Hello and Welcome!

I'm getting loads of new visitors after being recommended on metafilter and then Yahoo Picks and then USA Today. Thanks for passing through. This is Vitamin Q, perhaps the internet's biggest trivia resource (for what it's worth!). Things have been a bit quiet here recently due to the season and since I'm busy turning this site into a book which will be published in the Autumn.

SOME SITE HIGHLIGHTS: This link will take you to links to some of my favourite lists from earlier months of the site, or just browse away.

And here's a sneak preview of some of the items I may or may not put up here in the next few weeks:

sausages of the world / who were the Mitford Sisters? / 30 things you just don't see any more / 12 signs I'm getting older / best ever singer-songwriters / who has been 'big in japan' / penny sweets from your childhood / 20 crazee Death Metal song titles / Japanese childrens' fads / 10 brilliant songs with terrible lyrics / strange body modification rituals around the world / 10 famous real or made-up Eskimos / the changing face of words meaning 'good!' / bad grammar in Rolling Stones song titles / the dances of the 1962 USA dance craze

So please bookmark VitQ and return another time. The archive to the left contains the equivalent of a 500 page book of nonsense.

Roddy

 
HAPPY HOGMANAY

78 terms for being drunk

mortal / full / bombed / off your face / wellied / bladdered / in your cups / half-seas over / legless / ratted / happy / sotted / boozed up / mellow / shit-faced / fuddled / smashed / blasted / paralytic / wrecked / tight / juiced / tipsy / pissed as a newt / clobbered / totalled / schnockered / worse for wear / como’d / blue / sloshed / lit / razzled / drunk as a lord / bleezing / langered / tanked up / guttered / miraculous / stinko / on the sauce / hoovered / mashed / pished / Brahms and Liszt / out of your tree / three sheets to the wind / squiffy / woozy / trollied / under the influence / locked / blitzed / steaming / polluted / trousered / plastered / blotto / nappy / fleein’ / trashed / pickled / rat-arsed / blootered / ripe / seshed / zombied / shot / high / merry / lush / wasted / soaked / out of your box / soused / pie-eyed / hammered / sozzled

...and the rest! Thanks to those who offered other terms. Happy New Year from VitQ!

 
GLOBAL KENNEL

Countries and their particular dog breeds:

Afghanistan - Tazi (Afghan hound)
Argentina - Dogo Argentino
Australia - Queensland Heeler
Austria - Alpine Badgerhound
Belgium - Schipperke
Brazil - Fox Paulistinha
Canada - Husky
China - Chow Chow
Croatia - Karst Sheepdog
Cuba - Havana Silk Dog
Czech Republic - Fousek
Denmark - Broholmer
England - Springer Spaniel
Estonia - Gontchaja
Finland - Suomenpystykorva
France - Ariegeois
Germany - Rottweiler
Greece - Greek Harehound
Hungary - Pumi
Iceland - Icelandic Spitz
India - Mudhol Hound
Ireland - Glen Terrier
Israel - Kelef K'naani
Italy - Bergamasco
Japan - Akita
Latvia - Latvian Deerhound
Macedonia - Sarplaninac
Madagascar - Coton de Tulear
Malaysia - Telomian
Mali - Sloughi
Malta - Pharaoh Hound
Mexico - Xoloitzcuintli
Netherlands - Drent
New Zealand - Huntaway
Norway - Dunker
Peru - Peruvian Hairless
Papua New Guinea - New Guinea Singing Dog
Poland - Tatra Mountain Sheepdog
Portugal - Portuguese Cattle Dog
Russia - Borzoi
Scotland - Dandie Dinmont
Slovakia - Liptok
South Africa - Ridgeback
Spain - Galgo
Sweden - Drever
Switzerland - Appenzeller
Tibet - Lhasa Apso
Turkey - Akbash
USA - Treeing Tennessee Brindle
Wales - Cardigan Corgi
Zaire - Basenji

Source: various

 
SONGBOOK

A bunch of genuine titles of folk-songs and old popular tunes.

