25 Comments
User's avatar
Kate Walker's avatar

Ooh ooh! I have a useful comment for once!

I used to work in book production, and lithographic ink has a slight fishy smell to it, which is why old bookstores smell fishy. Because I'm an utter riot, my party trick is sniffing your books and telling you which ones were printed with digital v lithographic ink.

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Dennis Lee's avatar

Definitely whip this one out at parties. Go to the host's bookshelves and just start deeply inhaling.

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Kate Walker's avatar

Snort lines of text, preferably while reciting Shakespeare or Chaucer 🤣

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Karl Klockars's avatar

Speaking as someone who was, at least at one point, Chicagoland's leading lutefisk journalist (a title no one else is coming for, I trust), I approve this experiment.

https://www.chicagomag.com/chicago-magazine/february-2011/the-lutefisks-mysterious-allure/

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tom's avatar

i always thought the tattoo was "Rise and Grind. The Hustle Never Stops" but now I realize the other part of the colon was, you guessed it, your butthole.

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Dennis Lee's avatar

Twist: it's the "o" in "Stops"

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Kristina's avatar

The Catholic Church once declared that beavers are fish (cause they live near/in water) so people could eat them on Lenten Fridays.

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Matt P.'s avatar

Muskrat, too. Still occasionally available around Southeast Michigan/Monroe County. An in-law’s family dates back to the early fur trapping days there and vouches for it.

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Dinkle's avatar

You should also try doing a lent fish fry with gefilte fish, if that is not too blasphemous.

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Lynn's avatar

Lutefisk is good when made right. Soaking it in cold water for a day at least helps. The best way I've found to cook it is start in cold water, bring it to a boil, take it off the heat. It is flaky this way, not gelatinous. Of course I do eat it with a lot of butter, some of my family used to eat it with a cream sauce.

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John's avatar

If I may be the most 40 year old man and WELL ACTUALLY you here, the meat prohibition was originally for warm-blooded animals. Thanks, 14 years of Catholic school!

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John's avatar

And yes, that means you can eat snake on Fridays.

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Marie Hebert's avatar

Excellent that you still have some left over for additional experiments

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Beebe Sharkey's avatar

Can’t decide if my Norwegian ancestors would applaud this or be appalled by it.

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Amanda's avatar

Oof. Thanks for taking one for the team! Since even cooked it seems raw and gelatinous, I wonder how it would be in a Japanese prep like red miso nuta? With a side of natto, natch.

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Rick's avatar

The title scares me. I'm gonna have to get severely drunk to forge my way through this adventure. Thanks, Dannis.

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Erin.is.cold's avatar

Aw yeah, the terrible food of my people! My grandma made lutefisk once when I was a kid, and it was like any other flaky white fish with tons of butter on it so I didn't get the disgust. Years later I went to a Scandinavian buffet meal and encountered what appeared to be chafing dishes full of Vaseline, and the horrible faces people make when you mention lutefisk made more sense.

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Ariel's avatar

Were the cats excited about this??? If they weren't, then you know you're in trouble.

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Davida's avatar

Fun fact: Scorpion, the shithead idiot cat who eats literal garbage, won't touch fish. Used tea bags? Delicious. Kurt Vonnegut finger puppet? Sign him up. But tuna? Get that shit out of here.

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Dennis Lee's avatar

I don't think they recognized the smell as fish!!!

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Mystery Meat's avatar

Man up and do it with hákarl!

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Kristina's avatar

A tour guide in Iceland told us that to properly taste hakarl you should open it in a meadow with nobody around so nobody is offended by the smell, and so nobody can see you spit it out.

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Dennis Lee's avatar

We have some in our fridge but it's so old I'm not sure opening it is a good idea. Okay, maybe it's not a good idea, but an EXCELLENT one

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Chi-Fed's avatar

Yup, that's why there is also a fish soup called bookbinder's soup!

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Daniel Costalis's avatar

Sweden's National Day, also known as "Svenska flaggans dag" (Day of the Swedish Flag), is celebrated annually on June 6th, commemorating the election of Gustav Vasa as king in 1523 and the adoption of Sweden's constitution in 1809.

Surströmming is lightly salted, fermented Baltic Sea herring traditional to Swedish cuisine since at least the 16th century.

I leave you these two pieces of information with no pretext or context.

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