a quick answer, but no, you had to go all snarky.

It's making things very difficult to read.

That took me a couple or three minutes. Then I reminded the poster that Google could always find such answers. Snarky would have been to tell him to go Google it, without doing that myself and posting the relevant link to the information.

I gave him the answer to his question.

Did anyone accusing me of snark answer the poster's question? I did. I hope the information was useful to that poster.

I'm so glad Meta's gone.

Last edited Sat Mar 23, 2013, 01:06 PM - Edit history (1)

I usually do the same thing. I will post a link in my reply so that the poster will know where I got the information.

the comment is meant to keep the thread going.

We don't need to throw links or criticism at each other. Exactly because 99% of us know how to use google, IF we want to.

now that Meta is gone.

It actually wasn't "really rude", it was just mild snark. But, whatever.

The suggestion about Google was just that: a suggestion.

The link had a full answer to the poster's question. Now, I could have written a short answer, but I don't know how much information that poster needed. So, I linked to the wikipedia entry on that plant. I searched for sea buckthorn on Google to find that link, went to the link to confirm that it was what was being discussed, and then copied the URL and pasted it into my reply.

So, to review:

1. Poster asks what buckthorn is.
2. Another DUer goes and does a search for "sea buckthorn," the actual plant mentioned in the OP. That DUer also knows that the common buckthorn is not the plant described. He finds and checks the results to make sure they're relevant.
3. The second DUer copies and pastes the URL into a reply to the first DUer.
4. The second DUer reminds the first DUer that Google has such information available.

I'm not sure where the snark is in that. I can see where the reply to the question is. I can see the link to a source with as much information as anyone would want on sea buckthorn. I can see a note about Google being a good way to find such information. I'm not seeing any snark, though. I think someone's seeing something that is not there. I hope the poster with the question found the information useful, though.

This is a forum. On the Internet. The first course of action should be to LOOK IT UP. It's rude not to.

MineralMan could have used this if he'd wanted to "go all snarky":
[link:http://lmgtfy.com/?q=buckthorn|
Buckthorn]

isn't the sea buckthorn discussed in the article. Two different species. I knew that, which is why I did the search for sea buckthorn. I knew that a search for just buckthorn would bring the wrong result.

I knew that because I spent many hours last summer trying to clear buckthorn from my backyard. It's an invasive plant with nothing of value to humans. It's not edible, and it's simply a noxious weed.

Sea buckthorn, on the other hand, grows in northern Europe and Asia and produces lots of edible berries. That was the plant mentioned in the article in the OP. Because I knew the difference, I searched for and linked to the correct plant, so there wouldn't be any confusion. Even the Wikipedia article mentions the other type of buckthorn, to make sure the reader understands the difference.

In all, it took me about five minutes to reply to the poster's question. I'll continue to do that when people have questions, and I will continue to suggest Google. It can't hurt.

(said without snark, of course) Thank you MM!

a dried, salted sheep rib and some blubber, I'll be ready to make dinner.

You are a very intelligent and knowledgeable person as I have learned from your posts over the years, which is what really surprised me with your "google is your friend" comment.

Someone asked a simple question, and you happily explained the answer, just not to the person asking the simple question.

In fact, there are a lot of very knowledgeable people on DU, which is why I and many other DUer's will ask questions, hoping for intelligent and considerate answers. That is what draws me to DU.

What is it that you want? Click the link. That is why I found it and posted it.

You did a bit of work, and made a helpful post.

To many here, that makes you rude!

well I can see that worked ha ha.

In this day and age we don't need to be told the obvious when attempting to be social or actually discuss
instead of post links.

with you. It probably prevents many from actually *liking* you. Just sayin'.

Julie

Reminding people of Google is not snark. Using a Let Me Google That For You link is snark.

provide an answer to the poster's question? I did. I actually searched for it, went to the wikipedia page and checked it, and then copied and pasted the URL into a reply. I don't see that anyone else bothered to help the poster find the answer he was looking for. Do you?

You think reminding people about using Google is snark? Really? I think it's good advice. But, I didn't just tell the poster to go Google it. I went and found the information that poster was looking for and posted a link. How is that snark?

