Justin from Kalamazoo, Michigan, saw a Heinz 57 ketchup ad that mentioned euchred figs, sometimes spelled euchered. He’s familiar with the card game euchre, but why euchred figs? Although a handsome booklet produced by the H. J. Heinz company in...
Sugar weather refers to a period of time during the spring in Canada marked by warm days and cold nights, when the sap starts running in the trees. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Sugar Weather” I tripped across a...
Eben, a chef in Lummi Bay, Washington, who blogs about food at UrbanMonique, is curious about the term caster sugar, which denotes sugar less fine than powdered sugar, but less coarse than the regular table variety. The name caster sugar derives...
If you want to be a better writer, try skipping today’s bestsellers, and read one from the 1930’s instead. Or read something besides fiction in order to find your own metaphors and perspective. Plus, just because a city’s name...
A Huntsville, Alabama, physical therapist notes that patients with a hamstring cramp will sometimes say “I’ve got a rising in my leader.” Rising is a dialect term for swelling, and leader is a dialect term for tendon or muscle...
To sugar off means to complete the process of boiling down the syrup when making maple sugar. Some Vermonters use that same verb more generally to refer to how something turns out, as in the phrase, “How did that sugar off?” This is part of a...