Intercultural indices of the breakfast egg

There I was, with two other naked blokes, talking about eggs.

No, really. If you're Finnish or if you've spent any significant time in Finland, the situation seems less foreign. It's a sauna thing, see. People discard their clothes to sit and sweat together, and pass the time in either perspiration-soaked silence or small talk.

This time it was small talk. Which meandered in the direction of intercultural diversity.

At this point, I should explain that I've just returned to Finland after a bout of globetrotting to and from the two Uniteds: Kingdom and States. The Kingdom is much as it ever was, and maybe much as it ever shall be. The States, on the other hand, is still an object of some cultural puzzlement.

Or to put it another way, the States makes me feel like an object of some cultural puzzlement.

An infamous misquotation hangs in the air, with the two same nations still divided by the same common language, and the authorship (Shaw or Wilde, both Irish) still unresolved. But at this moment, the pith seems to be epitomised by eggs.

Actually, I'm spreading the yolk somewhat. It's not an Anglo thing, it's European-North American intercultural diversity hanging like an improperly punched chad in the frontal lobe of my mind.

One much-regurgitated personal tale from the Bulgaria of old concerns my favourite menu item of the times: Хемъндекс без Яйце (that is, 'ham and eggs without egg').

The lack of said breakfast item in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall is neatly juxtaposed by the market saturation on the other side of the pond in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Lehman Brothers.

There still, the unwary European traveller can be befuddled by waitresses who, intent on earning their 20% tip, want to know whether the eggs are to be 'over easy' or 'sunny side up' (and whether the sausages are to be 'patty' or 'string'; and which of any number of variants of milk/cream/milk-cream mix is to be preferred).

And hence it strikes me, with not a little irony, that in Europe I may not understand what is said, but I do most often get the meaning. In America, where we have that common tongue, I can mostly tune in to what people say. The puzzle more often is what they mean.

Strange foods I have eaten (2)

Occasionally I get cravings for some of the stranger culinary delights that only seem to appear on shop shelves in Britain. I'm not talking about salt and vinegar crisps, which occasionally appear elsewhere. Nor Melton Mowbray pork pies and Wensleydale cheese, because I cannot consider those strange. Nor am I talking about the jellied eels and pickled eggs that you sometimes read about in dewy-eyed descriptions of the pubs of yesteryear, because I never fancied those much. Although I do sometimes get an unhealthy urge for pork scratchings.

But when I travel over to the UK, I usually come back with a jar of pickled walnuts in my bag. We had a walnut tree in the garden when I was a teenager, and the crop one season was big enough to keep us in pickles for years. The walnuts are pickled young and whole, including the outer skin and before the inner shell has formed. For best results, use the finest malt vinegar. Yum!

Strange foods I have eaten (1)

People sending photos of food to Flickr have made me consider some of the odd grub that must have passed my lips over the years.

I have already blogged on the wonderment of Bulgarian tripe. But near the top of the list must be banana ketchup from St Lucia. Mind you, with enough of their wonderful rum, one really doesn't care too much about the aftertaste.