About the Bush, Willy
Andy's Gone With Cattle
Blancheflour and Jellyflorice
Blink Over the Burn, Sweet Betty
Can Ye Sew Cushions?
Cape Cod Girls They have No Combs
The Castration of the Strawberry Roan
Fanny Power
Fly Up, My Cock
Give Ear to a Frolicksome Ditty
Golden Ring Around My Susan Girl
Gonna Keep My Skillet Greasy
Hallelujah I'm a Bum
Handy Spandy Jack-a-Dandy
Have Some Madeira, M'Dear
He Went to Sleep - the Hogs Ate Him
I Catch-a da Plenty of Feesh
I Had a Wee Cock
I Wanted a Kitten to Love Me
I Will Bow and Be Simple
I'll Hae Nae Mair o' Yer Cheese
Into the Air, Junior Birdmen
The Lean and Unwashed Tiffy
Let Simon's Beard Alone
Lumps of Pudding
Making Babies By Steam
May the Bird of Paradise Fly Up Your Nose
Morrisey and the Russian Sailor
My Gal's a Corker
My Word, You Do Look Queer!
Never Throw a Lighted Lamp at Mother
Nine Inch Will Please a Lady
Risselty-Rosselty
Sexcamel
She Perished in the Snow
The Shearin's Nae for You, My Bonnie Lassie O
The Squid-Jigging Ground
The Sugar Notch Entombment
There Was a Wee Bit Mousikie
There's an Empty Cot in the Bunkhouse Tonight
Violate Me (In the Violet Time)
We Loop in the Purple Twilight
What Kind o’ Pants Does the Gambler Wear?
When She Cam Ben, She Bobbed
When the Ice Worms Nest Again
A Woman Belly Full o' Hair
The Wren She Lies in Care's Bed
Zack, the Mormon Engineer

Source: various

 
TOP OF THE SHOP

Some bingo-related trivia:

1 Bingo has existed in some form since at least the early 1500s when it was already an established lottery game in Italy.

2 Bing Crosby received his childhood nickname of Bingo from his favourite jug-eared character in a comic strip called the Bingville Bungle.

3 In British slang, bingo wings is the name given to loose skin or flabby flesh on the under sides of the upper arms. It comes from the idea that bingo is largely played by overweight elderly women.

4 It is becoming quite popular to play bingo at bridal showers in the USA, with cards depicting traditional gifts which are struck off as numbers usually are when the bride unwraps that item.

5 In early 30s New York, bingo became a fad when introduced by Edwin Lowe who had seen the game played at travelling carnivals in the South. Numbers were covered with beans and winners shouted Beano! when all numbers were covered. When one of Lowe’s players wrongly shouted Bingo!, he adopted this as the name of the game.

6 Cow chip bingo (aka ‘cow pie bingo’ and ‘bessie bingo’) is a game played in Australia and the USA where a field is marked off in squares, the squares are raffled and a cow is let into the area. The winning square is the one where the cow lays down a pat.

7 Bingo, the tubby orange monkey in the TV series The Banana Splits was played by Terence Winkless and voiced by Daws Butler. Since Bingo was drummer with the men-in-animal-suits pop group, and since it was partly a spoof on The Monkees, who were an attempt to create an American Beatles, it’s likely his name was a play on Ringo.

8 Numbers were given nicknames in bingo (a practice now dying out as the game tries to escape its tawdry image). These names were a mix of rhyming slang, visual image and topical cant. Some standard ingredients include leg (1), duck (2), flea (3), door (4) and fat lady (8). The nickname for number 9 (‘doctor’s orders’) came from the advertising for an early 20th century laxative named Number 9.

9 There have been many songs about bingo, including The Upsetters’ ‘Bingo Kid’, Patrik Fitzgerald’s fey punk ‘Bingo Crowd’, Matt McGinn’s fun-folky ‘Bingo Bella’, girl-band Cleopatra’s ‘Bingo My Love’, The Fall’s early effort ‘Bingo Master’s Breakout’ and Tom Verlaine’s ‘Mr Bingo’.

10 On a CD of songs by North American Indian women, I encountered the Six Nations Women Singers, an Iroquois vocal combo, and marvelled at the breadth of their subject matter. The first song was about the White Man’s destruction of mother earth, the second about bingo (translation "I only have two dollars, but I’m going to bingo anyway.").

11 Early pinball machines, especially those in the 1930s, were often based on the game of bingo. These machines tended to have prize money as opposed to the usual ‘for amusement only’. Players had to achieve runs of certain numbers by landing balls in holes.

12 Scientists in Canada have identified a condition they call ‘bingo lung’, caused by over-exposure to the smoke-laden atmosphere in bingo halls.

