some observations from north of the border

[Laurence Horn]

On Sep 14, 2012, at 4:43 PM, Victor Steinbok wrote:

> A couple of minor points.
>
> (1) may well refer to the common claim that farmed salmon is chemically
> protected (antibiotics, etc.). US and Canada have some of the more
> stringent regulations on aquaculture, but we've had an influx of
> Chilean, Costa Rican and Ecuadorian farmed fish (not just salmon, but
> striped bass and other fish) and that's a bit of a problem. The fish
> farms in the region are run by a couple of Norwegian companies who are
> very adept at squeezing every last dime out of farmed fish--and doing so
> in Central and South America in order to skirt European, US and Canadian
> anti-PhRma regulations. Even in the US, the usual rumor spread by
> environmentalists is that salmon farming is a very dirty business,
> conducive to fish infections, which are then treated with massive doses
> of antibiotics. This is certainly the case South of the Border and
> perhaps in Asia (a different can of worms entirely). But PhRma is
> definitely an issue.

I knew about the issue (we go for the wild Pacific salmon locally available and hope it's not endangered), but hadn't come across "Pharm Salmon" as opposed to "farmed salmon" to refer to it.  I see other instances of the former via Google, though.
>
> 2) We have Doner kebabs too but we don't refer to them as such. The
> usual designation in these parts is Schewarma or Shawarma, with "Kebab"
> reserved for integral skewered pieces of meat. The other some variations
> as to the makeup of said Shwarma. Traditional Israeli shawarma is made
> with turkey meat. Turkish, Lebanese and other regional variations use
> chicken or lamb/beef combination. Even then, there is the layered
> version (which is how the turkey one works) and the ground version, the
> latter closely resembling gyros. Added irony is in the Dutch use of
> "schawarma" to describe pre-spiced/marinated small strips of meat, which
> are usually chicken or pork--pork certainly being anathema to the usual
> schewarma-eating population. I believe, I've posted on this subject a
> couple of times here.
>

Right, "shwarma" in one spelling or another around here (although I have no idea if its beef, lamb, or chicken rotating on those spits), and there's a relation to gyros as well, as that wikipedia site explains, and I've had Döner kebap (different spellings, but always with the umlaut) in Germany, very well prepared and garnished especially in the Kreuzberg section of Berlin (and more like shwarma than what I'd call kebabs here), but I hadn't seen "donair" anywhere (or heard of the meatloaf-with-sweet-sauce version either).  You can even get poutine donair in Halifax (with the cheese curds, fries, and beef gravy on top of the, I guess, meat loaf).  But I didn't.

> 3) Did you make any stops in Central and Northern Maine?

Nope, flew over it.  Do they raise their vowels too?  Is it from playing all that frozen-pond hockey?

LH
>
>    VS-)
>
> On 9/14/2012 3:49 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>> From a recent trip to Halifax:
>>
>> 1) a variation on a snowclonish theme:
>>
>> FRIENDS DON"T LET FRIENDS EAT PHARM [sic] SALMON
>>
>> 2) a regional delicacy, advertised in various pizza and snack shops:  =
>> DONAIR
>>
>> My first mental "aha" moment led me to parse this as a French spelling =
>> of D=F6ner, as in the D=F6ner kebabs ubiquitous in Germany, but it turns =
>> out that the "donair" is a Haligonian (yes, that's the adjective) =
>> variation on that theme, given the ground meat/meatloaf versions, or so =
>> I gather from browsing google hits and the relevant (and impressively =
>> thorough) wiki-site after I got home, =
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doner_kebab.
>> (I didn't try any when I was there, since I spent all my Canadian fast =
>> food dollars on the extremely good fish and chips there.)
>>
>> 3) Canadian raising is very much alive and well.  (Although I didn't =
>> notice any utterance-final "eh"s.)
>>
>> LH
>
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