The Other White Meat?

Prime Junta said:

Actually the gap is right back to where it was pre-WWII, any way you look at it.

(In case you're interested in looking at it in a variety of ways, here's the raw data plus some nice graphs about it: [ http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/TabFig2005prel.xls ].)

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Thanks, I'll have to take a look at it. I am more familiar with the wealth differential than the income differential, so I'll have to check that out.

magerette said:

Is it better or worse than Lutfisk? My grandmother had to stop making that by popular request.

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Fermented herring is actually quite rare, and it's an acquired taste. They say it taste ok, but that the smell alone is enough to make people puke. You really shouldn't even open a can indoors. We are talking about rotten fish here. And yes, it's DEFINITELY worse than lutfisk. Fermented herring is one of those weird traditions that probably should go away but people still eat because it's their "heritage". Then it's an old "do you dare to eat it" kind of test, so people eat it just because they want to say that they have eaten it.

I hadn't thought about people actually finding lutfisk (lye fish) weird but it probably is. I find the dish tasteless and stopped eating it at a young age. Many consider it to be one of the "must haves" on the table during a Christmas dinner.

Pickled herring is a very traditional and much loved dish that is eaten in pretty much every holiday (Christmas, Easter, Midsummer, on a Crayfish party etc). Pickled herring could probably be called "raw fish", but just like sushi there's far more to it than simply chewing a raw herring.

It's usually eaten while also drinking strong liquor in the form of brännvin (burnwine). It's really just distilled alcohol, traditionally tasted. We have different brands of "brännvin" from different areas around Sweden, kinda like scottish people have different local distilleries for whiskey and france/spain/italy etc have different wines.

Im not much for drinking brännvin, but I eat pickled herring quite a lot. There are numerous versions and a traditional table on easter or Christmas have at least 3-4 of them. The version with onion and the one in mustard being the most common as far as I know. I prefer the garlic version. Once I ate Christmas dinner on a fish restaurant that had over fifteen versions.

magerette said:

We thrived on pickled herring at my house--and smoked fish was one of my favorite treats as a child, but we never had any fermented herring. Is it better or worse than Lutfisk? My grandmother had to stop making that by popular request.

Edit--amazing--the economics geeks can even get their teeth into a thread about rat meat...as it were. You go guys.

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Lutfisk (lipeäkala in Finnish) is a traditional Christmas dish here. I find it OK, although I prefer my fish fresh, but my father is absolutely nuts for it. Last Christmas something went horribly wrong, and we ended up with a pile of stinky, wobbly, almost-transparent jello-like substance instead of something even vaguely resembling fish, and he still ate all of it.

It sounds like they are blowing this out of proportion as there is a significant cultural difference. The taboos of certain foods are different from culture to culture.

I remember being with a group of Lao kids and running my mouth about eating dog. I got a surprising answer: one kid said the dog over here is terrible. Dogs here (NA) eat from the sewer. It sounds like a myth perpetuated just to keep people from doing it.

Would it surprise you to learn that the clothing the Huns wore were made out of mouse pelts?

Now excuse my while I eat my bacon and eggs...

JemyM wrote:

It's usually eaten while also drinking strong liquor in the form of brännvin (burnwine). It's really just distilled alcohol, traditionally tasted.

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Sounds like that would be a good accompaniment to the rat meat, as well. We had two kinds of pickled herring, one in a sour cream sauce, and one in wine with onions and peppercorns. Both are quite yummy and I eat them when I can find them to this day.

I never actually got to taste Lutefisk--my mother, aunts and uncles had forcibly stopped my grandmother from making it before I was born, but every Christmas and New Years when she made up the smorgasbrod, she lamented it's absence.

I think that Finnish brownie stuff sounds pretty good, myself

What do you think of Beef tongue? My answer always is: "Phew, comes out the mouth of an ox. Just give me an egg."

Bartacus said:

What do you think of Beef tongue? My answer always is: "Phew, comes out the mouth of an ox. Just give me an egg."

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I ate that alot when I was younger. It was kinda good actually. But we didn't eat in chunks like those pictures, but in very thin slices (like when eating salami) on sandwhiches.

I've never had the opportunity to taste beef tongue. It sounds like the way you've eaten it, it can be a cold dish too. Didn't know that.

Another, imo very tasty, dish is Belgian fries (or for you English: chips) with 'ne curryworst speciaal. Quoted on wikipedia: "An example of an additional on-the-spot preparation is sometimes in Flanders called mammoet speciaal (mammoth special), a large frikandel (curryworst in Antwerp and Flemish Brabant) deep-fried and cut so as to put chopped onion in the V-shaped length and dressed with mayonnaise and (curry-)ketchup" Be warned for some: we're talking about Belgian mayonaise and not the one you'll find in the Netherlands (Do they out suggar in it or what?!?)

And offcours there are the organs we sometimes eat like liver and others. I don't know how common that is. And also always a good shock for Brittish visitors is that we eat horse meat -> steak with fries, but also thin fumed slices on bread.

Beef tongue is one of the few types of meat I actually don't like, and that's not because it's been in another's mouth...couldn't care less. Aren't sausages - at least some of them - packed in skin straight out of a pig's rear end?
I just don't like the taste of tongue meat. Beef tongue, rabbit tongue... bleh. But I would try rat meat at least once.

Bartacus said:

And offcours there are the organs we sometimes eat like liver and others. I don't know how common that is.

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I used to eat liver a lot when I was younger too. My cohabit just refuses to eat it so I kinda miss it.

blatantninja said:

I read once that the extreme labor laws in Germany are part of the problem. How it's really hard to fire someone. Do you think that factors into the problem?

