bumblebeez, veer,
If I remember correctly, the Gouda we used to buy in Canada was imported; I think from Holland. It was not rubbery, nor was it smoked. I don't mind eating smoked cheeses, but Linda does not like any of it.
I have noted that even the so-called "extra old/sharp" cheddars here (in California), are kind of bland. Oh well, at least it is warm here. LOL
Regards,
Bob

What an interesting thread!

The anecdote from colleenoz reminded me of a funny incident which occurred to our family while eating a swanky restaurant in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Family: "Gammon? Is that like ham?"
Waitress: "No, it's meat from a pig."

Vee, Lucas is sui generis. I find her funny, but understand that others may not.

I bought some smoked Gouda for an appetizer, a pear and cheese kabob, that I never made. The smoked cheese called for wasn't available so I settled on the Gouda. When I tried cutting a piece later and just eating it, I didn't like it. Remembering the recipe called for it to be baked, I melted some on a cut up apple and liked it just fine. But then I'm no cheese connoisseur. Still, I wouldn't be caught dead with Velveeta in my cupboard. The horror! The horror! Stupid prejudice, but there is is.

Woodnymph, Thai is a good compromise with vegetarian friends where everyone can get what they want. The one near me must tone down the spices because I've never had anything really hot. What did you think? Baltimore is a city of immigrants and we have marvelous restaurants. We are lucky in that way.

I find Thai food to be spiced, but not really hot-to me those are two different things. I dislike "hot" foods-jalapeno, tabasco-but don't mind a lot a spice like cinnamon or ginger.

cece, I like spicy food too, but without the chili. I used to be able to buy a Sharwood's mild curry powder that had all the other spices but no chili, but alas I haven't seen it for a couple of years.
Thai food is very popular in Australia, also Indian and Vietnamese. We also have a large immigrant population and Adelaide has a well deserved reputation for its restaurants - there is probably any type you would like if you look hard enough and are prepared to drive there. We had dinner last night at a Moroccan restaurant and it was lovely.

Chris, there are worse prejudices.:) I don't buy processed cheese food for my own pantry, but I don't mind eating it as an ingredient in other people's cooking, especially when I'm a guest. After all, it is edible and nutritious, and I can't very well say to the host, "Oh, yuck, you use Velveeta. Why?"

My mother taught me that I was to eat politely whatever was put before me in someone else's home, unless I had a damned good reason not to. I've had to remember that when I'm presented with coffee and tea, without given the choice to abstain, because I don't like either -- yet I got quite good at discreetly gulping either beverage, leaving just enough in the cup so that when asked if I wanted more, I could say: "No thank you; I haven't finished my first yet." My beverage of choice is plain water, though iced water is splendid, but I understand in some cultures water is not everyone's first choice of drink.

My worst embarrassment, however, as a dinner guest was in Albania. My hosts, a young married couple, insisted that I, as their honored guest, should have the greatest delicacy of the meal, a fried gizzard of a chicken. I tried protesting politely but they wouldn't have it, until I had a brilliant idea: why don't we split it three ways? They gave in and I watched them as they ate their pieces of the gizzard, chewing and rolling the bits around in their mouths with great satisfaction, almost ecstasy. I swallowed my piece without experiencing the texture or tasting it.

Frieda, I was brought up that way too, and always told my children that they should eat what I gave them for a meal as it was good practice. The one concession I made was for my younger son who doesn't like strong tasting fish like tuna (chooner hahaha!) or salmon. So imagine my delight when I picked him up after his first meal at his girlfriend's parents' house and asked what he had eaten and he answered 'Tuna mornay'.
'Did you eat it?' I asked.
'Yes' he answered with a fair degree of self satisfaction.

Vee: I have had that strawberry with pepper dessert. Many years ago, we were the last lunchers at a small restaurant and the chef asked if we would be guinea-pigs for a new recipe he wanted to try out. Strawberries in a Pepper Sauce! A bit dubiously, we agreed. From memory, this was how he did it.
A shallow frying pan was heated over a burner on a trolley next to our table. He put in a pink juice, possibly a puree of strawberries, warmed this, added fresh ripe medium-sized berries and did that thing that chefs do, lightly tossing the pan to coat the berries. Then he ground pepper-corns over in a frightening generous manner and with a flourish added warm alcoholic spirit (can't say what but likely brandy) and flambeed the pan.
We had it with ice-cream and it was wonderful.

