When I was growing up, the standard way to cook vegetables was, "boil until all the flavor and texture are gone, plus 10 minutes."

Exactly! Except for potatoes and corn. Potatoes got either boiled (red potatoes only) and eaten plain or mashed (no skins included or anything other than salt and pepper, though), or washed, rubbed with Crisco, poked all over with a fork, and baked (the first thing I learned to cook was baked potatoes), unless my dad was feeling ambitious and did his specialty of double-baked potatoes, with cheese (which he still makes for holidays--yummmm!). Corn got boiled on the cob or baked into casseroles or creamed (my aunt has a kick-ass creamed corn recipe that is also of the yum).

I didn't realize until ChiKat told me that outside of the Farm Belt in the Midwest, corn is considered a starch, not a vegetable. You don't dare express that opinion around my farming uncles, whose main crops are soy beans and corn!

I was introduced to lutfisk as a traditional Finnish dish. And Finnish sweet rye bread is a thing of beauty. But that lye-infused fish jello is just awful.

They're renters; they're moving.

God, I hope so! Good to hear that nobody was hurt. Scary!!

Best thing ever to turn up in a work-related mass email: The International Edible Book Festival: [link]

And dammit, flea, that neighborhood has been saying for years that they're pulling themselves out of drive-by-dom, and then the drive-bys come back.

I knew lutfisk was in Sweden and Norway. Didn't know the Finns had it too. I had a recipe for mämmi (a Finnish easter rye sweet bread) that I made once. Good stuff.

Better than the "carnivorous plants are pets" email of yesterday?

I know 3 or 4 gentrificationy families with small kids who live on Burch. Sheesh.

I didn't realize until ChiKat told me that outside of the Farm Belt in the Midwest, corn is considered a starch, not a vegetable.

I would say that in a nutritional sense, that's so, but I don't know that I've encountered anyone who would generally categorize it that way in terms of meals.

(That's your cue to speak up, Cornstarchers!)

Better than the "carnivorous plants are pets" email of yesterday?

If it weren't for the president's ban on cross-species hybrid freaks of nature, I'd get right to work on a venus flytrap that eats dictionaries.

Cooking corned beef till grey is a sign of a bad cook, not a bad culinary culture.

Aren't there two kinds of corned beef you buy--one is grey, and one is red?

Are the bacon and sausages different from the ones you'd get in the rest of the British Isles? I don't doubt they're great, but I see Irish food as food that's different from day to day fare in the UK.

Isn't that a hard line to draw? Every culture has bread. Every Euro country has white bread, but I might have really loved the bread in France (had I ever been there, which I haven't). If someone's talking about how good or bad the Xculture food is, does the item have to be unique to the country, or at least a hallmark in some way?

I went to a very nice little Irish place in the DC suburbs once. They had very solid, non-glam, stick-to-your-ribs food, but nothing seemed overdone that I could tell. I liked it well enough. But it's not sexy, though.