camwyn | Ten Things I Want You To Know About New Jersey.

I've had about as much of the news as I can take. Here. Have some unrelated content.

Ten Things I Want You To Know About New Jersey.
In No Particular Order.

1. We don't actually have that accent. In the big cities, yeah, it's common, but it's really difficult to tell people from most NJ counties apart from residents of, say, Pennsylvania or Ohio by accent alone.

2. We have whales. I know the state is regionally famous for the beaches of the Jersey Shore, but not that many people know there are whale watch tours out of the southern end of the state. (Unfortunately, some people found out about this because a Boy Scout troop on one of these tours lost a kid who was doing the 'king of the world' routine at a watch-boat's prow this past May.) I myself have seen finback whales in the waters off Cape May, and numerous bottlenose dolphins, including several babies born in the state's territorial waters.

3. The view of the state that you get from the Garden State Parkway is much nicer, and probably more representative of the state as a whole, than the view you get from the New Jersey Turnpike.

4. Unfortunately, we're big believers in highway revenue coming from toll booths. I'm really sorry about that. If you come to visit the state, bring a bunch of quarters and dollar bills with you, because we charge people to use the Turnpike and the Parkway, we charge people to leave at the major border crossings, and so on.

5. We are not actually part of New York. We're across the Hudson River from a lot (but not all) of the state of New York, definitely across the river from New York City, and while our economy is tightly tied up with theirs, we are not part of them.

6. It is possible to live in this state for twenty consecutive years and never once meet someone who is discernibly part of any kind of organized crime. No, seriously.

7. Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge in Morris County, NJ, is an amazingly beautiful place and would probably make entomologists who want to study things that prey on mosquitoes very happy indeed. Students of the order Odonata- dragonflies and damselflies- would be very happy there. The Swamp also has coyotes, fishers, and at least one American chestnut tree, though the tree is not producing nuts and may in fact be blighted. Nevertheless, it's a lovely place to visit.

8. We ratified the Bill of Rights first. We were also the third state to ratify the Constitution.

9. The original 'cure' for tuberculosis- before drug resistant strains started cropping up and stuff- was streptomycin. Streptomycin was first isolated from a soil fungus found in New Jersey. Say what you like about our creepy water supply but dammit, our soil fungi rock the house.

10. You can get a seriously kickin' gyro from the Acropolis lunch truck that periodically makes a circuit of downtown locations in Newark, NJ. I mean, those guys make the best damn gyro I've ever had outside of Astoria, NY- and Astoria has a Greek population to rival that of Athens.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

A Greek gyro is named that because of spinning involved in the preparation. Basically, if you take minced lamb/beef and smoosh it up with some breadcrumbs and lots of Greek spices, then instead of making a proper meatloaf shape it into a column and wrap it around a, a.... it's not like a rotissier, it's vertical, but basically wrap it around an axis and set it to turning slowly in front of cooking elements (or over an open fire in the original form), that's where the 'gyro' part comes from. The stuff is served by carving off strips and putting them into pita bread with certain sauces and maybe onions and lettuce and tomatoes.

and oh man are they delicious ...

*contemplates stopping at one of the stands on the way home just cause now reading that description has made me crave one*

Oh, man, the flea market has them but it's hard to run a booth and eat one at the same time

heh. yah, I can imagine ... that's the only problem with them. They take effort and time to eat without totally making a mess ... and then you do anyways :)

Oh, but that's what you get in kebab vans here! It's referred to as a kebab, and often considered a bit dodgy (because of the 'mystery meat' angle. I won't eat the stuff). There are such vans all over Oxford :) I guess there are some decent kebab shops around, but in that form it's definitely not a gourmet dish.