Source: various

 
McBANQUET

'The Blythesome Bridal' is an uproarious Scottish song probably written around 300 years ago. It tells of a wedding ceremony, the motley crew of guests and the food and drink they consumed. Here is a guide to the wedding guests and their feast:

Sawney the soutar (Alexander the shoemaker)
Will wi' the meikle mou (Will with the big mouth)
Tam the blutter (Tom the dirty, clumsy chap)
Andrew the tinkler (Andrew the vagabond)
bow'd-legged Robie (bow-legged Robert)
blue-cheeked Dowbie
Lawrie the laird of the land
sowlibber Paatie (Patty the pig-spayer)
plucky-fac'd Wat i' th' mill (pimply-faced Walter from the mill)
Capper-nos'd Francie (copper ie red-nosed Francis)
Gibbie that wons in the how o' the hill (Gilbert who lives in the dell)
Alaster Sibbie wha in wi' black Bessy did mool (Alastair Sibbie who slept with dark-haired Elizabeth. Sibbie, perhaps just a surname, has connotations of sexual disease)
snivling Lilly
Tibby the lass that stands oft on the stool (the girl who often does penance in church)
Madge that was buckled to Stennie and cost him grey breeks to his arse (ie spent all his money)
gleed Geordy Janners (squinting George Janners)
Kirsh wi' the lily-white leg, who gade to the south for manners
Juden Mecourie
blinkin daft Barbara Macleg (very stupid)
flea-lugged sharney-fac'd Lawrie (flea-eared, dung-faced Lawrence)
shangy-mou'd halucket Mag (hare-lipped, giddy Margaret)
happer-ars'd Nansy (Nancy with the scrawny backside)
fairy-fac'd Flowrie (fairy-faced Florence)
Muck Madie
fat-hippet Grisy the lass wi' the gowden wame (ie golden womb, probably a sexual slur)
girn-again Gibby (moan-again Gilbert)
glaiket wife Jenny Bell (meaning both ugly and stupid)
mealy-shin'd Mungo Macapin (dusty-legged Mungo McAlpine)

And the food:

langkail (unchopped cabbage) / porridge / bannocks of barley-meal (meal scones) / sawt herring / a cogue of good ale / fadges (flat wheat loafs) / brochen (honey porridge) / south of good gabbock of skate (best portions of skate) / powsowdie (sheep-head broth) / drammock (gruel) / crowdie (type of cheese) / caller nowtfeet (fresh calves’ heels) / partens (large crabs) / buckies (sea-snails) / whytens (whitings) / spaldings (dried fish) / singit sheepheads (singed sheep heads) / haggies (haggis) / scadlips (hot broth) / lapper'd-milk kebbucks (cheese made with curdled milk) / sowens (gruel of fermented oat husks) / farles (savoury scones) / baps (bread rolls) / swats (beer made from sowens) / brandy in stoups and in caps / mealkail (a dish of mashed cabbage and oats) / castocks (cabbage stems) / skink (beef soup) / scrapt haddocks / wilks (whelks) / dulse and tangles (seaweed)

Source: from the collection of Scottish songs by David Herd (a contemporary of Robert Burns)

 
SEEDY

Some fruit and veg used as derogatory slang:

fruit - an old-time homosexual
wally - a useless person (from the Cockney for a gerkhin)
gooseberry - a third party at a potentially hot date
plum - person prone to mistakes
prune - an elderly person
turnip - an unsuccessful England football manager*
lemon - an idiot or a naive person
nut - a discotheque psycopath
grapes - Emma Freuds (ie haemorrhoids)
coconut - a black person accused of living a ‘white’ lifestyle
cabbage - a lazy so-and-so
limey - US slang for the English (from sailors who used lime juice to ward off scurvy)
fig - an inconsequential person

*When the England manager gets bad results, the newspapers traditionally print a photo of him with his head turned into a turnip or some other vegetable.

Source: by Tim Wells; some added (and some Bowdlerised) by RcL

 
SPECIFIC HUNGER

10 particular cravings I get for food and drink far away in time or place:

1 Mixed Pakora (Kebab Mahal, Nicholson Square, Edinburgh) - pakora are Asian fritters which are sold at kebab houses in Scotland. Since most of these places are run by Pakistanis (as opposed to Turks in England), they sell a mixture of Middle Eastern and Asian fast food. The mixed pakora comprises spicy, bright red chicken wings, chunks of fish in a light spiced batter, deep fried mushrooms and onion pakoras. Served with a thick red chili sauce, yoghurt sauce and lots of salad.

