When Melissa was growing up in Tacoma, Washington, she’d walk to the corner store, where she’d pick up a corn dog and a bag of jo jos, a term for soft potato wedges with the skin left on. Researcher Barry Popik has dug up a story that...
Is there a word for a serving dish shaped like the food it’s meant to serve, such as a plate for serving fish that’s shaped like a fish? This is part of a complete episode.
Frida in Marquette, Michigan, shares a proverb from her Finnish heritage that translates as “Until the food is ready, feed your guests with words.” She also asks about pank, a term she often hears there in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan...
The Italian phrase Non si frigge mica con l’acqua literally translates as “We don’t fry with water around here,” and means that the speaker doesn’t do things halfway. Quite a few other Italian idioms involve food. One...
In parts of the United States, the verb to build is used to mean prepare a food or beverage, so you might build a coffee or build a lemon pie. This use of to build appears in a lot of literature of the Old West. This is part of a complete episode.
The word piecemeal means bit by bit. If you pay back a debt piecemeal, you repay it a little at a time. The -meal in piecemeal is an old term that means a measure of time or a specified portion. In Middle English, this element appears in several...