Ah, see, I had assumed that British usage of 'kebab' meant what the Greeks call 'souvlaki'- ie, chunks of meat onna stick. Greek souvlaki is marinated lamb or mutton with spices and sauce and lemon juice, but people who aren't Greek tend to refer to anything on a stick as shish kebab, unless it's satay. Which is annoying because shish kebab is Turkish in origin and Greece and Turkey are sort of hereditary enemies.

hee. that's what I thought intially too!

then imagine my surprise when I took the other half to a stand in town, ordered a gyro, and got told 'hey, that's like a dona kabob' joyfully (and yes, I know that's probably not how they spell the first half of it but I'm only very wonderful at playing translator to his accent, not perfect)

the brits confuse even us canucks sometimes ;)

Heh- when I was in Quebec, my friend

mountainspeak and I stopped at a mall food court, and all the signage was in French. I had no idea what the hell a 'yeero' was, until I saw someone order it and realised the transliteration rules were probably different for French than they were for English.

*L* never seen that one, but then haven't spent much time in food courts in Quebec.

Probably would figure it out eventually - as you probably would have given some time. Given how many different ways people pronounce it ... heh. if you're in a city with souvlaki stands all over the place like I am here (and probably more there I guess - though we do have one in a conservation area/campground here, just to be weird *L*) then you've probably heard all sorts of weird ways people say it too, hmm?

They're called yeeros in Sydney too.

Doner kebab, that's the one!

hee. and I should have guessed the correct spelling. Any word that ends with 'er' comes out with an 'a' type sound when he says it.

Döner, I think.

We call that kebab as well! It's just slightly less readily available as fast food. When people cook kebabs at home, though, that's probably what they're making.

What's the difference between a shish and a doner kebab?

I believe, though I am not sure, that shish kebab more often has vegetables in between the chunks of meat on the stick, whereas your doner kebab is the gyro/shaved meatloaf thing I described. Souvlaki is not really supposed to have vegetables on the stick, at least not when done the way American Greeks do it.

It's easier to get souvlaki as fast food here because you can set up a stand and cook meat onna stick in relatively little space, whereas the spinny thing you need for a gyro is a little more complicated. However, these days they sell pre-formed gyro strips, which is lame but which means an enterprising stand owner can produce them on a street corner too.

We didn't have hot dog stands in Astoria, the way most of the rest of New York did. We had souvlaki sellers.

The Greek xylaki (lit. "little stick") never has vegetables on. Possibly because of American influence or simple linguistic drift, "souvlaki" is now somewhat ambiguous, at least in Crete, between the xylaki, the gyros, and a larger, metal-spitted version of the xylaki that has occasional vegetables on.

I believe it varies by region. In this part of the world (Israel), a kebab is ground meat, with binding agents (breadcrumbs, egg, I dunno) and spices on a stick. Shipudim is anything on a stick, and shishlik is generaly chicken breast on a stick. And schwarma is pressed-together meat (turkey, usually, lamb, traditionally, and chicken and cow are also available)on the above-described rotisserie arrangement. Not ground, though, and not with breadcrumbs or anything like that.

There is no such thing as a shish kebab arond here, and meat rarely comes skewered together with vegetables.

I believe kebab is derived from an Arabic root meaning "round."

Shipudim is anything on a stick

That's because shpud is Hebrew for 'spit'. It doesn't appear until Mishnaic times, so I assume it was borrowed from German-Roman soldiers, and is thus related to the English word.

It seems unlikely. I don't know of any other words to enter Hebrew from Germanic languages at that time; there are few enough borrowings even from Latin. There are,of course, piles of loanwords from Greek.

There are cognates to shipud in Aramaic and Arabic, as well, and Arabic has even less reason to borrow from Germanic languages than Hebrew does. Although they might have borrowed it from Aramaic.

Incidentally, the first appearance of the word is in the War Scroll, where it means "sharpened."

So you think the phonetic similarity between the Hebrew and English words, for the same object, is pure coincidence?

Yes. It happens quite often.

Yep.

Gyro = doner kebab

*snort* I should have read below and found the real spelling. thank ya. *G*

Ten Things I Want You To Know About New Jersey.

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