English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

alphabet

06:09

@tchrist I almost never had casseroles growing up, and I think they're fairly uncommon around here; they seem unappetizing to me, not that I resent people who somehow enjoy them. It's definitely a regional thing.

tchrist

@alphabet You really need to try lasagne. I think you'll like it.

alphabet

I dunno. Maybe there are other Bostonians who consume casseroles regularly, but I don't think of them as typical dinner fare; I don't think they're nearly as popular here as they are in other parts of the country.

Lasagne is a casserole in the same way that pizza is an open-faced sandwich. That said, I don't like lasagne either.

tchrist

Beans and sausage.

@alphabet The one from every state.

You don't eat scalloped potatoes and ham?

I can tell you're stuffing person not a dressing person.

No macaroni and cheese, really?

alphabet

@tchrist I don't doubt that someone in Boston eats casseroles. But you don't hear about them often.

tchrist

I guess this is what happens when your house has no oven.

No funeral potatoes, eh?

What happens when somebody dies?

alphabet

06:16

We do, in facf, have ovens here.

tchrist

No green-bean casserole for Thanksgiving OR Christmas??

You really should try enchiladas some time, too.

alphabet

Green bean casserole is, I think, at least somewhat more popular around here. But my family didn't have it at Thanksgiving; we just had ordinary roasted green beans.

tchrist

Oh, it says you have to call these cassoulets or New Englanders don't know what you're talking about.

alphabet

@tchrist Now you're just redefining the word "casserole" to include other, more appetizing dishes.

tchrist

@alphabet Nonsense. You put a bunch of stuff in the cassoulet and put it in the oven. One dish. You're done.

alphabet

06:20

@tchrist I've never heard the word "cassoulet" before.

tchrist

Read the article.

Cheesy potatoes cas<WHATEVER YOU CALL THE THING YOU CAN'T TALK ABOUT>.

Oh maybe you call them "bakes" there.

tasteofhome.com/collection/…

Ahah, you are Doctor Sheldon Cooper and I claim my five bucks!

CowperKettle

In Russian, kasaletka is a kind of aluminum container in which food is served on airplanes

tchrist

Can't eat more than one food at once. They have to be separated.

alphabet

@tchrist That's just made up. I have never heard of this bizarre bean-based concoction.

tchrist

No mixing allowed.

If I put extra hotdogs in your baked beans, I know you'll come around.

alphabet

06:25

When I grew up, we made mac and cheese the proper way, from boxes. I still think America's finest cheese is "mysterious orange powder."

tchrist

That's racist.

CowperKettle

When I grew up, we made mac and cheese the proper way, with rye bread and lots of black caviar.

alphabet

EasyMac alla vodka.

tchrist

Rough on the sturgeon, eh?

alphabet

Boston baked beans are our city's worst export. I don't think they're all that popular within the city; it's just something we inflicted on the rest of the world.

tchrist

06:29

> Until the past fifteen years or so almost all the stories about Midwest cuisine were really stories about community. It was about the dishes people brought to church socials and community events that had their roots in the harvest and surviving long winters that came to us from the area’s Scandinavian and German immigrants.

What dishes do you bring to your church socials and community events there?

alphabet

Casseroles: the best food for surviving long winters.

tchrist

Comforting.

alphabet

A last resort.

tchrist

The resorts are closed during long winters. Haven't you seen The Shining?

alphabet

The Shining is what happens when you resort to casserolophagy out of desperation.

tchrist

06:33

French toast casserole is your favorite.

Never heard of that.

I bet there's no such thing.

Maybe French toasting is a way of broiling.

Do you put maple syrup on it?

alphabet

It was based on some sort of hasty Google Trends analysis. I'm skeptical.

I should try an all-maple-syrup diet.

tchrist

How do you fit the casserole dish in the French toaster?

> But more excitingly, french toast casserole is the most popular in the Northeast. Combining a main course and a dessert, this franken-dish is bound to light up hearts, faces, and stomachs over the holidays.

alphabet

You crush the casserole dish into tiny pieces first so that nobody will try to use it again.

I have never heard of a dish called "french toast casserole."

tchrist

So you serve it with some sort of shooting flames, like cherries jubilee. Kirschwasser always brightens any place it set on fire.

alphabet

Apparently in your state it's "chili casserole."