Balsamic vinegar is wonderful with strawberries - it is rather sweet, but not something you might think of trying.

If there is a Trader Joes nearby, try their cheeses. I've never had a bad one from them, and they have Gouda imported from Holland. Very reasonable prices, too.

I was also raised in the above manner - dare I say it - to behave politely no matter what was put in front of me. Words like "ick" and "gross" were never applied to food under any circumstances. My mother was a depression baby. We didn't have to eat everything but we were not to disparage any table offerings. I have been sorely tried over the years at various parties and functions, but I have stuck to my manners. And I have to say, I have had some very delicious food that I would not have tried on my own.

Thanks for the various strawberry ideas, and Frieda for the spoon bread info. Perhaps our RP Southern Belles can tell me if it's eaten 'as-is' or is anything else served with it?

I have to admit to being a fussy eater as a child. Although I am sure it was partly to get attention (and bad was better than none) it may also have had something to do with the poor quality of Post War food in the UK. I remember hating the texture of gristle-filled sausages and having to eat the fat on meat. Under-cooked eggs were something I found difficult to swallow, especially when the white hadn't even set.
I never remember eating at or even visiting other homes . . .we must have been one of the few families in the country/world who had no relations (maybe they had disowned us), but if we ate out in hotel restaurants/dining rooms, very good manners were called for. None of this running about, not sitting still indulged in by modern children.

Vee, I'm not a Southern Belle, but spoon bread was a specialty of my late South Carolinian SIL who could certainly qualify for that title. She served spoon bread plain in place of any other bread, such as baking powder biscuits, beaten biscuits, angel biscuits, corn bread, Sally Lunn or hot yeast rolls. Spoon bread typically accompanied hot baked ham and pork roasts. I don't recall her serving it with beef but she might have. In the American Southwest and in some parts of the South, a similarly prepared dish is called 'baked grits' or 'hot baked cheese grits' if it is prepared with cheese and garlic. It is also spoon-served from the dish it baked in and eaten with a spoon or fork, though it's usually a side dish not in lieu of traditional breads. The latter is very similar to polenta, btw.

I like spoon bread hot, with butter, and that's the way I like cornmeal mush also.

Never in my life had spoon bread. I thought it was some sort of cornbread pancake.

Dad taught me the importance of eating politely everything put in front of me. Sunday dinner at my grandma's, at the kitchen table with all the kids, I complained about the green beans tasting funny. Dad was so embarrassed about my rudeness he dumped the entire bowl in my plate and made me eat each and every green bean. I don't think I ate another green bean for 30 years. And I certainly never complained again about the food served to me.

Siobhan, I so love balsamic vinegar I sometimes think I could drink it straight. I have been known to add it so generously to salad that I must sop it up at the end with a nice piece of bread.

But balsamic vinegar for strawberries, nay. If I add anything at all, it would be a shot or so of amaretto. All atop vanilla ice cream, of course.

The best strawberries I've tasted are those from pick-em-yourself fields around Ponchatoula, Louisiana. Ponchatoula has a Strawberry Festival each year in April, I think. Some of the Ponchatoulas are as big as my fist -- diploids, octoploids, etc. -- but they don't seem to suffer as much from the pithy or hollow centers of most oversized strawberries. I find strawberry genetics fascinating. From my botany classes many moons ago, I still remember that strawberries aren't actually berries -- they are composites -- while watermelons are actually berries! botanically. The first Europeans to see North American strawberries were astonished at their size compared to the nubbin-like strawberries of Europe. Growers have been messing with hybridization ever since, so what we eat now are mostly monsters. My favorite strawberry dish will always be Strawberry Shortcake but I want a true shortcake, not a sponge cake substitute.

Vee, even in the United States, which didn't have the post-war rationing of the UK, the quality of the food was quite different in the 1940s and 1950s to what it is now. You mentioned hating gristle-filled sausage: I loathed chili con carne when the carne was more gristle than meat and chopped barbecue beef with gristle and fat included. Beef of the time was heavily marbled and that's the way the older folk liked it. Look at photos in cookbooks of the era and notice how fat the steaks were. Another thing about cooking during that era in the US: They cooked most vegetables to death and turned pasta (only they didn't call it pasta) into glue. 'Course people who grew up eating that sort of cooking either learned to like it that way or they developed a profound distaste or suspicion of the abused foods. I was of the latter persuasion until I was in my late teens.

