DAVID ADAMS writes about the odder side of life…
Buttered lutefisk prepared to eat. PICTURE: Jonathunder (licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0).
• A US pastor has written a newspaper obituary for his church’s advent tradition of serving a dinner of lutefisk – a Nordic dish featuring what’s been described as “jellyfish-like” dried cod soaked in lye – on the first Tuesday in December after his Minnesota-based church decided to end the 70 year event. In the obit published in the Forest Lake Times, Pastor John Klawiter, senior pastor of Faith Lutheran Church, said ‘The Lutefisk Dinner’ (also known as the ‘Scandinavian Dinner’) would be remembered for “all of the familiar faces that reunited each year over a wonderful meal of lutefisk, meatballs, potatoes, lefse, bread, cranberries, and coleslaw” as well as jokes like “The piece of Cod which far surpasses all our human understanding”. He said that ultimately it was the growing age of the 150 volunteers required to put on the dinner for some 500 people each year which prompted the decision. It’s also been speculated the fact fewer Minnesotans grow up on lutefisk make be a factor – Klawiter has been quoted as saying: “You put a plate of lutefisk in front of the average person on the street, you probably wouldn’t get too many takers”. Two “Turkey bingo” events are being held in lieu of a service.
• We all know how hard it can be to catch and/or kill a cockroach after it scuttles across the kitchen floor. But maybe, instead of killing them, we should be looking to utilise their chewing power to get rid of food waste? A company in the Chinese city of Jinan, capital of Shandong province, is reportedly doing just that, feeding a billion cockroaches with some 50 tonnes of food waste every day. And the Shandong Qiaobin Agricultural Technology Co, which uses a system of pipes to feed the roaches which are contained in “cells”, is not alone – numerous other ventures in China are also looking to use the roaches as a way of getting rid of waste including a Sichuan company, Gooddoctor, which is reportedly holding its six billion roaches in check through the use of a water-filled moat filled with predatory fish.
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• A German town has installed some pedestrian crossing lights with a difference – instead of the usual stylised images of people standing and walking, they reportedly feature likenesses of Elvis Presley. Fiedberg is the town where the rock ‘n roll legend was stationed while serving in the US Army between 1958 and 1960. The three crossing lights feature Elvis striking a pose behind a microphone for the red ‘don’t walk’ signal and a silhouette of him doing one of his iconic dance moves for the green ‘walk’ signal. It’s not the first time German localities have adopted unique pedestrian lights – Berlin’s Ampelmännchen are famous around the world and Beethoven and Karl Marx also feature on lights in other towns.