Mmm, sounds very edible.

tchrist

06:40

duh

Of course it is.

alphabet

To be fair, enough jalapenos will make anything taste OK.

tchrist

Either red or green, makes no nevermind. We're colorblind here.

alphabet

Those "uniquely searched" data sets are bad.

The top search for every state is PORN, except Florida, where it's SEX PORN.

tchrist

At least they finally got the time zones right.

And the winner is....

Dressing French is fashionable again, so you should try some on your French toast casserole.

CowperKettle

07:57

Dannyu NDos

Is it true that most Americans have potato chips as lunch?

CowperKettle

Lunch is at about 13:00, right?

> It was first recorded in 1591 with the meaning 'thick piece, hunk' as in "lunch of bacon". The modern definition was first recorded in 1829.[2]

Dannyu NDos

My maternal cousin is a native American, and I'm afraid if her lunch is unhealthy as such.

CowperKettle

> when the Prince of Wales stopped to eat a dainty luncheon with lady friends, he was laughed at for this effeminacy

@DannyuNDos Boiled potato, on the other hand, must be harmless

Dannyu NDos

I don't like potato in general. I used to like chips and crisps, but that's a long time before.

CowperKettle

08:08

They sold yummy rectangular chips in the USSR

CowperKettle

08:21

A Soviet psychiatrist tried to make photos of his patients' hallucinations

59.ru/text/health/2023/12/17/73018982

In the end, his other, more daring, inventions caused a suspicion in his brother, who asked him to undergo hospitalization and take psychiatric drugs. He could not bear the stress of mental disease, and killed himself.

Dannyu NDos

Oh, to think about it, there still is one kind of potato dish I like, namely mashed potato.

Too sadge those potato salad being sold in convenient stores costs like 2 USD per serving.

CowperKettle

In a Soviet comedy of 1961, a working girl is incensed at a man speaking disparagingly of preparing potato dishes as something easy, and starts listing the numerous dishes one can make with potatoes, in the style of Bubba in Forrest Gump.

Девчата Блюда из картошки

►

Forest Gump- Bubba naming all the ways to cook shrimp

►

CowperKettle

09:03

> years lost due to disability (YLDs), sometimes also known as years lost due to disease or years lived with disability/disease

I don't understand the formal meaning of this. I've been reading an article on treatment resistant depression.

Does it mean "the years during which the person is completely unable to work", or "the years during which the person is able to work but feels bad"..

CowperKettle

10:15

> AI may be used to screen individuals for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and symptom severity just using retinal photographs of the eye alone. In a new study of 1890 eyes of 958 participants, deep learning models had a mean AUROC of 1.00 for ASD screening and 0.74 for symptom severity.

It's AI galore.

jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2812964

Vladimir Lenin and Inessa Armand

Born in France, buried near the Kremiln wall.

M.A.R.

10:48

@CowperKettle a prominent theme about any Russian you mention who lived during the USSR

@DannyuNDos heretic!

@CowperKettle if it sounds weird it's because it's a WHO invention. Anything those guys come up with is weird.

Statistically it means years lost that could have been spent at full health. So: Years lost because the person died, or years lost because the person was depressed instead of being healthy.

WHO's definition of health includes being a functioning adult and being able to contribute to the society. So mentally distrssed people are unhealthy too.

@DannyuNDos French fries or, like, Lays's potato chips and commercial air in a packet?

Wait, the name is already "Lay's" huh

@DannyuNDos wait, native American or native American?

Dannyu NDos

11:05

@M.A.R. Lay's

@M.A.R. ????

M.A.R.

Born and living in America or you literally mean like belonging to the Cherokee or something?

@DannyuNDos well, that's impressively unhealthy, even by American diet standards

Dannyu NDos

@M.A.R. The former.

M.A.R.

A decade old statistic said 70% of Americans are overweight or obese. I wonder what the figure is now.

And around 40% were obese (BMI>30)

> From 1999 –2000 through 2017 –March 2020, US obesity prevalence increased from 30.5% to 41.9%. During the same time, the prevalence of severe obesity increased from 4.7% to 9.2%. (NHANES, 2021)

Nothing has changed there.

> Among men, obesity prevalence was lower in the lowest and highest income groups compared with the middle-income group. Researchers observed this pattern among non-Hispanic White and Hispanic men. Obesity prevalence was higher in the highest income group than in the lowest income group among non-Hispanic Black men.

