Emily in Halifax, Nova Scotia, is married to a native Dutch speaker, who points out that they buy groceries in a store, so why doesn’t grocery denote just one of those items and not the store where they’re sold? Originally, the French...
Vogelheu—literally, “Vogelheu”—is a Swiss dish with toasted bread, cubed and cooked with eggs and other ingredients for a tasty meal that makes efficient use of leftover bread. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of...
Slip someone a Mickey means to doctor a drink and give it to an unwitting person. The phrase refers to Mickey Finn, manager of Chicago’s Lone Star Saloon in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, who was accused of drugging customers and robbing...
Patrick in Muncie, Indiana, is fond of jojo potatoes, those delicious deep-fried, seasoned wedges also known as Jo-Jos, and wonders how they got that name. Fortunately, researcher Barry Popik has the scoop. This is part of a complete episode...
A psychiatric home health worker is curious about the use of nuthouse to mean “a mental health facility.” This term goes back to the turn of the 20th century. The word nuts itself once had an extremely positive connotation, referring to...
Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Country Cooks (Bookshop|Amazon) is about the foodways and folkways passed down through five generations of a Black Appalachian family. The book, by novelist and...