There really is a Butter Pie? I thought it was just a Lennon-McCartney lyrical mashup.

Yep - it's more like a potato and butter pie, but calling them that, doesn't do them justice - I'm kind of assuming brats refers to a type of sausage - perhaps made from unruly children - But what's hot dish?

Yes, brats are a sausage - familiar for bratwurst. Never inquired about the meat. Figure that where sausage is concerned, ignorance is the best policy.

Hot dish is an Up Nort' specialty. It's a fairly generic term for a casserole, which MUST contain one item from each of these categories: cooked starch (pasta, rice, diced potatoes), diced cooked meat (chicken, sausage, beef, pork, venison, whatever), canned condensed soup (usually cream soup - cream of mushroom, cream of chicken, cream of asparagus - but let your creativity run wild!) and may contain anything else, at the cook's discretion. Ingredients are combined and placed in a casserole dish, topped with either crumbled potato chips or crumbled canned fried onion rings (It is NOT a hot dish without one of these toppings!) and heated in the oven until browned on top, Serve with beer and your preferred condiment - ketchup, tabasco, sriracha, A-1, to taste. Makes a fortifying and warming meal when the temperature outside dips to -40. (And it does up here.) Known in other parts of the country as Methodist pie. (Refers to the Methodist tradition of potluck suppers, not to an ingredient. At least, not as far as is discussed.)

Don't they eat the justly infamous black pudding in your area?

Yeah - Who was it that said "He who loves sausages or the law should watch neither being made" Bismarck is ringing a bell....

Hot dish sounds good - I'm saving the recipe - will be trying it out soon...

There's nothing infamous about Black Pudding - they do seem more common in Lancashire and Yorkshire and the further South you go the less chance of getting a proper one. The plastic-covered supermarket variety are ok, but really you can only fry them - you need to get the real deal from a butcher - boiled for 10 mins and served with mustard - Delish :O:......

Does this count as a thread hijack? - I mean the OP nudged it in theis direction before he disappeared......

Food trivia time: What's the connection between Doughnuts, JFK and Bismarck......

I tried Black Pudding in Edinburgh and in York. Tried second time because I thought the Scots might have gotten it wrong. They didn't. It may be am ethnic thing, like lutefisk or kimchi. Liked the pork and beans for breakfast, though.

OK, I'll bite. (Poor choice of words, perhaps.) What's the connection between doughnuts, JFK, and Bismarck?

Pork and Beans - I thought that was a C ration delicacy?

As for the other thing - A very tenuous connection - JFK, famously once said "I am a Doughnut" to the people of Berlin, and in Germany at least, doughnuts are sometimes called Bismarcks, because he [Bismarck] was reputed to be rather fond of them...

That whole thing about JFK calling himself a "Jelly Doughnut" is completely false. If you don't believe me just ask a German what "Ich bin ein Berliner" means.(Or just look it up on Wikipedia.)

Here's a sampling of the results of googling baked beans uk breakfast:

http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic...d_Kingdom.html
http://voices.yahoo.com/baked-beans-...04.html?cat=22
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/in...2203724AAIUR6p
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_breakfast
http://www.englishbreakfastsociety.c...ish-breakfast/
http://britishfood.about.com/od/faq/f/breakfast.htm

I grant that they make a distinction between UK "baked beans" and US "pork and beans", but the dish called Heinz Baked Beans looked and tasted identical to Campbell's Pork and Beans. (Don't let the name fool you. YOU try and find the "pork"!)

I thought the beans, like black pudding, fried bread, and fried tomatoes, might be something that was served up specially for unsuspecting Americans. But my web research says you guys actually eat - and relish - all of them first thing in the morning, when I'm barely handling toast and coffee. Gad! You guys are tough!:)

BTW, filled jelly doughnuts are Bismarcks over here, too. Hence, the coffee break call: "Let's go sink the Bismarck!"

Yes, JFK said "Ich bin ein Berliner." Fortunately, he didn't visit Vienna.

Yeah - I've heard people say that the usual rules of grammar didn't, for some reason, apply in that particular situation. I can't say I'm convinced - Makes no difference really - it was a great speech - everyone knew what he meant, a minor error on the part of a speechwriter doesn't alter that.

Yep - The Full English breakfast - aka: Heart Attack on a Plate - And another delicacy - this time from Liverpool - The Docker's butty: An unsliced loaf, hollowed out and smeared with butter and a bag of chips dropped in - You guys call them french fries, but certainly anything I've seen labelled a french fry, bears little resemblance to a real chip. Too thin and not enough grease - mind you decent chip shops are getting thin on the ground, even over here

I hijacked the thread myself, so it may officially be considered re-flagged under a neutral nation.

I'm recovering from a bad day yesterday, still reading stuff though.

Chips and I are acquainted. Yikes!

But, hey! it is State Fair time here in the US Midwest, and we can match you arterial blockage for arterial blockage. Corn dogs, chicken-fried bacon, deep-fried corn chowder, deep-fried Twinkies. But top of the list, IMO, is deep-fried butter. That's right!

Take a stick of butter. Insert a serving stick and freeze the butter solid. Dip in batter and deep-fry. Take a big, ol' bite. Call your cardiologist.

I can top deep-fried butter. I found a stand selling deep-fried lard with a butter dipping sauce.

I'm having problems with the deep fried butter - it's one of those things that is so unbelievable it goes almost all the way round to plausible. My mind is officially blown........

[edit - I had to google it - it's not April and I've done the Lucid Dreaming reality checks - I've obviously taken a wrong turn somewhere and ended up in a crazier universe than the one I started in]

C13G' Sorry to hear about the bad day - Hope whatever made it so is history now.....

Halsey: Affirmative. Deep fried lard is a topper!

IVV: Please google state fair food. And remember, people pay money for and eat this stuff!

c13G: Hang in there. TGIF.

Yeah - have seen the Paula Deen deep-fried butterballs etc.. - In any case I'm not doubting your word - It's just that when I try to find a rational explanation for why someone would eat a stick of butter, fried in batter, the best I can come up with is either this is an incredibly robust hallucination, or I've slipped into a parallel universe where a coronary is an incredibly desirable thing. Have you considered that you may have been infiltrated by alien lifeforms with an addiction to human blubber, and they're trying to fatten you all up for a feast of some kind??

IVV, it wasn't about doubt. Deep-fried butter is perhaps the most egregious example (excepting deep-fired LARD!), but "State Fair food" includes a lot of impressive concoctions. I suggested the google for your enjoyment, not as evidence. There's the deep-fried bacon-wrapped riblet on a stick, the deep-fried bacon-wrapped chili cheese dog on a stick, the deep-fried cheesecake on a stick (No bacon on that one! Although there is a deep-fried bacon-wrapped Snickers bar.)

Aliens? I lived in Los Angeles for 35 years. I thought Men in Black was a documentary.

Actually, when I see all the politically correct, be-healthy-we're doing-this-for-your-own-good propaganda we are assaulted with, I suspect it is a socially acceptable form of rebellion. "Once a year, you can eat this stuff. Next week, back to broccoli."