Dannyu NDos

I cannot decide whether it's a good thing that people in average became less likely to starve to death and more likely to be satiated to death. It's certainly remarkable, though.

CowperKettle

12:14

One of my distant relatives, a boy, starved to death during the Civil War

He could not get to food which was being distributed by some anti-hunger foundation, because of all the crowd there.

So the humanity might be sleepwalking into a disaster, by burning all the oil in bulky personal cars, while we literally eat oil, because it contributes to food transportation, harvesting, to production of fertilizer.

Rather sleeprunning, not sleepwalking.

The Nate Hagens podcast on this topic is chilling.

@M.A.R. Thanks!

Laurel

12:31

@DannyuNDos It's common enough that potato chips are part of lunch, but it would be weird for it to be the entire thing

CowperKettle

What do german bakers play in their spare time?
Gluten tag

Laurel

Like the other day my work had a catered lunch for some event which was sandwiches and snacks like cookies and small bags of chips

Mitch

13:29

@DannyuNDos 'native American's only means 'ancestors born in North America before 1492' (roughly)

For someone who has an American passport it is 'American'. Anything else needs qualification.

@CowperKettle it was invented by AI Gore

@DannyuNDos 'have as lunch' means the had them as the only thing for lunch, and nothing else.

Maybe you meant 'always have them with lunch'?

Even then, it's not that common. The only time I've ever had 'potato chips' (that's how you say it in the US) is in a box meal prepared for an event (like a conference) so that no cooking is involved. For example at a conference where there are hundreds of people that need to be fed but there are no food service facilities to prepare them

So some company prepared a few hundred box lunches (lunch in a box) which usually consists of a sandwich, a fruit, and maybe a cookie or small bag of potato chips.

I would expect in general that potato chips are usually not in everyone's meal. They are more common for kids, but not common for older people

Oh. A catered lunch just like @Laurel just described

@M.A.R. it's about 115% now.

Even our statistics are inflated

Laurel

14:18

@Mitch Ours was on platters

Well, I say "ours" like I was invited to this, but in reality I just came after it was over and grabbed a bunch of leftovers

Also, you can get chips with your meal at Panera Bread

Mitch

@Laurel ooh fancy!

@Laurel the best kind of 'free'

Mitch

14:55

@Cerberus well ...

I have nothing personal against any particular Casserolians

Maybe it's just tuna casserole that's the problem for me.

As @tchrist mentioned baked ziti and lasagna are casseroles... In spirit

I'd like Shepard pie more if only there were fewer peas and more Shepard.

@Cerberus the English connotation of that makes it sound funny, like before a concert, the string section goes out to the woods to break off a few twigs of just the right feel

Robusto

15:19

#Worldle #695 1/6 (100%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🎉
⭐⭐⭐🏙️🪙📐
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr

@Mitch Sam Shepard would be appalled.

alphabet

16:10

@Mitch We do say "drum sticks," though. Granted they're also a food.

CowperKettle

18:13

Kangina

Kangina (Dari: کنگینه, lit. 'treasure', Dari pronunciation: [kʌn'ɡiːnɜ]) is the traditional Afghan technique of preserving fresh fruit, particularly grapes, in airtight discs (also called kangina) formed from mud and straw. The centuries-old technique is indigenous to Afghanistan's rural center and north, where remote communities that cannot import fresh fruit eat kangina-preserved fresh grapes throughout the winter, and merchants use kangina to safely store and transport grapes for sale at market. Grapes preserved using kangina in modern Afghanistan are typically of the thick-skinned Taifi or...

Keeps grapes fresh for 6 months

Coming to the store near you

CowperKettle

18:46

> In the brain, extracellular ATP release associated with endurance exercise acts to suppresses mitochondrial NADH oxidation, leads to coordinated increases in cerebrospinal fluid lactic acid, dopamine, and several other metabolites, and to a cascade of adaptive benefits that appear during recovery over the next several days.

ATP doubles up as a signaling molecule released outside cells to indicate increased stress levels.

> "When ATP is inside the cell, it acts like an energy source, but outside the cell, it is a danger signal that activates dozens of protective pathways in response to some environmental stressor," said Naviaux. "We hypothesize that suicide attempts may actually be part of a larger physiological impulse to stop a stress response that has become unbearable at the cellular level."

M.A.R.

