SC - OT - Way OOP - Mocha Tim-Tams & note for Olwen the Odd

[Olwen the Odd]

Christina van Tets wrote:
> 
> No my dears, we don't do pie floaters in Melbourne, at least, not up until I
> left 5 years ago.  We do put fried eggs on hamburgers, though,

For the record, not uncommon in certain parts of the U.S., also.

> and the
> occasional egg broken on top of a pizza before baking (I could never stomach
> the thought of that one).

Not unheard of in Rome, although sometimes you just get a boiled egg on
the side...

> My lord husband has had pie floaters a few times
> in Adelaide and surroundings - normally after a hard evening's drinking,
> from a caravan/kiosk, out of a plastic plate, but he says the most surreal
> experience was having one in Hahndorf (Barossa??) in a neat little German
> place decorated with lace and blue-and-white gingham...

Now _that_ is surreal. I am reminded of my brother almost wrecking his
car on the Autobahn outside Frankfurt, hysterical with laughter, when
the radio announcer said, "Und jetzt, fur etwas ganz anderes...!"
Perplexed witnesses to the fatal crash would have wondered, forever,
about the crazed American's dying scream: "... a man with three buttocks!"
 
> For the gentle (sorry, I forgot to look at the name) who thought there was
> something missing, did you remember to put tomato sauce (ketchup) on top??

Now this is interesting. To what extent, in the Oz culture, are tomato
sauce and tomato ketchup inerchangable? I ask because tomato sauce, to
Americans, is a completely different animal, either homemade or tinned,
and it is most often an ingredient in various cooked dishes. It's not (I
would say) generally used for pastas, but it often ends up as a cooking
liquid for things like stuffed cabbage or stuffed peppers, or in or on
meatloaf, perhaps in vegetable soups. To complicate the issue, I have it
on high authority that in parts of the American Midwest, tomato ketchup
(almost invariably a thinned, pureed chutney of tomatoes with vinegar
and sugar, and various token "spices" in microscopic amounts, and almost
never homemade except by loons like Ras or myself) is often added as
either a seasoning or as a main-bulk ingredient to tomato-based pasta sauces.

I had nightmares for weeks when I heard Phlip's descriptions of Ohio
lasagne bolognese made with cottage cheese and ketchup. My father used
to joke about things like this, and since most of his jokes were of no
newer vintage than his time in the U.S. Army from 1941 to 1946 or so, it
all falls eerily into place that perhaps he had direct personal
experience with this, possibly with Midwestern army cooks. He used to
speak of layering cooked spaghetti with Velveeta and ketchup, and until
recently I assumed this was the equivalent of a fairy tale told to
frighten the children into being good. Perhaps the world is bigger and
even more frightening than I knew ;  ). 

Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com