LL-L "Delectables" 2009.04.09 (08) [E]

[Lowlands-L List]

===========================================
L O W L A N D S - L - 09 April 2009 - Volume 08
===========================================


From: Brooks, Mark <mark.brooks at twc.state.tx.us>
Subject: LL-L "Travels" 2009.04.08 (07) [E]

Ron waxed poetic: “And feed them fish sticks…”



Ah, talk about a memory of childhood!  Fish sticks and ketchup along with
something obligatorily green like canned green beans or canned green
(English?) peas.  Not green in the sense of healthy or
environmentally-friendly, mind you, just the color green.  Thus, the canned
vegetables.  No, we wouldn’t want any actual nutrition delivered, would we?
Fish sticks probably have less nutritional value than the infamous Twinkie.




Personally, I never went for Twinkies so much, but I did like a product from
the same company that we always called Snowballs.  I don’t know the real
name, but it consists of a mound of chocolate cake with some white sugary
filling injected inside and a sort of tough marshmallow (preferably pink)
covering that had coconut sprinkled on top.  Oh man, what a treat!



I see that Hostess actually named them Sno Balls.  But, I’ve got to say that
the orange Glo Balls really border on blasphemy!



http://www.freshchocodiles.com/hostess/snoballs.html



Regards,

Mark Brooks


----------

From: Roger Thijs, Euro-Support, Inc. <roger.thijs at euro-support.be>
Subject: LL-L Delectables, was Re: LL-L "Travels" 2009.04.08 (07) [E]

> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>

> Subject: Travels

>  Boiling fresh fish robs it of most nutrients and flavor. It should be
outlawed. ;-) But I realize that's a cultural matter and I may be an
aberration

Similar to the US, the fish I could get served in Cape Town a couple of
months ago was also fried, grilled or barbecued.

When I was a kid in the fifties just "*stokvis*" (stockfish) was boiled and
served with a cream sauce (later with a milk sauce when one became aware of
calories). Mussles were also boiled obviously.

Other fish was fried. The variety in inland Limburg was limited, what I
remember we got on Fridays was one of these:

- Fried in real butter:

  - *kabeljauw* (cod) with quite some pieces of onion

  - '*zoete'* (sweet) *bukkem *with quite some pieces of onion

  - exceptionally *pladijs *(plaice), but I remember it could also be
prepared as boiled, and serrved with milky sauce.

- Fried in its own fat "op de tang" (fried on open fire (layed on 2 bars of
iron)

  - *'zoute' *(salted) *bukkem*

Bukkem is "bokking" in Dutch and is a kind of smoked herring.

The latter, zoute bukkem, was that salted, that it preserved, and could be
consumed raw.

*Herring* was prepared in venegar with much onions and served cold;

*Rolmops* was rolled herring filet with onion and cucumber inside, kept in a
pot of mayonnaise.

We didn't know maatjes at the time (I guess it did not preserve for inland
transportation);

but we got "*sprot*": little herrings, slightly smoked.

*Makreel *(macarel) slightly smoked, was also served as cold fish.

At festivities (cold) boiled *salmon* was often part of the cold dish. It
was generally bought as prepared.

At the time we only got light-pink boiled salmon, and didn't get the sliced
smoked salmon that became popular later.

In school we got boiled cod every Friday. It was served with melted butter.
The fish was tasteless and I hated it. I guess it was easy to prepare:
boiling all cod at once in a big kettle, melt some butter in a pan and
combine things at the very last moment.

In restaurant at the time we preferred trout, fried in real butter ("*truite
meunière"),* often served with little almond chips in the butter.

Things changed however, and already in the eighties we saw an evolution with
less-calorie food.

What we offered our guests at Monsanto was boiled *sole*. I don't know
whether the restaurant "Het verloren brood" in Antwerp still exists. The
sole filets were not cooked into desintegration, but could still be
rolled-up. Traditionally the guest got 3 rolls with eventually 3 different
sauces, in the national colours of his country of origin. The basics of this
sauces were not things as musterd, but extracts from the head and bones of
the fish, with some binder and with limited seasoning (and without ketchup
and Worchester sauce).

Boiled fish is offered in all Belgian restaurants nowadays.

In the Lunch Garden Chain *boiled Tilapia* is on the chefs menu this week.

Lunch Garden is a Belgian self-service restaurant chain, once owned by the
GB-group. This group sold its large warehouses to Carrefour and its downtown
more exquisite Innovation warehouses to the German Galleria group. As a
result one still finds a Lunch Garden at virtually each Carrefour parking
lot as well as on one of the floors of an Innivation shop.

url: http://www.lunchgarden.com/

So I had a quick dinner in the (bilingual) Lunch Garden in Kraainem East of
Brussels this evening.

The menu + a little coke:

http://www.euro-support.be/tmp/sfo/1lg.jpg

I removed the sauce a bit for making the fish visable:

http://www.euro-support.be/tmp/sfo/2lg.jpg

The ticket:

http://www.euro-support.be/tmp/sfo/3lg.jpg

(tickets in Belgium are allways all taxes, tips etc incl.)

So I paid for the menu without the coke: 9.95 euro

The *chefs menu of the week* combines things for a reduced price.

Bought individually the items would have costed:

- 8.25 euro for the tilapia

  incl: potatos, rice or French fries (supplements can be asked for free)

  incl also: warm vegetables, to be taken from a self-service bar with
generally 4 choices

- 2.45 euro for the salad bar

  (self-service from the salad-bar booth, with a variety of choices)

- 1.40 for the desert, a vanilla-rice pudding '"Condé rijst natuur, Riz
Condé Nature)

One can eventually replace the salad bar by soup (value 1.60 euro) if one
prefers to do so.

Soupes of today were:

- soupe oignons - uiensoep (onion soup)

- soupe aux chicons - witloofsoep (chicory/endive soup)

Actually the boiled fish dishes are becoming the expensive dishes.

The choice of fish varies from week to week.

Often a mixture is served as a "vispannetje".

The sauce often contains also some mussles and shrimps (without shell).

*Fried fish* with a crust is standard always available as one of the
cheapest dishes:

- 6.25 euro: *zeesteak / steak de mer*

  with potatos, rice or French fries

 as well as warm vegetables from the self-service bar.

Prepared fish food for the microwave is often also boiled fish,

an example:

- http://www.euro-support.be/tmp/sfo/4cf.jpg

- http://www.euro-support.be/tmp/sfo/5cf.jpg

I'm not saying fried fish is not popular or not served in Belgium,

I'm just saying I cannot find boiled fish dishes in the States.

Regards,

Roger

•

==============================END===================================

 * Please submit postings to lowlands-l at listserv.linguistlist.org.

 * Postings will be displayed unedited in digest form.

 * Please display only the relevant parts of quotes in your replies.

 * Commands for automated functions (including "signoff lowlands-l")

   are to be sent to listserv at listserv.linguistlist.org or at

   http://linguistlist.org/subscribing/sub-lowlands-l.html.

*********************************************************************
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lowlands-l/attachments/20090409/0f6f6525/attachment.htm>