2 Green Chili (somewhere in LA) - the LA equivalents of the British ‘greasy spoon’ (an inexpensive café) sell home-style Mexican food. Cheap, fast, tasty. You feel like your long lost Aunt Jacinta has cooked you supper. I don’t want bubble and squeak or a fry-up with a slice and sugary beans. I want carne verde.

3 Arctic Red (Western Canada) - this is a beer from the Yukon which is found in good bars in Alberta. It’s simply delicious, not unlike some of the better US microbrews such as Sierra Nevada. if they had it at my local pub here, I’d be even more of a lush.

4 Doner Kebab (Pamuk Kale, Church Street, Stoke Newington, London) - never has a food had its name(s) (doner, gyros, shawarma etc) taken so in vain. I love the way the Pamuk Kale (Turkish for Cotton Castle) do theirs. A circle of soft Turkish flat-bread, with added lamb or chicken doner or (shivers with excitement) both, sliced from a great wodge on a spit, plied with herby tomato salad, raw onions, hot peppers and lashed with chili and yoghurt sauces. Roll it up. Chew it down. The first time I ever ate a doner (Chalk Farm, April 14th 1981) I wept when it was finished. You can’t buy one round here, which is partly why I’ve lost 35 pounds this year.

5 Chicken in Soy Sauce (restaurant now demolished, Lauriston Place, Edinburgh) - chicken done ‘lemon chicken’ style ie sliced breast with a very light batter. The sauce was soy based, of course, but rich and delicious. Much missed - and never seen on another menu.

6 Meatball Sandwich (NYC) - as if I need another reason to love New York! The best one I had was in somewhere on, maybe, 8th Ave, somewhere in the mid 20s to mid 30s. It’s no good unless the whole thing collapses and you get messy. Needless to say, the UK has as many good meatball sandwiches as it does bald eagles. Possibly the only good dish containing ‘America’s Shame’ ie its terrible cheese. We have terrible teeth, they have terrible cheese. The other great NYC fast food are those sausages split and cooked under an iron, then served in a soft tortilla with hot tomato sauce.

7 Chicken in Batter - (St Andrews) fried chicken, one of the world’s most popular and least well done foods. Scottish chip shops used to do leg portions in the same batter used for fried fish. The trick is getting the cooking time right, so the batter isn’t brick-like and the chicken portion cooks through. But they used to be able to do it. Now, it’s just the same old KFC-alikes or the bald bits of ex-bird yawning on their hot trays.

8 Pork Curry - (Hung Lam, S Clerk Street, Edinburgh) - now I am Char Sui Boy. But when it comes to the wondrous tan goo that is Chinese curry sauce, I don’t want red roast pork. In fact, the man here turned his lip and refused to sell me such a thing many moons ago. Now it’s ubiquitous on takeaway menus, while everyday pork (probably the most common meat in real Chinese food) is not to be found. Except here. Gloopy, tangy, satisfying.

9 Stewart’s Key Lime Soda - I don’t have a sweet tooth, so I don’t know why I wake in the night craving this sugary American fizzy drink. It tastes like boiled citrus sweets liquefied. It’s oddly nice and comes in dinky bottles.

10 Pata - I spent a week or two in the Philippines on a literary conference, and as I’ve said before Pinoy food is fascinating. The one thing I’d like to taste again is this alternative to spare ribs, actually made from the pig’s lower leg. It is boiled up with seasoning and then deep-fried until crispy and served as a snack.

While on the earth-shattering subject of Edinburgh fast food, Big Mark adds:

North Indian Chilli Garlic Chicken from that Indian in Roseburn that changes name every 8 months or so. So spicy I could never finish one. But it tasted like licking God's back. And Honey Garlic Chicken from that Chinese at Haymarket. It's still a chinese but they don't do HGC anymore. The staff were always amazed that I didn't buy any rice to go with it, but it didn't need any. Tasted like the orgasmic head-spinning high that it was.
Source: by RcL (195 lb) This list is actually based on a poem you can see here.