For those who asked, the Thai restaurant was a wondrous experience! The menu was nicely divided into hot vs spicey dishes. I order a classic Pad Thai with shrimp, peanuts, and rice noodles. The sauce was fantastic -- very subtle. For desert, I had fresh mango with a coconut rice dish. My friend ordered a very hot chicken dish which was pronounced delectable.

Roving through my books at home, I came across a large tome by Pamela Harlech. Are any of our British friends familiar with this author? In it I found recipes for venison, duck, rabbit, and all sorts of small game birds. It's quite detailed and I found terms like "duxelles". Is this author considered reputable, in so far as her cuisine?

Woodnymph, do you know if any of the dishes you had were seasoned with lemongrass (also spelled lemon grass)? It imparts a very subtle flavor that I like very much -- it also has a very nice aroma. Another herb often found in Thai cooking is cilantro (aka Chinese parsley and coriander leaf). I like cilantro if it's not overdone -- if it is, though, I think it has a metallic taste, especially an aftertaste. I'm glad you enjoyed your Thai experience and it sounds like it won't be your last!

Frieda, yes, on the menu was offered lemongrass soup. Many years ago, I had found a tea made from lemongrass. It was quite addictive and I was devastated when that entire line of tea was discontinued.

I've sampled Indian, Vietnamese, Japanese, and Chinese cuisine, but Thai is now right up there with my favorite: Indian cookery, with the tandoori ovens and oh so subtle flavors....

I thought veggies boiled to death was purely a UK culinary skill. ;-) Cabbage and cauliflower used to have bicarb added to the water to preserve the green colour of the veg . . . otherwise it went to a pink pulp.
Pasta was unknown in my youth unless it came in one of Mr Heinz' cans.

Frieda, coriander is a taste I have yet to acquire. Because I am not used to it I find it SO 'different' more so perhaps because it looks so like parsley.

Mary, I'm glad you enjoyed your Thai meal. I have been served Thai food by a Thai friend of my brother, excellent Japanese food by my J D-in-L and 'proper' Chinese food (the best I have tasted) by a Hong Kong Chinese student doctor. This was many years ago and I still remember the preparation that went into the meal with several young men cutting, chopping, pounding in a very small kitchen of a tiny 'student flat' in an insalubrious London suburb. So little space available that they chopped the meat on the bathroom floor . . . on a board. No monosodium glutamate was added to this delicious meal.

Strawberries, when grown 'naturally' don't ripen over here until the end of June when they are served at enormous expense at Wimbledon (tennis). Our so-called English summers can be so wet, cold, damp that often the strawberry crop is full of mould and mildew and through lack of sunlight totally tasteless. Raspberries, tayberries. loganberries etc do much better and are grown in large quantities in Scotland. I much prefer their flavour.

Vee, oh lord! what Heinz & company did to pasta by putting it in tins (in the US, we blame, though some celebrate, Chef Boyardee, the brand-name and phonetic-rendering adopted by one Ettore Boiardi). My grandfather was so repulsed by canned spaghetti that he forbade the stuff to ever be presented to him. He didn't like any "furrin" foods though, even rice, which he referred to as "maggots."

One of the things I promised myself to do before I die was visit Temple Street, Kowloon, Hong Kong, and eat my way up one side of the street and down the other side. I got to do that a couple of years ago. Madness, I say, sheer madness in the things offered. It's best to go at night, when the neon and other lights add an ambience of mystery and exoticism -- and since you can't see too clearly your sense of smell seems heightened and thus, too, are your tastebuds.

China is an upside-down country, cuisine-wise. Most spicy and hot foods develop in hot climates, partly because the ingredients are native to hot places and partly because, as Mary mentioned above, physiologically, hot-seasoned foods act as natural air-conditioners -- they make the eater sweat more. However, in China the southern, hot parts of the country have the milder foods; think Cantonese (Guangzhou, Guangdong); while the northern and inland western provinces have the fiery cooking; e.g., Hunan, Sichuan (Szechuan). I don't know why the Chinese cuisines seem to have reversed the usual pattern.

