My visitor Adam has departed, but not until I took him to Wrigley Field, where he went to see the Cubs last night (they beat the Dodgers 1-0). I didn’t catch the game, as I had to pack and stuff, but I did go to Wrigleyville with him, where we hoisted a brew and downed a superb bratwurst at the Goose Island Brewery. Adam ordered “chips” with his brats, not realizing that in America chips aren’t fries! (I wasn’t thinking.)
And on my way home today to take Adam to the subway (bound for O’Hare), I saw a lucky rabbit munching greenery:
It was just a juvenile, and not very spooked, but it did eventually trot off. The photo below shows you where the phrase “high-tailing it” comes from!
…this would be our lagomorphic lagniappe?
b&
Logically this is a lagomorphic lagniappe.
Lordy, what lovely literary locution!
b&
Alliteration is a little awesome.
A bonus: completely different efforts fulfill gradual, halting investigations jumping kaleidoscopic latitudes mostly now over perpetual queries realistically serializing textual uniformity verbally with xerographic youthful zebras.
…okay, that got a bit strained at the end…and the middle…beginning, too, come to think of it….
b&
Are you ok? You didn’t pull something, did you?
I think I might have labored my lexicon a bit, thumped the thesaurus, dinged the dictionary…wrenched the word book?
b&
OK, altogether now (sung to the tune of “Mairzy Doats”):
I am seeing an abundance of rabbits out in the Chicago suburbs. The population seems very high this year. Mild winter?
It’s just wittle wabbit season. Lots here in Pittsburgh right now, and we had the winter from post-freezing hell.
You Yinzers got a problem with those jagoff rabbits ‘n that again? That pest needs gone.
I’m seeing some lagomorphs of some kind or other here in Ottawa again, including one I saw out way after dark, which was odd. Dunno if they are rabbits though.
🙂
Cute! I love word origins and hadn’t known that one.
Also, if you miss those marvelous brats on your travels, Costco has foot long hotdogs — and Polishes (which have some nice pepper in them) — for a song. Seriously. And toppings. Not the same, but maybe okay for a quick fill in.
And the song you can get the foot-longs and Polishes for at Costco would be Harry Caray’s cover of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”?
ROTFL!!! No, just $1.50, plus tax. It includes a refillable soda or lemonade or water, though. And, you don’t have to be a Costco member to access it.
So what are chips then?
What I mean is, what do you mean by “chips”. That’s what we call fries too.
Those “chips” in the US are what Brits and others call “crisps”.
Thanks!
We call them chips too. It’s context for us. If there could be doubt we differentiate by calling them potato chips (or whatever they’re made of), and hot chips. When buying hot chips from McDonald’s, Burger King and other American chains, we often refer to them as fries. That’s because they’re different from “normal” chips in that they’re so skinny. We call the really big hot chips that usually have salsa or sour cream or something on them “wedges”.
“Hot chips” is a good way to distinguish them from the brittle crisps/chips. “Wedges” may be universal. I think of them as having the skin on, but I’ve suddenly thought that there is another word for them–maybe “skins”? Ah, those versatile potatoes!
Mmmmm. Wedges. Very easy to do too. Cut the potatoes into wedges, mince a bunch of garlic, chop a bunch of fresh rosemary, toss everything together with olive oil and season with coarse salt and coursely ground fresh black pepper. Spread on a sheet pan and roast till tender inside and crispy outside, turning several times.
Mmmmmm….
We make them with kumara a lot too (a kind of sweet potato). They’re delicious, but most have very tough skins.
The equivalent over here would be sweet potato fries.
ever look at the ingredients list for McDonald’s fries? it’s like 40 ingredients! The Rube Goldberg of potatoes! How hard is it to take a potato, cut it up, fry it in oil, then lightly salt it?
No offense to any other nationality, but for my money, it is Belgium that does it properly. You can have your haute cuisine, I’ll take pomme frites any day of the week.
