Posted on 04/29/2007 2:46:24 PM PDT by WesternCulture
“I think there must be something skewing those particular statistics to make it look as if residents of DC earn more than they do. If you scroll down to demographics in the following link you’ll see where the per capita average income in DC is $28,000 vs. $42,000 for the US average.”
- ‘Average per capita income’ is not to be confused with ‘GNI per capita’.
I’m more or less sure that in this case, ‘average income’ refers to the accumulated income in terms of PERSONAL INCOME of the citizens of Washington DC divided by their total number.
GDP/GNI, on the other hand, includes the sales of companies etc.
As the Wikipedia article states that Forbes has ranked Washington DC as the 9th richest city of the US, it’s unlikely that the GDP per capita of Washington DC would be that low comparede to the total US GDP/capita, isn’t it?
“I think the writer’s point is not that the French are better, but that they do have things in their culture well worth saving.”
Having everything shut down between 12 and 2 is not worth saving. Doctor, food, pharmacy, broken down car, - doesn’t matter. You wait.
“Does your family eat hogmaw? I don’t know what the German word for it might be, but I know it’s a classic among the Pennsylvania German-descended families of western Maryland...including my own family.”
Hogmaw or Seimaaga is originally a Pennsylvanian Dutch dish. From what I understand, there’s no Dutch dish called Seimaaga. Or is there? Maybe there once was although it has been forgotten over here in Europe.
Seimaaga simply means ‘pigs belly’.
The Germans eat pig’s belly a lot, but most of the times they just put it on the grill and serve it with a piece of bread and mustard. IMO, ‘Schweinebauch’ is a real delicacy, but I can understand people who never would dare to try it.
Swabia has lots of good dishes which I foiund nowhere else in Germany.
No, not even close. D.C. is rich (gross metropolitan product is ~$85 billion), but it is nowhere on the scale of New York, Texas, or California which are all in the trillion dollar range (with California being the highest with a $1.6 trillion gross state product which is only about $100 billion less than that of Italy and about $500 billion more than that of Canada).
“No, not even close. D.C. is rich (gross metropolitan product is ~$85 billion), but it is nowhere on the scale of New York, Texas, or California which are all in the trillion dollar range (with California being the highest with a $1.6 trillion gross state product which is only about $100 billion less than that of Italy and about $500 billion more than that of Canada).”
- California is in fact one of the 10 biggest economies on earth, the eighth biggest one by nominal GDP and the ninth biggest by GDP at purchasing power parity (’GDP by PPP’).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_US_States_by_GDP_%28nominal%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28Nominal%29
However, I was talking about Nominal GDP PER CAPITA.
According to these statistics, DC is the richest ‘state’ in the US:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_US_States_by_GDP_per_capita_%28nominal%29
Some interesting aspects:
- If Washington DC was a country of it’s own it would be far richer than it’s closest competitor, namely Luxemburg.
- California and the East Coast of the US are among the richest regions of the world. The per capita wealth of these parts of the US could be compared to Scandinavia (Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Iceland) as well as the richest part of Continental Europe (Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria, Southern Germany and Northern Italy).
- The nominal GDP of California is more than twice as big as that of Russia, an industrialized nation of 142 million habitants.
That's because you're looking in the wrong culture. "Pennsylvania Dutch" is an anglicization of "Pennsylvania Deutsch," or Pennsylvania German. I do suspect that Germans eat pig stomach stuffed with loose sausage and other oddments, because this dish was featured in Helmut Kohl's cookbook from a few years back. This is distinct from what we in the US refer to as pork bellies, which is "side meat" or the abdominal wall of a pig. This cut, when sectioned and smoked, becomes bacon.
“That’s because you’re looking in the wrong culture. “Pennsylvania Dutch” is an anglicization of “Pennsylvania Deutsch,” or Pennsylvania German. I do suspect that Germans eat pig stomach stuffed with loose sausage and other oddments, because this dish was featured in Helmut Kohl’s cookbook from a few years back. This is distinct from what we in the US refer to as pork bellies, which is “side meat” or the abdominal wall of a pig. This cut, when sectioned and smoked, becomes bacon.”
- I see.