Mary, I bet you've had 'duxelles' in France, as it is a quite common stuffing for meats, game, and savory pies there. Basically it's a mushroom/shallot/butter paste. As with many French dishes, to my mind the original ingredients are fine enough in themselves and many provincial cooks leave them, as is, or at least discretely recognizable when cooked together. But, I guess we can blame French chefs for playing around with foods and disguising them, often with delicious results, but equally often for no good reason at all.

I heard a rumor that the English don't cook with garlic. Is that true? Garlic is something that as a kid I didn't like, but somethime during my 30s a swithch clicked over and it became necessary for my happiness.

Hmm, I can't imagine roast lamb without garlic and rosemary -- that's the way I've known most English cooks to season it. Vee, is that a usual way? I adore garlic, even the smell of it on my hands after I've minced it. On my breath and other people's breaths is a different matter, but I'm willing to risk it!

Vee, I might have asked this before, I don't remember: I'm trying to identify this contraption that my landlady in Elgin, Scotland used to bake on her stovetop. She was the one who cut scone dough into the wedge shapes that I will forever associate with scones, though I now know that must be what some Scots do, not the English. Anyway, she would place a pan of scones on the hot hob and then put this half-domed metal doohickey over the pan, hob and all. I say half-domed because one side was made to slide up inside the other half or it could be lowered to make a full dome. The scones, or whatever, would bake under this thing just like they were in a regular oven. Do you recognize what I'm talking about and know what it's called?

Chris your rumours about garlic/lack of in English cookery are fairly accurate. It has long been regarded as French and therefore suspect. My childhood home would never have had so much as a clove of the stuff within breathing range. But with the 'help' of TV chefs and the 'chattering classes' it is becoming more popular. I use it when roasting lamb with rosemary and sage which we grow in the garden. Another 'change for the better' the only herbs available used to be parsley, mint (for mint sauce served with lamb) and maybe thyme.

Frieda, your Scottish cooking kit isn't familiar to me. Did it look like one of those ancient bits of ironmongery made by the local blacksmith in 1867? We used to stay in Scotland many years ago in both the Shetlands and later in Inverurie, not far from Elgin. The family had been bakers and we were fascinated by the Scotch pancakes, bannocks, scones etc that were still made daily by hand . . .literally . . . no spoons, ladles, weighing, everything was mixed with bare hands. As you say all cooked on the top of the hob using a heavy flat skillet. Delicious taste but no good for the waist line . .in the days when I still had a waist. :-)

When I was growing up in the deep south, garlic was virtually unknown. The typical southern Easter dinner would be celebrated with a roast of lamb, made with a mint sauce. (never garlic or herbs). Herb gardens were something done in colonial days. Thank goodness, they have made a comeback!

I think garlic is an acquired taste, and the year I lived in France, I certainly acquired it!

Pamela Harlech's books must be at least 20 years old--I think Nigella has replaced her. Avoiding garlic also sounds like a very dated trait.
If you like reading about English food, Toast is a must.

Here is a link that might be useful: Toast by Nigel Slater

I wondered why I had never heard of Pamela Harlech or her book so 'looked her up'. She is not English but American, from NY. Many years ago she married David Ormsby-Gore (he became Lord Harlech on the death of his father) who was serving as British Ambassador in Washington. I don't know what sort of circles she had moved in before her marriage but Harlech was related to the Cecils, the Devonshires and therefore both British PM Harold MacMillan and JFK. She may have had the money but he probably provided the extra social oomph.
Is her recipe book full of down-to-earth cockle-warming meals for families on a tight budget or is it all about quail's eggs in aspic and how to deal with the servants? ;-)

Thanks, Vee. I will have to scan the book to look for servants, etc. but I can tell you that the recipes look exotic to this American -- e.g. venison, rabbit, etc. She does cover a lot of extraneous material about running a large household, apart from just cooking....

With Easter coming up I am interested to know if you prepare special meals/food stuffs for this holiday in your various necks of the wood, or maybe you take part in family/community/church customs.

Over here hot cross buns are traditional Good Friday fare. Home made with yeast as a bread dough, they can be delicious served warm with butter. Unfortunately the supermarkets begin selling them in January and they taste heavy and horrid.
Easter Sunday is the day for giving children chocolate Easter eggs. Again in the stores from about February and unless you buy one made of good quality choccy they can be quite sick-making and very over-priced.
In this part of the UK it is the season when folk visit the local grave yards/cemeteries to 'flower' the graves of departed relatives. Sixty miles up the road, where I come from, this custom takes place before Christmas.
Do any of you celebrate with special family meals or menus? Maybe you go in for Easter bonnets or parades?

