When Aunt Agatha throws a family dinner two things are always certain: There will be too much food... and she'll be offended if you don't sample every dish. 'No, thank you.' or 'I don't like cottage cheese.' are not acceptable dinner conversation.

The fact is that I do NOT like cottage cheese and think the garbage disposal is a much more appropriate place to put it than in my mouth. I do not eat cottage cheese for the same reason I do not eat the chunks of milk I find hardened to the bottoms of the long-expired milk cartons in my fridge. Unfortunately, what I would toss in the trash, Agatha uses to smother otherwise edible peaches.

When I looked around the table, I could see that I wasn't the only one having difficulty with at least one of Agatha's mandatory dishes. Everyone under the age of sixteen was struggling with the lima bean casserole. So were most of the rest of us.

My Uncle Sean was trying unsuccessfully to excuse himself from the pork roast, claiming he had suffered mental trauma after witnessing a highway accident involving a livestock truck and one hauling plate glass.

Erin, my young animal-activist niece was in a state about almost everything-- including the fruit-flavored gelatin, which she claimed to be derived from the partially-decomposed hides of poor defenseless piggies and moo-cows. (This fruit-flavored gelatin is more commonly known by a brand name that rhymes with 'yellow'. It is owned by a company who would sue me for making derogatory comments about their product.) I found out later that this friendly, feel-good food actually IS made from the partially-decomposed hides of piggies and moo-cows.

Agatha's coup de grace, (or as one of the youngsters called it, "coup-de-'Ptooey'!")... was a culinary experiment inspired by her recent trip to Scotland. It was one of the foulest foods to ever appear on a menu: It was Haggis.

This is how the encyclopedia describes Haggis: "A delicacy of the Scottish Highlands that consists of a boiled sheep's stomach, that has been stuffed with the minced remains of the animal's windpipe, lungs, heart and liver."

On the table, it looked like a prop from a low-budget space-alien movie-- bulging, lumpy and covered with stretched, translucent skin. Through it, dark shapes could be seen-- shapes that still had the unappetizing appearance of internal organs. These were covered with disturbing white specks that might have been rice-- except that I didn't think they grew rice in Scotland.

"Is that rice?", I asked. "Please tell me that's rice, cuz from the look of it, it could just as easily be larvae."

Agatha explained that the specks were probably just chunks of lung that hadn't been boiled long enough. Somehow, that didn't help.

"What I don't understand... and probably don't want to know...", whispered my cousin Bert, "... is how anyone could have come up with such a dish in the first place. Who was the first person to put Haggis in their mouth? Did they do it on purpose? Did they do it by accident? Or were they being forced?"

In the end, we decided that no one probably knew the exact origins of haggis, but that 'force' was the most likely explanation.

Of course, the same questions could rightfully be asked of the origins of cottage cheese, gelatin, scrapple, blood pudding, souse, chocolate-covered ants and a whole host of other unappealing foods. To distract ourselves from what we had to eat, Bert and I spent the rest of the meal drinking wine and theorizing about the origins of disgusting foods.

First, we considered the case of animals that most folks don't consider to be food, but that end-up getting eaten anyway: emu, monkey, rattlesnake, ostrich, beaver, groundhog, squirrel, frog, rabbit, cat, dog, horse, rat. We concluded that the reason people eat them is that-- despite their outward appearance-- they're made of meat.

Next, we pondered the history of unpleasant vegetables. Rhubarb, we theorized, was a weed that fell into a pan by mistake. Ditto for turnips. In the middle ages, beets were served in jails as part of the punishment. Currants became popular when all the other crops failed. The Brussel sprout began as a garnish that was never intended to be eaten.

Scrapple: For those who are not familiar with this dish, scrapple is composed of all the parts of a pig most people would pitch. Other folks have chosen to put these parts in their mouths, chew and swallow them. These pig-parts include, but are not limited to, the nose, feet, brains, tendons, spleens, cartilage, tongues, testicles, tumors, toe nails, gums, skin, knees, kidneys, lymph nodes, urethras and sphincters, which are ground, grilled and doused in maple syrup. Who could conceive of such a thing? Our best guesses were either Lutherans or German Catholics.