Which reminds me of a bad joke, told to me by a Belgian companion: How do you drive a Belgian mad? Put him in a round room and tell him there are frites in the corner.
what? I told you it was bad!
I miss fish and chips, with the newspaper and vinegar
When some family of mine were travelling around Britain together, a cousin’s wife was really disappointed with the fish n chips there. One day, after getting some in a shop that had won an award for its fish n chips and still being disappointed, she began abusing the owners. It was very embarrassing. We mostly fry ours in plant oils, so they’re a lot less fatty then the British version. There might even be a law now about what they’re cooked in, but don’t quote me on that.
We have pretty good fish and chips in Ontario, Canada. My family from California (originally from NZ) always want them when they come here.
Goderich has a great fish and chips wagon by the beach.
But even in Britain there are apparently “game chips” which are closer to crisps than regular chips.
I’ve made the same mistake in brew pubs before. One can never trust local culture, for they may have been raised on a steady diet of British TV. Or they could just be confused. Pub chips may be in-house cut and fried potato chips/crisps, or not. and to make matters worse, now that other americans have seen the light and begun to enjoy Belgian ales, one can also find frites, but usually with a gawd-awful attempt at an “aioli”. I’ve never been to the UK or it’s former imperial holdings, so I can’t compare our attempted “chips”, but our pomme frites are usually a pale shadow of the real thing. Still, it beats the limp and bland crinkle-cut fries and ketchup of my youth.
Americans come here and see “hot dogs” on the menu and expect a long skinny thing in a bun with American mustard and tomato sauce (ketchup). Instead they get a battered sausage on a stick, dipped in tomato sauce.
If you want the bun type, you have to specify American hot dog, which a lot of fish n chip shops won’t have.
I love sausage rolls when I am in NZ. Here they are full of chemical crap and you can’t readily get them. Even the ones at the airport in Auckland were tasty.
I love sausage rolls too! I choose them over the ubiquitous mince pie every time!
uh oh, you said mustard on a hot dog! wars have been fought for lesser offenses! I’ll let the New Yorkers and the Chicagoans fight that one out, I’m a vegetarian, so I stick to Tofu Pups or Smart Dogs, which will make me universally hated. but a battered sausage on a stick? Sounds similar to the corn dogs we have here, often a food indulged on at state fairs.
It’s very tempting, but I think a mistake, to go to a foreign country and expect anything to resemble the food from home. It might, but that would be mostly a coincidence. If it has the same name–“hot dog”, “hamburger” “chips”, “pie”–it is all the more likely to be an unpleasant surprise. Try out the new stuff, I say, and wait till you get home to have the familiar grub.
exactly, although it’s fun to try out the foreign version of things, just to compare. what’s really bad is coming home and missing all the great things you had on vacation, heading down to the store and wandering aimlessly because none of the old familiar stuff sounds good any more. and yet there are some people who will only eat at familiar chain restaurants in tourist areas and are terrified of local grub. Imagine traveling to across an ocean and only to eat at Pizza Hut and drink Bud light…my heart breaks at the thought. because it’s true, because it happens.
Yes! Exploring the food is one of the main joys of travelling.
My first reaction was “They serve rabbit sandwiches at Wrigley Field?” It was a bit of a puzzler until I scrolled down a bit.
An open face rabbit sandwich with gravy would be good!
Sounds like something they might serve at a lumberjack competition.
I really really would like a bite of that!
I saw a page saying that in 2013, 40-60% of the rabbits in Chicago died of tularemia. Since untreated tularemia has a 7% fatality rate in humans (according to Wikipedia) — yikes!
Here in QLD Australia there is an $88,000 fine for keeping pet rabbits and that is per rabbit.
Two tame rabbits were found near a washed out creek in floods last year but no one has come forward as owning them as they would have to pay $176,000.
I can only begin to imagine what would happen if Australia were able to “harvest” all its rabbits and sell them overseas to countries where people are undernourished and/or starving.
Sweet widdle bunny wabbit!