Yes, guest, getting back to dody's first comments:
Merikinsthis word really is a no, no, but that is besides the point have slang words for pretty much every type of food you can think of but I have never heard a slang term for peanut butter. Is there one?
Do we USer's have slang words for every type of food? we often have many names for food, and names for different types of the same food. pone/mush/grits/kernels-- for different ways to eat/prepare corn maize, and we have lots of names for some foods (coffee comes to mind, with coffee, java, cup'a joe,etc)
When the english (in particular) first settled here, they found themselves confronted with new foods.. the soil and climate of NE (or Virginia, for that matter) is not well suited to growing wheat--it will grow, but not as it does in the champion regions of england..
and native foods grew so much better.. so they were confronted with trying to make 'old home style foods' with out the old ingredients. and corn maize, is so different than wheat, or barley, or any other old world grain--and it wasn't just corn that was new...
so many everyday foods that we don't give a second thought to, are from the americas.. the old world domesticated animals, but here in the americas, the first people domesticated plants..
sunflowers (seeds and oil)
pototoes
chocolate
pineapples
avacados
chili (and all sorts of peppers)
pumkins/cuccumbers (some melons did grow in old world, but most varieties eaten today are from america)
and of course, the topic of converation, peanuts!
which are really a legume, and with other american legumes/beans, are again, more of the commonly eaten varieties of beans today (old world beans, like flava beans, have less protein, and are harder for the human body to digest)
So people tried to make bread out of corn, (but since it has no gluten at all!) it doesn't 'bake up' like bread.. and corn breads got 'new names'--some are hobson jobson words, like 'journeycake' or pone, which come from indian names for flat cakes make from ground maize and fat. and some new foods, like peanut butter were made to help create an appatizing food from something (peanuts) that were generally used for animal fodder and feeding slaves (fitting then, that a former slave first made it, and promoted it)
but goodness knows, the country that gave us 'toad in a hole', 'spotted dick' and 'bubble and squeek', and hundreds of other weird names for foods should be commenting about USer's slang for food..
but i will agree, SOS(shit on a shingle) is one of the more interesting slang terms for food that we have
