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.

Every culture has bread.

And many cultures do them differently. Doesn't take a professional to tell the difference between Jamaican bread and French.

Doesn't take a pro to tell Jamaican curry from any English or Indian curry I've ever tasted either.

That'd be like there being only one beef dish, even within a cuisine.

If it's like all the other bread or curry or whatever, it's not characteristic, not a defining factor. Which is why I asked about the sameness. In fact, the question I initially posed was to find out about the differentiators. Does Ireland pretty much eat like the UK? Well, their breads are different, for starters.

Was Matt harshing on British food, I wondered? Why so specific?

And lo, questions answered.

My co-worker should stop staring at my breasts.