Oh, how I miss hot cross buns... the crunchy outside, the chewy warm inside and then the melting butter --- yum.

Since my DH is Jewish and I don't belong to organized religion, we eat the chocolate, but that's it. However, the city is very religious so there is plenty to remind us of the importance of the event for others.

There's been a definite shortage of Cadbury's Creme Eggs in this next of the woods.

Now that my family is scattered to the four winds, traditional Easter dinner has fallen away too, I'm afraid. When I was a kid, it was a big deal -- second only to Christmas. We always had a huge ham (well, it was Iowa after all), fresh asparagus and about forty-three other vegetable side dishes, fruit salads, yeast breads, cakes, pies, and other desserts. It was a time to bring out the damask table cloth and napkins and use the real china, crystal, and silver. We kids had to be on our best behavior and couldn't enjoy eating because we were terrified of spilling something on the precious tablecloth or our new Easter duds. Bless my Opa (grandfather)! I think he deliberately broke the tension by spilling some of his soup down his shirt-front or dropping his bread, butter side down, onto the cloth. After that everyone relaxed and ate with careless gusto.

Speaking of Easter outfits: Those were the highlight. Everyone at church -- the women and girls anyway -- looked to see how well turned-out everyone else was. The females had been sewing for weeks on their Easter dresses or suits. It was the first showing of the spring colors after a season of winter drabness -- no matter that Easter Sunday was often colder than a well-digger's patootie and sometimes snow was still on the ground. One year everything I had on was pale powder blue: from my hat (the peculiar-to-the-1950s little arch that sat purposefully lopsided on the head -- think Mamie Eisenhower), to my dress with the net (scratchy) can-can petticoat, to my anklet socks (that crept downward over my heels despite constant tugging) and maryjanes. That was the year that I got a baby blue-cover King James Bible, which is still one of my most cherished books.

As Frieda said, now that all our children have their own children, we don't always have Easter dinner at home; but this year my daughter has a gift certificate for a Honey-Baked Ham (specialty shop) and a new recipe for a spring cake (her description). So, she invited her family, ham, and cake to our house after church with me to provide extras--probably corn pudding, fresh salad, dressed eggs, and rolls. My two stepdaughters also are coming with small retinues.

I belong to a very large church, and last year I was the only one there wearing a hat. We have several African American families who attend, and some of those ladies used to wear big, beautiful hats. I'm a little intimidated this year about wearing one, but then I'm much too old to give in to peer pressure. Who knows? Maybe I'll be instrumental in getting some of those casual-dress folks to smarten up a little.

Our weather has turned quite cold this week, but we are promised 60s and sun for Sunday. I have a photo of my daughter and oldest niece when they were small standing out in the snow holding their pretty Easter baskets. We always hid colored eggs (not in the snow) and had chocolate eggs and rabbits. What is in short supply here this year are the Russell Stover coconut cream eggs. They are the best!

Our kids have long flown the coop, so no Easter baskets. And neither of us is religious, in either of our background religions, Easter is just another Sunday spent reading the NY Times.

Leel, an interesting point.
I think the UK is far less of a religious country than the US with a very low percentage of regular church goers. Even the Catholic church relies on the many Polish etc immigrants to swell its numbers. Despite this (in England) we still have an official religion, C of E, and our Bank (public) Holidays are often based round religious festivals, so Good Friday and Easter Monday are technically days off work, or used to be before stores, super markets etc went in for longer opening hours and 'Sunday trading'.
Because of this I think it would be difficult not to notice that this weekend is 'different'. . . although not to the same extent as Christmas with all the excesses of buying, spending and over-eating.

Carolyn I am interested to know how you 'dress' an egg.

We have never had special food, other than Hot Cross Buns, which in my youth were only for Good Friday, and chocolate eggs. Now there are not only eggs, but bunnies, and in Australia, since rabbits are a feral nuisance, the Easter Bilby, made by local chocolate manufacturer Haigh's.
We usually get together with my parents and SIL and BIL for a meal, but we have set menu.