The reason I was convinced the dish had some connection to the Dutch or to Dutch immigrants besides the expression ‘Pennsylvania Dutch’, was that ‘Maaga’ sounds more like Dutch than like German, as ‘Maag’ is the Dutch word for stomach. In German, the word is ‘Magen’ with one ‘a’. But this probably doesn’t mean much. There are several dialects in Germany and in some parts of the country, close to the Dutch border, people might use the word ‘Maag’ or ‘Maaga’ instead of Magen.
I didn’t know there was a dish like this in traditional German cooking. It would be interesting to see if I could find it on some menu next time I visit Germany.
While Germans eat a lot of bacon too, they often don’t cut this part of the pig into thin slices (bacon) like is often done in the UK, the US and Scandinavia. I haven’t come across thick, grilled/BBQ:d slices of pork belly in Scandinavia or the UK, but perhaps it is popular among some people in the US?
This is finely-ground port, typically trimmings and scraps left over from butchering, along with pork fat and possibly some organ meats (this may vary regionally), boiled in a kettle with cornmeal, salt, and pepper, and poured into loaf pans to cool. When chilled, the cornmeal and lard congeal and solidify the mixture into a solid loaf.
This loaf is then sliced, pan-fried, and served with syrup, typically as a side-dish at breakfast, alonside eggs, meat, or both. This same dish is also referred to as "scrapple."
Thanks for sharing your childhood memories!
I really enjoy hearing stories like this and to learn more about local culinary traditions from all over the world.
Pawnhoss/Panhaas seems to be somewhat reminiscent of two Swedish traditional dishes, namely
‘Pölsa’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C3%B6lsa
and ‘Palt’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palt
I enjoy both a lot.
Furthermore, Pawnhoss as you described it also reminds me of the famous Scottish dish ‘Haggis’ (I’ve tasted it once, it was great. Poured some Scotch whisky over it as I had been instructed to.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haggis
People definitely ate more of animal entrails in the old days. Today, we’re much more fixated with specific parts of the animals we eat.
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panhas
For more information and a photo, see the wikipedia entry for scrapple.
I still remember making sauerkraut on my father's front porch. The tools required included a five-gallon (18-liter) earthenware crock, a cabbage cutter, and a "stomper" (a device shaped like the traditional wooden potato-masher, but about three feet or one meter long and correspondingly wider.
If more Americans had a little more patience, we’d be a healthier and happier country.
Thanks a lot for the links, I really appreciate it!
Both Panhaas/Panhas and Seimaaga seems to originate from the North Western parts of Germany, which would explain certain linguistic aspects (like the double a’s), as this area is close to the Netherlands.
Like I said, I’ll keep my eyes open for these dishes next time I go to Germany.
Sauerkraut isn’t very common in my part of the world (Sweden). However, it is eaten occasionally and you can find canned Sauerkraut in every grocery store. Naturally, the taste can’t be compared to the Sauerkraut you can get in restaurants in Germany, but if you add some wine, broth, clove and perhaps a little cumin (and let it simmer for a while) even canned sauerkraut tastes really good. Combined with German sausages like Thüringer Bratwurst or Käsekrainer and German beer (these things are sold in Sweden, although genuine German sausages might be hard to
find outside of the biggest cities) it becomes a small Germany vacation!
Best of regards!
“If more Americans had a little more patience, we’d be a healthier and happier country.”
- I guess the situation is worse in the US and Northern Europe than in Southern Europe, but lack of interest for genuine cooking (not so much enjoying traditional cooking as being prepared to spend the TIME required for making different traditional dishes) is found everywhere in the industrialized world.
Even though Italy is a paradise for people with a ‘Conservative’ approach to gastronomy, a lot of Italians are worried about the preservation of traditional recipies, foodstuffs and customs. This concern has in fact evolved into an international movement, namely the Slow Food movement;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_food
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_Movement
I do suspect that Germans eat pig stomach stuffed with loose sausage and other oddments, because this dish was featured in Helmut Kohl's cookbook from a few years back.
The "other oddments" are potatoes, onions, cabbage, celery, salt, pepper, and pork cracklings if you've got them. The cleaned stomach is stuffed with the mixture and stitched shut, then roasted. It's flat-out delicious, if a bit heavy.
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