Lisa from Paris, Kentucky, grew up eating a German Christmas cookie at a friend’s house in Miami, Florida. This deep-fried, bow-tie-shaped pastry was made with butter, lemon, and rum, and dusted with powdered sugar. The family called them Hobelspäne...
A member of the ski patrol at Vermont’s Sugarbush Resort shares some workplace slang. Boilerplate denotes hard-packed snow with a ruffled pattern that makes skis chatter, death cookies are random chunks that could cause an accident, and escargot...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski doctor told him that in addition to adding more whole grains and vegetables to his diet, he should also replace words in his vocabulary with healthier alternatives. For example, she’d prefer that he say That actor was really...
A Pennsylvania woman says that when her stepmother was frustrated by someone, such as when the driver ahead of her was dawdling at a traffic light, she’d express her irritation with Are you posing for animal crackers? This expression goes back at...
The expression you look like death eating on a Nab means “you look terrible.” It’s a humorous elaboration of the idea of death, which refers to death consuming a dry, salty, peanut-butter-filled snack made by the Nabisco company. The more common...
After our conversation about cutting donuts, spinning cookies, and other terms for gunning a car’s engine to make the vehicle spin in a circle, preferably on a gravel surface, a Chicago listener points out that in his hometown, this practice is...