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:2116796}}

Carolyn, are your 'dressed' eggs similar to deviled or stuffed eggs? I forgot to mention the deviled eggs in our typical family fare above. I have always adored stuffed eggs, but I never was crazy about the hard-cooked, dyed ones that we kids hunted after Easter dinner. What particularly grossed me out was the green ring around the yolk. Even worse were the hard-sugar-coated, egg-shaped marshmallow thingies. I'm glad those seem to have passed into oblivion.

Carolyn, I admit that I don't attend church services regularly, but when I do I have to say that I find the casualness in dress of most worshippers jarring. No doubt that I'm old-fashioned, but even today -- even in Hawai'i --I wouldn't dream of showing up at church in slacks or shorts and tank-tops.

Kath, the chocolate Easter Bilby is cute. I'd eat his ears off first, then his nose -- that's what my brothers and I did with our chocolate bunnies, and my sons did too. I recall that we were disappointed that the creatures were hollow if they were two-sided.

What is a Bilby? I used to have some friends who went to a boys' school and they had a master called Bilby who was always really really cheerful so if something was going well for you, everyone used to say "It's just bilby"....

A marginally interesting aside for you there.

Here's a question to answer interspersed with the Easter food descriptions: When you think of a burger, what is it specifically?

I have been amazed in my roamings to find that what constitutes a burger is not always what I grew up thinking a burger is.

First, there's the main ingredient: is it ground beef, ground lamb, ground goat (Jamaican favorite), chicken, turkey, meatless -- textured vegetable protein patties or whole vegetables such as sliced eggplant (aubergine) or those gigantic mushrooms? I've heard various fish and seafood sandwiches referred to as burgers, too.

How is the main ingredient cooked? Grilled (gas or charcoal), griddled, pan-fried, etc.

What is your favorite condiment? Does the inclusion of a particular condiment, say ketchup (tomato sauce), automatically make you want to pitch the thing in the nearest garbage bin?

How else do you like to 'dress' your burger? What do you consider an unusual ingredient? For instance, I thought the Aussie's beetroot on burgers was most unusual until I found out that many Aussies expect it without asking for it.

What's the 'weirdest' burger you've ever had? I think the oddest burger I've ever had was called a "Rhode Island Chow Mein Burger." Evidently it is quite a favorite in that state, but I have no idea why. Basically, it's a beef patty on a toasted regular burger bun with chow mein vegetables in a a thick sauce ladled over it, and then sprinkled with fried chow mein noodles, and finally topped with the other half of the bun. It's a gloppy mess to eat hand-held. I can't say that I will crave another any time soon, but it was to me surprisingly palatable.

I have some very special Easter memories of growing up in the deep South. Our family traditional feast was always roast Lamb with mint jelly. Children were always given chocolate Easter bunnies and choc. eggs wrapped in bright colored tinfoil. Someone always held an Easter Egg Hunt, and there were prizes for the kids. In my day, the popular song was "The Easter Parade", which starts out with, "don your Easter bonnet, with all the frills upon it..." There was a contest in church amongst the ladies, as to who could outdo the others with new pastel Easter outfits. It could be cold enough for wool, but the coats were always spring coats of pastel colored wool. We girls all wore white gloves and Mary Jane shoes with white stockings to church.

My own unique memory was of getting not only stuffed, plush bunnies for Easter, but having a real, live white rabbit show up on our doorstep Easter Sunday. (Mind you, this is in the city of Atlanta!) Turns out the neighbor down our street had bought the bunny for their kids, who did not want it, so let it loose. My parents decided to adopt the rabbit, and my father built it a cage in our backyard. Periodically, it was let out to explore and dig a den, and play with our dog. But it always come back to its pen. At that time, I believed in magic, with good reason....

One year, I was given pastel dyed Easter chicks, who lived in a box in our kitchen. That did not work out so well, so our maid took the chicks home with her, which she later cooked, when they were full grown.

Wood, funny about your chicks. We always used to see baby chicks for sale at Easter, but the Humane Society got involved because they almost invariably died having been literally loved to death.

Vee and Frieda, yes my dressed eggs are the same as deviled ones (boiled eggs cut in half with mashed yolks mixed with mayonnaise, salt and pepper, perhaps a little vinegar or mustard, and then stuffed back into the empty halves of the whites). I put a little chopped sweet pickle in mine to give them some extra taste, but then I don't much like eggs.