 
CHARMING

31 items and images worn or carried for luck:

1 eye of Horus
2 coal
3 birthstones
4 lucky T-bone (from a sheep’s head)
5 rabbit’s paw
6 cameo brooch
7 St Christopher medal
8 rosary beads
9 ankh
10 wishbone
11 coal
12 dried piece of umbilical cord
13 four-leaved clover
14 lucky coin
15 gonk
16 likeness of a saint
17 garlic
18 horseshoe
19 coral
20 dice
21 Star of David
22 unusual pebble
23 mini rice storage-bag (Japan)
24 lizard or pig amulets
25 bullet
26 lucky garment
27 white heather sprig
28 crucifix
29 henna markings
30 small figurines
31 knotted string

Source: various

 
DON'T EAT AT JOE'S

The 10 'best restaurants' in the USA:

1 Chez Panisse, Berkeley CA
2 Jean Georges, New York NY
3 The French Laundry, Yountville CA
4 Spago Beverly Hills, Beverly Hills CA
5 Highlands Bar & Grill, Birmingham AL
6 Alan Wong's Restaurant, Honolulu HI
7 Charlie Trotter's, Chicago IL
8 Ginza Sushiko, Beverly Hills CA
9 Daniel, New York NY
10 Le Bernardin, New York NY

Source: epicurious.com

 
OOPS

Some mistakes in trivia list collections:

In the entertaining recent facts’n’stuff collection That Book, author Mitchell Symons repeats the old adage that Charles Manson auditioned to be in the TV boy band The Monkees. Apart from being far too old to be a candidate, Manson was in prison at the time of the tryouts.

In Aubrey Dillon Malone’s recommended literary lists collection Stranger Than Fiction, a list called ‘Watery Graves - 5 Writers Who Drowned’ begins with poet John Berryman. Although Berryman did commit suicide in 1972 by jumping off a bridge in Minneapolis, it was a high bridge and a windy day and Berryman’s instant death was caused by hitting concrete at the river’s side.

Even best-sellers contain oopses. Ben Schott’s encyclopaedic little book Schott’s Original Miscellany pulls another old chestnut from the fire of error, repeating the offensive humdinger about Mama Cass and the sandwich in a list called ‘Untimely Popstar Deaths’. Cass Elliott died of a heart attack, not from choking on a sandwich (though this was wrongly reported at the time). The filling is usually either chicken or ham. The offensive humour perpetuating the myth is clear - fat Jewish woman chokes to death gobbling a ham sandwich.

The little-known trivia website Vitamin Q also contains errors, notably in a list named One-Off Beasts, where it claims the Indian river dolphin is the only mammal to be blind. The dolphins are only 'effectively blind' and although ‘blind as a bat’ is still not true, there are species of mole which have no eyesight whatsoever.

We ought to know better...

 
ALL TOGETHER NOW

Some selections from the CD '50 Favourite Chinese Children's Songs':

1 Children, Children, Spring of the Motherland
2 Labor is the Most Glorious
3 Being at the Side of the Teacher
4 Little Girl Picking Mushrooms
5 Child on the Cow's Back
6 Sitting on the Wings of the Song
7 We Want to be Good Children of Lei Feng Type
8 Happy Uncle Kuerban
9 My Little Chicken
10 How Wonderful the School Campus Is!
11 Let's Row Our Oars!
12 Little Herding Flute
13 Song of Selling Newspapers
14 Whenever I Walk past the Teacher's Window
15 Cute Blue Fairy
16 Song of Horse Herding
17 Light Rain in March

Source: www.chinasprout.com (sadly currently unavailable)

 
FROSTIES

12 songs about snowmen:

1 Great Snowman - John D Loudermilk
2 Cat and Snowman - Tangerine Dream
3 My Friend the Snowman - Bananas in Pajamas
4 Suicide Snowman - Marilyn Manson
5 Snowman in the Summer - The Lazy Eights
6 Snow Man - Elvis Presley
7 Abominable Snowman - Manfred Mann
8 Snowman’s Land - Keith Emerson
9 Frosty the Snowman - Gene Autry
10 Johnny Snowman - Conway Twitty
11 Jolly Jolly Snowman - The Tumble Tots
12 Mr and Mrs Snowman - Hank Thompson and his Brazos Valley Boys

Source: various

 
ONE MAN'S MEAT

20 foods I hope never to taste:

One man's meat is another man’s muck. Strange foreign foods are not strange to those whose ancestors came up with the idea. I consider this as I knock back a plateful of the much maligned and misunderstood Scottish haggis (which, apparently, over 40% of Americans believe is a real creature). Okay, so it’s a mulch of spiced innards and oats loaded into a sheep’s stomach and boiled, but it’s wonderful (and an aphrodisiac, probably)! Here though is a rundown of some dishes I won’t be choosing from the world’s great menu:

20 Although nowadays usually made from chicken, ham and thin noodles, proper bird’s nest soup uses the nests of Bornean cave swifts and is said to be an aphrodisiac and to lead to long life - the usual excuses for eating something disgustingly exotic. The seaweed nests are held together with a mushy substance made from a mix of super-thick bird saliva, fish spawn and plankton.