People appear to be reading into my post what is not there. They're all welcome to do that. I suspect that the poster I answered clicked the link and found out what sea buckthorn is. It sounds like a tasty fruit that can be mixed with mashed wild apples. Sadly that plant doesn't grow in the US, or I'd try it out myself.

Have a nice day.

Mostly lectures about your righteousness.

Keep on rockin' dude.

Julie

Are we not done with this yet? I am.

and that is a much bigger problem than not using google and asking a question from the community

and find the answer, then post a link to the answer. That's my contribution to the community, and I do it a lot. The reminder about Google is just that, a reminder.

Now, I could have gone and researched the answer to his question and posted some of what I found. But, that would just be a partial answer. The Wikipedia page I linked to had a complete answer. There were many other results from that Google search. Fortunately, the wikipedia result had all the information needed. Wikipedia comes through for questions like this, almost always.

Does not supplying a link to a full and complete answer for a question qualify as treating DU as a community? I know I appreciate links, and visit them often.

it makes you seem petty.

But I provided the answer, as well. Give a man a fish, and all that...

no one has forgotten the numerous discussions in meta. which just means that people are more likely to notice when you act as though you are better than other people here

thats just my 2 cents

However, I will continue to provide information, when I can. Providing information is my mission in life. I've been doing that as a career and as a hobby for many decades now. I also like to help people with ideas on how to find information on their own.

That's just my 2 cents.

just the snark

again, i am extrapolating from my observations. i could totally be off base

That plant is not at all what I thought it was. I always enjoy your posts and comments.

I was wondering why the heck anyone would eat that. Sea buckthorn turned out to be a completely different thing, and an edible plant I was unfamiliar with. The buckthorn I'm familiar with is a noxious, awful weed that is very hard to eradicate.

I was just being nice to the person who posted it since no one reacted.

So you are wrong and incorrect in thinking you have the right to post links like I don't already know how to find information.

I posted an answer. You didn't say you were just being nice to the OP. You just asked a question. I don't know you, so I go by what you actually wrote, not what your intentions were.

Thanks for the advice.

arrogant. Why not adjust to the feedback? Google is your friend is now extremely dated and annoying.

Or were you not actually interested in sea buckthorn in the first place?

I went to some effort to supply the link. Not a lot, but some.

who is interested in my original post? I guess you would ratherspend your morning nit picking about Mineral Man's attempt to enlighten.

When I give a research project to my class I often get them started with some information I have pulled up and I always tell them:

"Remember, the librarian is your friend"

and posting something that indicated your interest in something obscure.

We're NOT a lecture class here, we are NOT your students.

This is not about learning as much as fun and NO ONE needs to be told what to do
when a short and ideally funny answer was ALL that is and was usually required -
especially on a weekend night!

information from the original source. It's not the OP's responsibility to answer detail questions about a quoted source at all.

Since anyone can look up that information, it's fine not to answer such questions. Someone else is bound to, anyhow. But, you said that your question was posted just to keep interest going in the thread. I saw it as a question about a detail in the OP, but a question that left out a pertinent word, so I did the research and posted a link.

I'm very interested in the food eaten by the Vikings, and found the thread worthwhile, except perhaps for all the attention to the way I answered your question. That part was unnecessary.

The other thing was just a distraction. The food eaten by the Vikings is very interesting, and I hadn't heard of sea buckthorn, so that was an interesting Google search.

I sometimes include a line about using Google when someone asks a question that could be answered instantly with such a search. But, I always provide a link as well to the answer.

BTW, I especially liked the reference to the dried, salted sheep rib. That sounds quite tasty to me, since I love mutton.

I thought it was interesting ,too.

books, mostly from the 17th century and later, so earlier references to how people ate are very interesting and not easy to find. Learning how and what people ate is fascinating.

Archeology is an interest of mine.

I have seen a number of interesting books in used bookstores ... usually independent bookstore like Powells in Oregon (and online)

determine the ingredients available to those Vikings. I imagine they did some testing to come up with the recipes.