Lemon, a bilby is a small furry marsupial, not often seen, but in appearance similar to a rabbit with big ears.

Frieda, for me a burger is a beef patty which is cooked on a hot surface (griddle, frying pan) on a bun with tomato, lettuce, beetroot (yes Frieda, a real Aussie burger has it) onion and tomato sauce (which is ketchup to some of you).

Here is a link that might be useful: Bilby

I like mine with lettuce and tomato,
Heinz 57 and French-fried potatoes.
A big Kosher pickle and a cold draft beer,
Good gawd a'mighty, which way do I steer?
-- Lyrics of Cheeseburger in Paradise by Jimmy Buffett

Cheez-buggah, cheez-buggah, cheez-buggah!
-- chant of the late John Belushi on Saturday Night Live

Anyone know any other quotes mentioning burgers?

Kath, in Australia are there other sandwiches besides the beef patty one that are called 'burgers'?

Beetroot grew on me, Kath! I certainly like it better than pineapple, which in Hawai'i will be added to everything, it seems. I haven't yet tasted a coconut burger but I figure it's just a matter of time.

The choice of condiment can be quite fraught: In the American Southwest a burger with mayonnaise is called a Sissyburger. In Louisiana maynez is the preferred treatment and if you ask for mustard instead, the mustard will be glopped on in the same copious amount that mayo is, rendering the burger inedible unless you're a real mustard freak. In burger-joint parlance "make it bleed" or "all the way, bloody" is a sandwich with ketchup.

Personally I think the addition of condiments should be left to the eater, but many eateries still put them on in the assembly. My DH got fed up one day at a fastfood drive-through, after he had carefully enunciated three times that he wanted his burger DRY. He checked before driving off and found that his burger had mayo, mustard, and ketchup! He lobbed the thing back through the window. I was embarrassed and felt sorry for the poor window-tender, but I also understood his frustration.

I had a very good pork chop burger in North Carolina. Don't think I've seen one in any other part of the country or world.

A pork chop burger?. Is that served on or off the bone? ;-)

Sorry to admit it Frieda, but I have never been in a MacDonald's or a KFC or any of the pizza outlets that have been brought to this once Green and Pleasant Land . . . and is now ankle-deep in the plastic/cardboard containers from these places.
Pale imitations of the traditional BBQ are often held during our apology for a summer. Usually the food is only burgers made from the cheapest meat or hot dogs ditto poor quality sausages. No salads or side dishes are provided. Besides mustard and ketchup many people enjoy a heap of fried onions, judging from the smell cooked in axle grease, on the bun.
I value my digestive system too much to indulge in this fare.

Re hard-boiled eggs. That horrible green/grey ring between the yolk and the white is caused because the eggs haven't been plunged into cold water straight after cooking.
When I was growing up, many moons ago, eggs were still a luxury due to rationing and unless you lived in the country and kept hens you would be lucky to get an egg a week. Dying them would never have been an option, nor was titivating them bothered with. It still upsets me when people 'waste' eggs . .. or any food come to that and we are told that in the UK a third of what we buy is never eaten!

Mary come over to my place in a week and our broody hen may have hatched half-a-dozen chicks. What colour would you like them to be dyed?

Do you have Scotch eggs in the US or Aus?

Vee - As far as I know, I don't think we have scotch eggs in the US (or at least the part where I live). I love those but haven't had them in years. My mum used to make great ones - not sure how healthy they are for you, but they are good for the soul. :-)

Vee, you haven't missed much from never eating in a McDonald's, KFC, etc. The draw to such places is, I think, the predictability -- you know pretty much what you are getting when you enter such establishments, no matter that it's cardboard food, in both taste and detritus.

However, there are subtle differences in predictability in such franchises, from nation to nation especially, but also from state to state in the US, sometimes. A Maine McDonald's will sell their local favorite, the lobster roll, while an Oklahoma McDonald's will have, say, a special barbecue pork (boneless) riblet sandwich. In the opposite place these sandwiches would languish and wouldn't stay on the menu.

The rubbish angle: Well, at least the old-fashioned fish 'n' chips shops recycled out-of-date newspapers. But I wonder about the ingestion of newsprint ink; didn't some of it dissolve and get onto the food?

I once saw a blubberburger on a menu in Alaska, but I didn't try it because I was afraid that it would contain exactly that: whale blubber.