19:29

@CowperKettle this double role is not unique to ATP. Every intracellular molecule plays a vastly different role outside the cell.

CowperKettle

19:45

I never thought that ATP ventured outside. I thought it was too valuable and maybe too reactive as an energy carrier

Curious.

M.A.R.

20:46

@CowperKettle ATP is not like some radioactive plutonium rod. It doesn't 'have a lot of energy', that's become a very common misconception because of the way some biochemist initially phrased it, and it's so common that everyone except the more diligent biochemists has come to believe it. That said I'm not sure what would be the most common source for extracellular ATP. More likely than not it's some cell dying and bursting, but how come that doesn't lead to inflammation and further damage, I dunno.

I would need to read more on it

jlliagre

21:07

False friend of the moment: casserole: sauce pan (the cookware, not what's cooked with it), never used in an oven.

Robusto

@jlliagre It's difficult to be happy about friends you've known all these years suddenly turning on you.

jlliagre

@Robusto You have casseroles among your friends?

Robusto

@jlliagre You're the one who put it in the friend zone, although a false one.

jlliagre

Oh, that's unfair. French idioms of the day: traîner des casseroles (lit. to drag sauce pans) or avoir des casseroles au cul (to have sauce pans behind the ass): to be compromised in some shady dealings.

Lambie

21:36

a casserole is a pot or pan or saucepan.

alphabet

21:49

@Lambie Are you pro- or anti-casserole (the food, not the pan)?

This chatroom has been divided on the issue.

Robusto

Joder, estoy harta de tantos putos casseroles.

Mitch

22:06

@Robusto Sam Shepard would be flattered

Robusto

@Mitch My way of saying you misspelled shepherd's pie.

alphabet

Even raccoons like the all-milk diet.

Mitch

22:35

@Robusto haha I was oblivious

alphabet

Does anyone actually eat shepherd's pie?

I have never seen it and refuse to believe it exists.

Robusto

I have it on occasion. I've also had it in Ireland, where it was more robust than what you get here.

Basically, it's just meat and potatoes. But it's how they spice it (if they do) that makes the difference.

Cerberus

@CowperKettle Hmm I wonder why mould doesn't grow in there.

It says the clay keeps them dry.

But that wouldn't seem to be enough.

jlliagre

Hachis parmentier

Le hachis Parmentier,, ou hachis parmentier, est un plat à base de purée de pommes de terre et de viande de bœuf hachée. Ce gratin doit son nom à l'apothicaire Antoine Parmentier, qui, convaincu que le tubercule pouvait combattre efficacement la disette, le fit goûter à Louis XVI. Le mot plus général « hachis » désigne un plat dans lequel les ingrédients sont hachés, émincés ou broyés. == Historique == Ce mets, apparu au début du XXe siècle, a été nommé en l'honneur d'Antoine-Augustin Parmentier (1737-1813), qui popularisa la pomme de terre en France, permettant à son pays de sortir du cy...

Lambie

Trader Joe's sells shepherd's pie so does Stop and Shop. Also, I make my own. The potatoes are mashed potatoes atop minced meat with any spices you want plus small pieces of carrots and green peas. Trader Joe's imports English peas. I know I sound like an advertisement.

Dannyu NDos

22:48

Nothing better than Japanese-style curry-and-rice.

alphabet

Lambie

alphabet

Imagine seeing this fellow and not wanting to give him your Cheez-Its.

Lambie

Is he yours? He should be living outdoors, shouldn't he?

alphabet

@Lambie He is my nephew, obviously. Can't you see the resemblance?

Lambie

22:54

Is he yours?

alphabet

I'm a relative of his, if that's what you mean.

Are you not aware that I am a raccoon?

Lambie

@alphabet I am pro-casserole because there are many types that are easy to make and they usually last for two meals.

alphabet

I am, as this chatroom well knows, a he-raccoon, a disaster gay, and an all-milk diet enthusiast.

jlliagre

'Tis now struck twelve. Get thee to bed, jlliagre!

alphabet

@Lambie Horrifying. Mitch and I were trying to convince tchrist that they weren't particularly popular in New England.

Lambie

23:20

That's precisely where they are popular. It's usually families with kids because the cooking is easy.

alphabet

What?! I live in Boston and never had them growing up, nor have I heard of others around here consuming them regularly.

Transcript for

English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…