history of the party:
It seems my grandparents on my dad's side pickled tongue yearly but it was never a party, just a family tradition. You start with a nice fresh cow's tongue.
It is then set out to cool and wait for the guests to arrive.
At the appropriate time, before the drinking begins, large onions are sliced in to rings and the tongues are skinned and cut into bite-sized pieces (about the size of a Ritz cracker.) Yes, the taste buds are still on there.
The tongue and onions are layered in a crock pot and the pickling spices and vinegar (I believe a 2:1 ratio) are added. The tongue goes into the fridge to pickle for two weeks and then the Barenfunc in made.
According to the story, brought over from a friend of a friend from Germany, there was a farmer who wanted to kill a bear so he would have his winter's meat. He decided to pour vodka into a honey comb, thereby making the bear drunk so he would have an easy shot.
So, Barenfunc is vodka warmed on the stove with honey and lemon added. Each year a new brew is created and lately different flavors of vodka have been tried with mixed success. One year my parents did not have a funnel to use to return the vodka to its bottle and so my industrious brother-in-law (of sod laying fame) made one.
As you can imagine, with shots going around, a lot of laughter follows. In order to remember what made us laugh, we took to writing down "funnies" on paper napkins. For years my parents had stacks of them that we would re-read each year. This year my brother took over the tradition for us and now he has stacks of napkins to remind us of fun parties past.
Lucky for me, only one of our children likes pickled tongue so she and I will share it this year and look forward to next year's party.
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