Spam: Spam was first concocted in the middle of the 20th century because the nuclear age demanded a meat product with a half-life.

Fruit-Flavored Gelatin: Let's see, we can sell these rancid hides for forty-eight cents a ton as fertilizer... or we can add some artificial flavoring and sell an eight-ounce box for a buck-and-a-quarter."

Mysterious Dairy Products: (cottage cheese/blue cheese/sour cream/yogurt, etc.): Again, we don't know. However, both of us have had the experience of opening the fridge and lifting a milk carton to our mouths, only to have a semi-solid mass land on our lips. Maybe, in the dim and distant past, before there was refrigeration and things got lumpy, faster-- someone had this goo land on their face and were hungry enough to actually think it tasted good. Either that, or they were drunk.

That possibility lead us into a discussion of the origins of beer. Wild animals will naturally avoid any food that makes them ill. This does not appear to be the case with humans and beer. I have personally gotten ill from beer several times, yet I continue to drink it. I suspect that was also the case with the troglodytes who first discovered a puddle of decomposing grain. It makes you happy, then it makes you sick. Maybe that's explanation enough.

Insects: Westerners are repulsed by the thought of eating bugs, yet they are a staple in many world cultures. After much consideration, we concluded that the invention of beer preceded the eating of bugs and therefore, bug-eating was probably the result of a bunch of drunken cave-men having fun at the expense of a visually-impaired colleague.

"Crunchy, like toasted nuts... but creamy inside. Mmmm! What is this?"

Lima beans: The practice of eating lima beans was probably also the result of some primitive practical joke.

Meat Sticks: At the packing plant, undesirable cow, pig and chicken parts are trimmed and pushed aside by the butchers. Sometimes, they get pushed too far and end up on the floor. Once, long ago, some of this floor-trash meat byproduct became lodged in the tread of a butchers boot. Eventually, he noticed the smell and the meat stick was born.

With a great deal of anxiety, we turned our attention to the far corners of the deli case and pondered the origins of such lunch meat monstrosities as head cheese and souse. These products are still on display and must therefore be purchased by somebody. The only somebodys that come to mind are people who are old enough to have voted for FDR during the Great Depression. This was a time of great hardship that required every part of a slaughtered animal to be used-- either that, or they needed something to store in all the coffee cans, milk jugs and plastic sherbet containers they refused to throw away. The tastes of the FDR generation are also the only viable explanation for the existence of blood pudding.

Haggis was a tough one. We sat and stared-- for a full half hour-- at the haggis, sitting like swollen road-kill in the middle of Agatha's table. Still, we had no clue as to how such a thing could have come to be called 'food'. Eventually, we concocted a bizarre theory that is probably just as feasible as whatever the real explanation is.

We concluded that the great Scottish famine of 1289AD was severe enough to cause normally docile sheep to cannibalize themselves. By the time the Highlanders ran out of food their only menu choices were poisonous, thorny moor-thistles or these carnivorous sheep. Nothing was wasted-- not even the stomachs-- which were stuffed with the partially-digested remains of other sheep. Their reaction was one that only starving people could have had:

"Aye, Laddie... 'tis not so bad, once ye get used to it! And perhaps when we're done, we can turn this boiled stomach into some sort of musical instrument!" Thus the reason that Scotland is home to both haggis AND bagpipes.

After much discussion, we decided that there is no earthly explanation for the appearance and continued presence of fruitcake.

By the time dessert was served, Bert and I had finished both our exploration of the origins of unappealing foods and almost a bottle-and-a-half of Chianti.

"Here... try summa this.", he slurred, hoisting a forkful of goo in my direction. "It's a new delicacy I just invented."

As disgusting as it looked, I had to admit that it wasn't bad. In fact, considering some of the things people have been known to eat, it might even catch on someday. If, at some in the future, someone serves you a slice of blueberry pie covered with lima bean casserole, you'll know exactly how such a strange dish could ever have come to be.