A number of years back, I got to be part of a pre-Western influence Chumash Indian meal, sort of along the same lines. Based on archaeology, a list of ingredients was created by a group studying the early Chumash settlements. As a very experienced fisherman and shellfish gatherer, it fell to me to get the fish and shellfish together and come up with suitable recipes for them, based both on the technology and the other ingredients available. Our adviser was the head of the local Chumash nation.

Others prepared dishes based on the land based animals and gathered vegetable foods, like acorns, nuts, berries, etc.

We gathered at one of the old settlements, or at least on the kitchen midden remains and prepared everything, using what was understood to be traditional methods. The result was a very edible meal that we all enjoyed after making it. One of my dishes, Leopard shark with wild gooseberry sauce, was a big hit. I also prepared a mixed shellfish dish, using local mussels, clams, geoducks, and other shellfish from the area. It was cooked in a broth made of turban snails, which dyed the broth a pretty purple color. That was good with some acorn cakes with pine nuts that were cooked on a slab of rock.

It was a great experiment! And an edible one.

Food in Ancient Egypt (Archeology Series)
Marc Armand Ruffer / Wexford College Press
New Hardcover / World History - Ancient Near East

http://www.powells.com/s?kw=archeology%2C+food&class=

but I had to delete it because the link gave out personal info.

That's sort of pre-spam, only runny. Really really runny.

The geniuses at Spam remedied that undesirable runny quality by broadcasting sawdust on the floor prior to sweeping.

Some of us are nuts enough to want to know more.

I'm not that far removed from the caveman Viking lifestyle.

My only concession to modern life is to eat much less meat.

These days there are too many meat eating humans on the planet.

Eating my neighbor's sheep would earn me a bad reputation, and I don't have good memories of the year we ate my dad's sheep. His sheep-raising experiment ended up with the sheep filling the freezer. I liked it better when the freezer was full of fish. I prefer mackerel in my pasta sauce to mutton.

One of my siblings raises goats. It's not clear to me how some goats are pets, and others dinner. In the ancient days of rural life I imagine they were all potentially dinner, first the farm animals, then the dogs, and then, if things were really desperate, the neighbors you didn't like.

These days I'd have to be pretty darned hungry to kill a deer or a pig or a marine mammal. I substitute California olive oil for blubber.

I think I'd like that, too, along with the smoked sheep's rib. I'm not as enthusiastic about the one containing blubber, though. But I've never eaten blubber, so I could be wrong. When I cook barley and lentils, though, I always add a piece of salt pork. The fat is important.

I followed the link and I end up with a Danish version. I couldn't find it easily at Amazon or through google without the author. I would like to buy it if it isn't too expensive.

I've fascinated by this type of stuff.

I found a blog with more information:

http://cathyshistoricfood.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/culinary-journey-through-time.html

I'll keep looking.

I think I have to buy it from the authors which seems too expensive for me with shipping. Oh well.

I use ham or bacon instead.

I like to use salt pork in my barley and lentil porridge. Some onion and garlic, along with some savory herbs, too. It's yummy. I'm guessing that those old Vikings didn't have the bacon, ham, or salt pork. Blubber, though. They had that.

some animal fat to make them more palatable. I've never had blubber although I have visited places it was available, but I don't think it can be much different than suet. Maybe someone will weigh in who has sampled both.

Sea salt is a time honored preservative, and there is salt water nearby.
Wild pigs are common in northern europe.

with salt, though. They were pretty much a coastal culture, and a seafaring and fishing culture. Blubber would have been a fairly easy animal fat for them to obtain in those latitudes. They may have eaten wild pigs, though. It appears that they did use blubber as an animal fat, though, for sure.

After some research, I see that the Vikings did eat the wild pigs and even domesticated them. The link below is full of good info on domestic animals and pets in the Viking era:

http://www.vikinganswerlady.com/vik_pets.shtml#Pigs

Sounds like an interesting read. Also, the potential for theme restaurants built around this is hugh!