19 Enjoyed in various cuisines, the soft shell crab is, to my mind, an abomination of a culinary idea. Hmm, this crab has a soft shell, so why don’t we chow down on its stinking carapace as well, eyes, claws and all? I don’t think so. At least it doesn’t have a tongue, though in Newfoundland, deep fried cod tongues are a common snack. And you thought Mars Bars were an odd thing to deep fry? Mind you, my niece Mhairidh recently spotted a girl in a Scottish chip shop ordering deep fried Milky Bar (sickly white chocolate) with chips and salt and brown sauce.

18 Though the Thais prefer their shrimp flavoured condiment in bottled liquid form (nam pla), Malay cooking tends to use a product named belachan - blocks of dough made from salted, decaying shrimps. Thought it adds great flavour to food, the blocks smell so pungent that they can clear a room in seconds and have to be kept in airtight containers.

17 The eccentric English father and son scientists William and Frances Buckland both experimented with eating exotic dishes in an attempt to find new foods which could aid Victorian food shortages. Although they found kangaroo and hedgehog palatable, William declared that the only thing worse than mole meat was cooked bluebottles. It is claimed that he also ate the embalmed heart of King Louis XIV of France.

16 Ever wondered what that musky tang is in the air at markets in your local Chinatown? That’s the durian - the fruit that ‘tastes like heaven and smells like hell’. Banned on public transport in the Far East, the delicious fruit unfortunately smells like a sewer. Eating some will give you bowel breath for hours.

15 Take one cuy, defur and skin it, leaving on the head and legs. Remember, however, to remove from its skull the tiny earbone so admired by gamblers as a gaming token. Then split it, grill or deep fry it and devour (soft, small bones and all). Cuyes are known in English as guinea pigs. Meep meep.

14 I know! Why don’t we take large amounts of fish egg gunk, turn it into a paste flavoured with lemon and garlic, make it look like strawberry ice cream and call it taramasalata!

13 Maybe tales of serial killers have put me off the idea even more, but any soup or stew made by long-term boiling of a whole head seems a debatable idea. In Scotland, we used to do powsowdie (literally 'scalp-broth'), a sheep-brain stew. In the West Indies, goat’s head soup is still popular and goes by the wonderful name of ‘mannish water’

12 Akutuq, sometimes called Eskimo ice cream, is a treat enjoyed by the Alaskan Eskimos (the Inuit are those in the Canadian north). It takes a long time to prepare and is made from caribou fat and marrow, seal oil, snow and berries. It is whipped (women used to hold singing parties while doing so) for an hour or more until it is light and creamy.

11 In Tibet and Mongolia, a tea is sometimes drunk made from heavily salted, rancid mare or yak's milk. Yak's milk is pink of course, due to a taint of blood. Except it isn't - that's just a rancid old myth.

10 They taste a bit like chicken (what doesn’t?). They taste like sweet fresh cream. They taste a bit like prawns. They taste like scrambled eggs. Mmm, what are they and can I have some now? They’re the larvae of the ghost moth, also known as witchetty grubs? Actually, I’ll take a lifelong raincheck on these Aussie overgrown maggots.

9 What to do with a honking great half-fish / half-monster full of bones and tasting of silt? How about jellied eels - a speciality of London's East End. Anything that has to be masked with a layer of slime made from calves’ hooves and served with various pungent sauces is probably fairly rank to begin with.

8 L’enfer c’est les autres, they say. But hell is also other people’s offal. I’ll happily tuck into liver and onions, but watching Turks sup up a plateful of kidneys or South East Asians tucking into blood and entrail stew, well, no thanks. And may I never have to nibble on the humble andouillette, a French sausage made from that foul tummy cloth known as tripe.

7 As with the oyster, the food of the poor often in time becomes that of the rich. A rustic Italian stew called cibreo is another good example. Using those bits of a chicken most of us don’t want to sample, namely the testicles and combs of the cockerel, it has become an unlikely delicacy. And while we’re on the subject of testicle eating (orchiophagy to give it its posh name), why all the coy euphemisms - 'calf fry' and 'mountain oysters'?

