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RSS icon Comments on Strangercrombie Letter of the Day: "Ask Them to Prepare Your Carp"

1

What is carp?

Posted by Amelia | November 23, 2007 12:17 PM
2

Your goldfish.

Posted by hoik | November 23, 2007 12:32 PM
3

Carp tacos, anyone?

Posted by Mahtli69 | November 23, 2007 12:38 PM
4

Someone's been smoking hash and watching back episodes of Iron Chef I think.

Posted by kinaidos | November 23, 2007 1:22 PM
5

COMMENT DELETED (Sock-Puppetry)

We remove comments that are off topic, threatening, or commercial in nature, and we do not allow sock-puppetry (impersonating someone else)—or any kind of puppetry, for that matter. We never censor comments based on ideology.

Posted by (not) Public Intern | November 23, 2007 1:28 PM
6

Back in the east bloc carp is a christmas tradition.Every year there are stands all over the cities where you can see tubs of carps and you can either have the fishmonger cut its head off there, or more traditionally, keep it in your bath tub until christmas, whereas grandma would do the clubbing/headchopping. The scales are kept year round as a money attracting charm.
they usually bread them and deep fry them.
(And I have yet to ever enjoy it. Blech!)

Posted by orangekrush | November 23, 2007 1:45 PM
7

You guys are so lame. Can dish it, but can't take it. Let's mouth off about the Girl About Town next issue, either that or masterbate in a sockpuppet as a heads up, mean joke warning, stranger staff is sensitive about ooh threats and such on a blog. Keep on with the funny stuff, Public Intern. I'm glad I spoiled my day at least.

Posted by Pubic Intern | November 23, 2007 3:27 PM
8

I love sock puppetry... and not just for the fun phonetics of it.

Posted by Amelia | November 23, 2007 3:40 PM
9

In warm lakes and canals, yellow carp grow big.

They are all bones, a bottom feeding scum fish. I never tried to eat any, but used to shot them with a rifle by the tons in the irrigation canals of eastern Washington.

Would dig a hole in the orchard and bury for fertilizer, or chop in pieces and made a stew for the cats.

Very, very bony. IF you were hungry, famine or poverty, you would welcome the sucking of each bone after stewing, roasting or grilling.... white middle class Americans are not.

Posted by Raphael | November 23, 2007 4:08 PM
10

When my husband wsa a kid, he had a neighbor lady who made cookies with carp eggs in them. Evidently they were terrible.

Posted by isabelita | November 23, 2007 4:30 PM
11

Gefilte fish?

Posted by Abby | November 23, 2007 4:44 PM
12

Indeed, carp is a European holiday dish. They are despised as bottom feeders, but what does that make catfish, flounder, and crab? And massive boneage does not turn people off eating shad.

Posted by don't be so koi | November 24, 2007 9:57 AM
13

Carp is actually somewhat of a delicacy in Europe, and, as others have mentioned, is frequently eaten in Europe. While I haven't had any European carp, there is a good reason that it's eaten so frequently there.

European streams and rivers that carp are taken from are much more likely to have very rocky bottoms. The carp don't ingest a lot of silt and mud like they do in the US. In fact, carp are not native to the US. They were specifically brought over from Europe because they were admired so well by Europeans. Americans thought it would be a good idea to bring them over here and dump them en masse into rivers so that they could sell them (quite literally, trains would stop on bridges over rivers and dump tons of carp right into the rivers).

Unfortunately, Americans failed to realize that the rivers and streams that the carps were entering were much different than European streams and rivers. The waterways here in the west that the carp gravitate towards are much slower and have very muddy bottoms. So the carp sit in the mud and roll around, ingesting large amounts of nasty sludge, becoming absolutely inedible, and ruining stream quality in the process. Yet another lesson in why people should not introduce exotic species to new environments.

Posted by Idahomo | November 25, 2007 11:51 PM

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