Scotch Eggs in the US used to be more common than nowadays. They were often a staple of school cafeterias, which generally meant poorly prepared and tasteless. Only about one kid in five really enjoyed the things; the rest grumbled and tore off the sausage part and mashed the egg part into mush so that it would look like they had at least tried to eat it. As with anything that gets a poor reputation, the Scotch egg lost favor, I'm afraid, in the US.

I laugh at the fried onions at English BBQs because the English, who eschew garlic, do love their onions it seems. I had one English flatmate who seemed forever to be 'baking' (her term) onions -- nothing but onions in a pan in the oven. I have to admit, though, I got used to the aroma and was more than once glad to partake of the onions.

Vee, scotch eggs were one of the first things we made in Home Economics class at high school. The very first was an Oslo lunch, basically a salad with a boiled egg, and I think the Scotch egg was to add variety to that. I have never had one since, though.

Frieda, my DH was aghast when I read him the burger part of this conversation, that I forgot to put EGG in my burger. A real Aussie one definitely has a fried egg in it! A real burger is obtained from a fish and chip shop. The kind that comes from a Maccas is 'Americanised' (I supposed that should be AmericaniZed LOL) with pickles, something we would never use, nor even give that name to. Pickles here used to be mustard pickles, a kind of condiment made with cauliflower and other vegetables. The green things are gherkins.
We have another burger chain called Hungry Jack's, which I think maybe a subsidiary of Burger KIng, which tries to be a little bit more Australian, but is still basically crap fast food.
With regard to other things in burgers, these chains do 'chicken fillet' burgers, and sometimes 'fillet'o'fish' but I wouldn't consider them real burgers.

Although Swedes may be the world's least religious people, Easter in Sweden doesn't go unnoticed. It lasts from Good Friday to Easter Monday. It may be said to start already on Maundy Thursday when kids go begging for sweets, dressed as witches, as American kids do at Halloween. Food is quite traditional, much as it was in Catholic times before the Protestant Reformation in 1560. There is always fish on Good Friday, most often salmon now, pickled herrings, gravlax and eggs on Saturday and a chocolate egg hunt for the children. We spend a lot of time painting the hardboiled eggs before eating them and try not to outdo the children in artistic efforts. Then we try to knock each other's eggs and the one with the last unbroken egg wins. On Easter Sunday there is lamb cooked with garlic, etc, and on Monday we eat leftovers. All desserts are made with chocolate in some form, such as chocolate glazed almond cake or a mousse.

Would someone say what "Scotch Eggs" actually are, please?

In my part of VA, the art of egg dying in the Ukrainian style has really become popular. Very intricate designs, done with a wax method are quite sought after. I own a few which I have had for years.

Mary, to prepare Scotch eggs you first hard-ish boil eggs and when they are cool wrap them in sausage meat,add a coating of egg and breadcrumbs and deep fry. They are usually served cut in half long ways with salad or with mashed potatoes and veggies. Often a useful addition to a picnic. These days people often buy them to save time and these can be pretty dreadful.

Kath the 'pickle' thing is interesting. We call the yellow mustard type Piccalilli and like you call the green 'mini-cucumber' things gherkins, not that they are very popular. Pickled onions/shallots are quite common and eaten with bread and cheese, cold meat etc.
I am rather partial to chutney which we often make during the Autumn. One of those recipes to which, with vinegar as its base, can consist of almost any fruit and veg. Just takes ages to cook.
Mariannese, this Good Friday my DH took his rod and net to the local trout lake but failed to catch anything. What happened when the old hunter-gatherers came home empty handed?!

Vee, my mum makes lovely pickled onions, and one of my favourite school sandwiches was fritz and pickled onion. Fritz is a processed luncheon meat exclusively South Australian, and also called bung fritz, and is encased in a sausage-like skin and is about 10cm in diameter. I think the name is in reference to the German butchers who were part of the German immigration here (others were winemakers and went to the Barossa Valley where good wine and German names abound).

I like chutney too, that has a tomato base and so is a deep red/brown colour, the pickles are a violent yellow.

Vee, I am sure the old hunters would have starved without the gatherers, that is, the women who gathered fruit, roots, shellfish and edible ants, termites. If the men managed to catch an old and feeble gnu every other month the tribe lived well for a few days, no more.