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It´s deeply rooted in tradition. Germany is a conservative country. Not necessarily the majority of the people but at least "the system". Innovation is punished. We killed the Romans when they tried to bring us civilization, we burned heretics at the stake, we followed an emporer and an Austrian into senseless wars. There is no hire & fire tradition. It´s not a given that a 50 year old experienced specialist will find another job if he loses the current one. Or a 30 year old lower-qualified. "The system" makes it hard to fire people (after 6 months), which makes companies reluctant to hire. Federal job agencies are not good at brokering jobs. They´re learning but they are buried in useless paperwork.
Our politicians see all the fresh concepts in other European countries. Especially Scandinavia has been really creative. I think it was Denmark (I hope I´m not telling bullshit) who has completely removed all barriers for a hire&fire approach - with the result that their unemployment rate is melting like snow in the sun. The average turnaround time for an unemployed is something like 4 weeks while it can be closer to 6 months in Germany.
No politican suggesting a radical system change would get (re)elected though. For this reason a backdoor approach was chosen and instead the economy stimulated with small adjusted to taxes (lower for most companies), exceptions for very small companies (they can fire their people easier) and effectively negative wage growth for 10 years (!). As a result Germany is much, much, MUCH more competitive as an industry location than before. The wage delta has become smaller, the effective taxes for companies lower (but nor for workers), and the well known advantages of location remained.
As a result Germany will be one last time, unexpectantly due to China´s weakness, the "export world champion" in 2008. The high demand for German product, especially industry machines and cars, creates new jobs. Approximately a million in the last few years. This lowered the unemployment rate significantly.
Unfortunately export depends on the situation in other countries. You all know what´s going on in the world economy at the moment.

The abundance of rules for everything is not a really a problem in everyday life. Because we have a tradition of bending rules. Or finding a contradicting rule we like more. In the last couple of years legislative gets too aggressive though.
Standardization is inevitable to a certain extend because Germany is a small country with high population density. The country is almost exactly half as big as Texas and has 83 million habitants.

Gorath said:

Our politicians see all the fresh concepts in other European countries. Especially Scandinavia has been really creative. I think it was Denmark (I hope I´m not telling bullshit) who has completely removed all barriers for a hire&fire approach - with the result that their unemployment rate is melting like snow in the sun.

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Yes, it was Denmark that introduced the "flexicurity" model.

In Sweden, OTOH, not even a liberal government (which means centrist to right-wing here) dare touch our rigid employment protection laws which are very similar to what Gorath make the German ones sound like. It's a bit strange as it they been a major criticism from the opposition while the social democrats have been in power, but right now it seems like at least our moderates try to out-social-democrat the social democrats themselves...

It's sometimes said that Sweden has a natural left leaning majority among the people while Denmark has a right leaning one, and to me it's clear that Sweden is not an example to look up to in many fields, sadly. At the same time our neighbors such as Denmark has things like their flexible labor market and the world's happiest people, and Finland has a school system that's actually working.

EDIT: Beginning to look like P&R this, so I suppose I could respond to what the thread is actually about as well! I don't think it's so disgusting that they're eating rats really as long as they're not disease-ridden or something, as others have said as well. Surströmming is probably much worse.

Prime Junta said:

I've tried it. It's not so bad. Some French cheeses are much more... fragrant.

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Not to mention Danish cheese... A colleague had an incident during his student years. He suspected a dead rat somewhere in the apartment causing a stench, but his landlady insisted that he was snacking on Danish cheese and that caused the problem (he lived a 20 minute boat trip from Denmark). The dead rat was later found and verified as source of the "fragrance".

The Danes used to be big on horse meat too. When I was a kid and the exchange rates were more favourable we used to go to Denmark to stock up on exotic foodstuffs and booze, and my dad used to go to "the horse butcher" (feck knows if the spelling is remotely correct. Horse tastes kinda odd though, and I have managed to avoid it for 20 years by now

We used to by smoked horse for the office snack fridge, until we hired somebody who likes the damn things and found that seeing them put her off her snacks. Out of respect for her, we switched to smoked beef and smoked reindeer.

I quite like horse, myself -- it's very lean, very tasty; a bit like venison really. And it makes for really good sausages. It's also highly ethical meat -- horses generally live pretty good lives compared to industrially-raised beef or pork, let alone chicken.

As this thread proved, we human eats all kind different foods, i can't think of any comparable species on earth. Even single type of food could be cooked/marinaded/garnished in wildly different ways.

Here in Borneo island, a dense tropical jungle stretching miles in all directions, and sunlight never reach the forest floor is really dangerous place for meaty overweight city folks that couldn't run very fast, and no, i'm talking about dangerous animal that eat people...

@PJ: Oh, I LOVE horse meat! I also like horses when they're alive, but that never prevented me from eating them. Funnily, there are meany people who wouldn't eat horses just because they love horseback riding. So? I'd eat pretty much anything as long as it had a face. Cauliflower, on the other hand...

Jaz said:

Cauliflower, on the other hand...

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I guess Brussels sprouts aren't your thing too? I absolutely hate mushrooms. Unfortunately it is used in many dishes, so I can't always eat the daily menu in a restaurant. (Chinese mushrooms are eatable, but I don't take it when I don't have too.)

I never tasted a horse meat, only saw a few imported horses keep by admires/enthusiastics. They often riding the horses along a busy road with heavy traffic while wearing the cowboy hat and boot, looks like Marlborro man and all that but then the horse decided to take a dump...

@Bart: Actually, I like Brussels sprouts. I do hate Broccoli, but I love mushrooms - have yet to find a type I'm not entirely enthusiastic about.

@Remus: Yeah, horses seldom care about the rider's dignity .