Lutefisk. Say it after me: LOOT-eh-fisk. It means, literally, "lye-fish". Sounds good, already, doesn't it?
Had you lived in Europe before refrigeration, you might have learned to eat lutefisk.
It starts with Norwegian cod, often, split and salted and hung up on racks to dry in the wind. It was a way to preserve food for the dead of winter.
In its unrefrigerated, preserved state, lutefisk resembles split, salted birchwood. Smelly firewood. In order to reconstitute the firewood, it has to be soaked to get the salt out, and soaked in lye to soften its wooden texture, and soaked more, and still more, until it vaguely resembles what an Atlantic cod would be had it not been salted, dried, soaked, poisoned, diluted, drenched, and vaguely "reconstituted".
A piece of abused and treasured cod, in, and at the end of winter, is delicious (compared to hunger). In Portugal and Spain, it became bacalao!
When I was young, soaking and diluting the salt- and lye-soaked-Norwegian-firewood, then dumping the water out onto the ground, left brown spots well into summer.
If you are really hungry for protein, and if you do not gag easily, you might love lutefisk, especially if you understand that you wouldn't be here without grand-, and great-grand-, and ever-grander parents. It saved their lives. You learned to eat lutefisk, when you had to, because it was your family, "and in our family, we eat lutefisk!"
Republicans eat the political equivalent of lutefisk during the Primary Season. If you don't like the taste of jellied paste, or shudder when you taste it, you aren't family. You don't understand. The Republican Primary family eats lutefisk because that is who they are, and you had better not forget that, not if you want to be nominated!
During the primary season, Republicans get together and require everybody to pass the salt-cod test, and to sing salt-cod songs, and no-tax songs, and trickle-down-economics hymns, and to scorn everyone who thinks that heathens who do not like gelatinous, reconstituted cod have a place in their Temple.
If you are a Republican, and want to be President, you have to eat the lutefisk, and praise it for its awfully good taste, and then try to convince people who like fried chicken and sushi and curried lamb that you know all about good food because you won the lutefisk vote.
Truth in disclosure requires that I tell you that I am Scandinavian. I am trying my darnedest not to let my dislike of salted, dried, drained, lye-infused, watered-out, gelatinous, gummy good cod fish influence me. But I am not running for President in any Republican primaries because the smell nearly kills me, and what does not die from the odor nearly gags from its texture and taste.
That, and the claim that apple pie is good, make me suspicious. Some people will eat anything to get nominated.
Apple pie?
Had you lived in Europe before refrigeration, you might have learned to eat lutefisk.
It starts with Norwegian cod, often, split and salted and hung up on racks to dry in the wind. It was a way to preserve food for the dead of winter.
In its unrefrigerated, preserved state, lutefisk resembles split, salted birchwood. Smelly firewood. In order to reconstitute the firewood, it has to be soaked to get the salt out, and soaked in lye to soften its wooden texture, and soaked more, and still more, until it vaguely resembles what an Atlantic cod would be had it not been salted, dried, soaked, poisoned, diluted, drenched, and vaguely "reconstituted".
A piece of abused and treasured cod, in, and at the end of winter, is delicious (compared to hunger). In Portugal and Spain, it became bacalao!
When I was young, soaking and diluting the salt- and lye-soaked-Norwegian-firewood, then dumping the water out onto the ground, left brown spots well into summer.
If you are really hungry for protein, and if you do not gag easily, you might love lutefisk, especially if you understand that you wouldn't be here without grand-, and great-grand-, and ever-grander parents. It saved their lives. You learned to eat lutefisk, when you had to, because it was your family, "and in our family, we eat lutefisk!"
Republicans eat the political equivalent of lutefisk during the Primary Season. If you don't like the taste of jellied paste, or shudder when you taste it, you aren't family. You don't understand. The Republican Primary family eats lutefisk because that is who they are, and you had better not forget that, not if you want to be nominated!
During the primary season, Republicans get together and require everybody to pass the salt-cod test, and to sing salt-cod songs, and no-tax songs, and trickle-down-economics hymns, and to scorn everyone who thinks that heathens who do not like gelatinous, reconstituted cod have a place in their Temple.
If you are a Republican, and want to be President, you have to eat the lutefisk, and praise it for its awfully good taste, and then try to convince people who like fried chicken and sushi and curried lamb that you know all about good food because you won the lutefisk vote.
Truth in disclosure requires that I tell you that I am Scandinavian. I am trying my darnedest not to let my dislike of salted, dried, drained, lye-infused, watered-out, gelatinous, gummy good cod fish influence me. But I am not running for President in any Republican primaries because the smell nearly kills me, and what does not die from the odor nearly gags from its texture and taste.
That, and the claim that apple pie is good, make me suspicious. Some people will eat anything to get nominated.
Apple pie?
.
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