6 You may have heard of kopi luwak, the world’s most expensive coffee. Gourmet delicacy or money-stripping con, you decide. The luwak is a Sumatran palm civet, a mammal which feeds on the fruit surrounding the coffee bean. The half-fermented beans are harvested from their faeces and are sold for up to £1000 per kilo. Just a cup of Maxwell House for me please, Mabel.

5 Though a fabulous cuisine blending SE Asian and Spanish recipes, some Filipino food can seem odd to the Westerner. Everything is sweeter - a lasagne sauce will taste pretty much like custard, bread like cake. But the ‘scare the tourist’ food in Manila is the balut - an incubated duck egg with a half formed chick which is boiled and eaten with salt. The true balut experience is not complete unless you feel the beak catch momentarily in your throat!

4 Casu marzu is a Sardinian pecorino cheese which has now been banned by the Italian authorities. It is livid with small maggots. Farmers claim these are just oversized bacteria, but the cheese has been ripened outdoors uncovered and in truth, flies have been laying their eggs all over it. Inevitably, it is considered an aphrodisiac. Some slightly squeamish cheese lovers wrap the cazu in an airtight bag and wait for the noise of wriggling and hatching to stop, then enjoy.

3 The proper way of preparing escargots (snails) for cooking is to starve them for a week, or perhaps feed them only herbs to give them flavour. They should be kept in wooden boxes to help dry them out. They are then covered in salt at which point they begin disgorging and foaming as all their inner juices leak out. They are then cleaned, their pancreases are removed and they are scalded and boiled.

2 Fancy some cucumber? Not if it’s the brown, cone-like sea cucumber, known also as beche de mer or ho cham. A relation of the sea urchin, it is said to have a bitter taste and a rubbery, gelatinous consistency. Sour, slimy starfish with fries and a shake anyone?

1 Common street food in Cambodia, deep fried tarantulas must be the dish I most hope I never have to try. The legs are crunchy and fibrous, the head contains soft white meat and the abdomen is filled with a cooked brown mush consisting of innards and excrement. Bon appetit!

Source: by RcL from various sources

 
JOIN THE CREW

Grose’s Dictionary of cant and slang, compiled in the 1780s, lists the divisions of what was called the ‘canting crew’ ie those types of people who commonly used low and criminal slang in 18th century London. Here they are with some attempts at explanation:

Men

1 Rufflers (the criminal elite or those who gained money by pretending to be injured soldiers)
2 Upright Men (tough gang leaders whose privilege was to deflower young prostitutes)
3 Hookers or Anglers (petty thieves esp. those who used a stick and hook to steal goods)
4 Rogues (common criminals)
5 Wild Rogues (those who have been criminal since early childhood)
6 Priggers of Prancers (horse-thieves; 'priggers of cacklers' were hen-thieves)
7 Palliardes (beggars from a begging dynasty esp. those who employ false sores and injuries)
8 Fraters (those who use false papers and patents in their begging; the 18th century equivalent of African spam cons)
9 Jarkmen (those who manufacture false documents for use in begging)
10 Fresh Water Mariners or Whip Jack(et)s (those who beg by pretending to be shipwrecked sailors trying to get back to port or home)
11 Drummers (those who travelled selling cheap or stolen goods)
12 Drunken Tinkers (itinerants who sell small goods for beer money)
13 Swaddlers or Pedlars (swaddlers are violent muggers)
14 Abrams (those who beg by pretending to be mad or disturbed)
15 Patricoes (low or unprincipled priests who conducted marriages for the poor; these ceremonies often took place with the couple either side of a dead animal, to symbolise 'till death do us part')

Women and Children

1 Demanders for Glimmer or Fire (those who begged for money for heating?)
2 Bawdy Baskets (thieves who also sell small goods and obscene books)
3 Morts (molls, women of generally low morals)
4 Autem Morts (beggars using borrowed children to gain sympathy)
5 Walking Morts (those who sold cheap or stolen goods in the street or door to door)
6 Doxies (older prostitutes who also begged)
7 Delles (prostitutes, esp. young attractive ones)
8 Kinching Morts (girls trained in pickpocketing etc)
9 Kinching Coes (orphans or beggars’ children trained in various criminal acts)

Source: Grose (qv)