Fat of any type was always something hard to find in a hunting, gathering culture. Game animals are generally lean and seeds and grasses have almost no fat. It was high prized when it was available. Wish it wasn't so easy to find now!

have been saying about lentil/grains etc

clearly people have been eating these things for quite a while

in history. Porridges were a common part of the diet of Europe for a very long time. Easy to grow and harvest, they were a major food source. It was also really interesting that they used dried, salted meat, too. I knew that they preserved fish by salting and drying, but I didn't know how they preserved meat. I had assumed it was mainly by smoking.

The blubber thing was interesting too, as a fat source, as was the wild fruit they gathered.

Pease porridge hot.
Pease porridge cold.
Pease porridge in the pot,
Nine days old.
Some like it hot.
Some like it cold.
Some like it in the pot,
Nine days old.

A very old nursery rhyme, indeed.

I'm an archaeologist and I remain skeptical.

Most of the mammals it comes from are highly protected. That's going to limit things a little.

As for seal blubber, it appears that it's a little firmer and you have to scrape it to extract all that good BlubberJuice (I learned that on Survivorman).

My mother used to cook with something she called "strip-o-lean", which I think is about the closest thing you can get in the lower 48. She didn't leave any recipes that called for blubber, thank goodness.

was your mother from georgia?

A one- or two-pound block of fat, basically. Okay for seasoning, I'm sure, but the one time I got a chunk of it in a bite of collard greens, I thought I was gonna die.

called 'streak of lean'.

i think a bit of fat does make things taste better. i notice that when i add just a small bit of butter to a big pot of homemade vegetable soup it immediately makes the flavor richer.

Which tells you how often I buy such things for my own use.

A little fat does do a world of good. When I'm actually motivated enough to actually cook something, I'll usually toss in a strip of bacon or two, to be fished out later. (Aha -- a strip of bacon! -- THAT'S where I confused things!)

I am Nordic (hence my DU name), But I despise lutefisk. As far as I am concerned it is basically inedible fish jello. If that sounds disgusting to you, you would be right.

But I rather like lamb and deer. And barley is just yummy in the tummy.

Thanks for the post. Interesting.

My mother-in-law makes it every Christmas, but doesn't cook it until it reaches the jello stage. It retains its flakes and isn't too bad, really, with some butter. Lemon isn't traditional, but I use some squeezed juice as well. I think lutefisk gets overcooked a lot, and that's not the best thing, anyhow. I've had it at a couple of lutefisk dinners, too, where it was firm.

I think it gets a bad rap, really.

Now gammelost, on the other hand, is foul stuff, indeed. That means "old cheese" in Norwegian. I call it "spoiled cheese" in English. Don't try it at home.

My sister lived in Denmark for a year and said it was horrible. I believe it.

It also makes a showing in one of my favorite movies, Babette's Feast.

Try out the movie, but apparently not the beer bread pudding (whatever they call it).

Never heard of Gammelost. Will Google.

Most of the family cooking was Suomilainen, my mother's heritage. But my Norwegian father never complained. He basically ate anything put before him without complaint. Yes, including lutefisk, on the rare occasions when it showed up on the dinner table. (Nobody else would eat it.)

Ollebrod

This thick pottage dates back to medieval times and is a popular Danish dish even today. With the consistency of cooked oatmeal, Ollebrod is considered a breakfast soup that can be eaten as a good hangover remedy. Traditionally this “soup” consisted of leftover bread pieces and beer dregs thrown together in a pot and left simmering all day. It was eaten morning, noon and night as a sort of continuous meal. If you can’t find a dark rye bread or Danish beer, use dark pumpernickel and a dark, German or English ale.

http://www.beyondtheladle.com/home/scandinavia/danish-beer-bread-soup

I eagerly opened this thread looking for caveman and Viking cooking lore.......only to find a bunch of stupid, and decidedly uninteresting snark.


.............. There was an actual link to a tidbit of real bonifide information about Sea Buckthorn. So theres that.


DU sucks.

actual discussion of the topic later

Since recently discovering a gaggle of Viking ancestors, I have been learning a lot about them. This will add to the info. Fascinating stuff!

enough for my sons and their friends.