to not understand why Americans call a main course an entrée?

[flummoxedworried]

Does anyone understand why this happens?

Almost as good as a Low Country Boil, right Seneca?

God's teeth, that sounds like a skin affliction from Holland.

Strange.

But instead its a wonderful meal of sausage, potatoes, shrimp, Vidalia onions, and corn on the cob all boiled in the same pot with the most wonderful seasonings. When it's done, you drain the pot and throw all the ingredients on the table on newspaper. Then you fill your plate and dig in. It's heaven.

And have a beer (or two) with it.

I've been invited to one this Saturday on an island off the coast of Georgia. Definitely worth a road trip. I could eat my weight in just the corn.

No beer for me. Dry white wine spritzers!

Jealous! Not Tybee Island by any chance? Hilton Head?

Mine's the potatoes. I beg my friend to leave a little bit of the water so I can spoon some on the potatoes then mash them up. Yum!

Not Tybee, a bit farther south.

Have a lovely time, wherever it is! I hope the weather holds good.

I came across another one - jacket potatoes. Here they are called baked potatoes and are much more of a side dish than in the UK. If you said jacket spud to someone in Canada they would look at you funny.

I also HATE the English passion for putting sweetcorn in everything, especially tuna mayo. That's another thing actually - it's not tuna mayo or egg mayo over here, it's tuna salad or egg salad.

Sweetcorn should just be called "corn" and there is only one way to eat it. Off the cob.

In America they call tuna mayonnaise tuna salad? That sounds weird to me. It only becomes a tuna salad to me if there's lots of other ingredients (not just sweetcorn!)

Same with egg salad - that contours up sliced egg, lots of lettuce, peppers, maybe avocado, cucumber. Id be gutted if I ordered egg salad and just got a lump of egg mayonnaise!

Love a good jacket potato meal though. Favourite is chilli, followed by tuna mayonnaise and a salad -Yum!

Regarding meal names in the U.K. It's a regional thing. I'm from the north of England and we have breakfast (obviously that's at breakfast time!), dinner (this is our midday meal...usually consists of a sandwich at work, WITH BUTTER, unless it's Sunday, then it's a main meal which of course is Sunday roast), and then tea, in the evening, which is our main meal after work.

I've recently moved to the south of England and was invited to 'tea' after work one evening with a colleague. I turned up with wine and flowers at 5.30, was given a cup of tea and some cake, had a nice chat and was introduced to her children...played a game of monopoly and watched tv etc...at 7 the husband arrived home and my colleague started to look a little awkward as I'm still sitting there (innocently waiting for my 'tea'). By 7.15 she tells me she's about to serve their 'dinner' and I'm 'welcome to stay if I don't mind sharing what they have...it's nothing special though!' It's at this point I realise I haven't been invited to what I call 'tea' at all! 'Tea' here is just that...a cup of tea and a chat...and maybe a slice of cake or a biscuit if you're lucky!! I declined the offer to stay and slunk off...she must have wondered at my gift of wine and flowers 😳😳😳

I say 'flannel'...never said wash cloth or face cloth. Just asked four random friends...3 said flannel, one said she used to say flannel but now says facecloth because that's what her DH says and he says flannel is 'common'!! How very rude! 😳

Loved your tea story, Wassock

Your colleague is probably discussing how amazingly generous people from the North are now!

Is there anything more disappointing than what they have the nerve to call 'coleslaw' in Canada? I was expecting the same as we have in the UK, but instead I got the usual coleslaw shredded veg, i.e. white cabbage, carrot etc. but it was in sweetened cream! None of the piquancy I wanted and expected, just fatty sweet revoltingness.

Yes @floraeasy, either my generosity or my penchant for alcohol 😳

Is there anything more disappointing than what they have the nerve to call 'coleslaw' in Canada? I was expecting the same as we have in the UK, but instead I got the usual coleslaw shredded veg, i.e. white cabbage, carrot etc. but it was in sweetened cream! None of the piquancy I wanted and expected, just fatty sweet revoltingness.

How odd. My experience is exactly the opposite. The coleslaw I've had in the US and Canada has consistently been delicious, whereas the stuff I've been served in the UK is generally immersed in something suspiciously like salad cream... boak.

Wassock - in your defence, 5.30pm is a very odd time to have someone over for tea

I was surprised to find a difference between what Brits think of as "midday" and how Americans use the term. In the US it's a generic "sometime around lunch time", rather than as a synonym for noon

It's tuna salad and egg salad in the sense that it's multiple ingredients put together. And yes, in the US tuna salad (and egg salad to a lesser degree) does often contain things other than mayo: chopped pickles, chopped onion perhaps, but certainly not corn.

Another great way to eat corn is creamed corn in the southern US style that doesn't actually involve cream. It's fresh corn scraped off the cob and cooked in butter in a frying pan so that some starched is released which makes it creamy.

I think the term "sweetcorn" arose in Britain because "corn" meant any grain as in the Corn Laws.

Here (UK) a back-hoe is a JCB, and an I-beam is an RSJ. (I work in the building industry)

I asked our builder (in the US) if he had ordered a skip - turns out it is a dumpster.

Was desperately disappointed the first time I ordered coffee cake - was expecting a coffee (maybe with walnuts) cream sandwich cake and got generic cake to have with a cup of coffee.

Speaking of coffee cake, don't y'all have teacakes that aren't made with tea, but are meant to be eaten with tea?

Speaking of coffee cake, don't y'all have teacakes that aren't made with tea, but are meant to be eaten with tea?

Yep, you have got us on that one! Totally true.

seneca - it's even more confusing than that...

We have toasted teacakes, which are sweet bread products with raisins and sultanas in.

We have teacakes which have a biscuity base and a marshmallow dome and completely covered in chocolate

And we have tea loaf, which is a baked fruit cake made using strong, cold tea (and there are several regional varieties)

Ooh I haven't had tealoaf in ages. I fancy some.

I like the idea of creamed corn

We have tea cakes in the southern US, too. They are really soft cookies rather than cakes.

I'm always confused when Americans ask the waiter 'Can I get' when ordering food/drinks when what they really mean is 'Can YOU please get me....'

Look up the word "get." The US usage is entirely correct. In this case it is a synonym for "receive."

Very true, Seneca. A lot of Brits are very sniffy about this usage, in spite of the fact that they'd happily say "I get flowers for my birthday every year" without thinking it meant that they went and fetched the flowers themselves!