The word is....

I have found that it is a completely different culture here. Words, food, lifestyle, etc. One think I will touch on is the food. Ok, does anyone know what a "slush burger" is? Yeah, I didn't either when I moved here. I teach a parenting class every Tuesday night where we serve a family meal. One night the food volunteer for the week came in, and I asked her what was for dinner. She said, "slush burgers." And I said, "WHAT burgers?" She replied, "You know, slush burgers." I looked into the crock pot, which was full of ground hamburger and a sauce. She also had buns in her hand. I said, "You mean SLOPPY JOES???" She says, "Yeah, slush burgers."

Ok, never have I heard of slush burgers until I came to Eastern MT. At work the next day I asked everyone if they knew what slush burgers are. They all said yes. Is this just a phenomenon that is here? Or are they called slush burgers other places? I just found this to be odd. Other things that involve food that I didn't know about until I moved here: HOT DISH. You mean, CASSEROLE? Yeah, they don't use the word casserole here. It's a hot dish.

There's also a very strong Norwegian culture here. At the county fair every year, there is a Sons of Norway booth, and they sell these things called "Vikings." My boss kept telling me how good they were and that she was going to take me to the fair to get one. Well, we went, and I found out just what a Viking was. It is literally a ball of meat on a stick. Like deep-fried meatloaf on a stick. I said, "Soooo, it's like a big ol' meat-wad on a stick?" Yep! That's what a Viking is. A big ol' deep fried meat wad.

There are a lot of other things about food that are different here, but these are the ones that mainly get me.

One last note...not just in Eastern MT, but the whole state, they call Soda "pop." When I first moved from CA everyone kept calling it "pop." I was like, "what the heck is pop?" They said, "You know, like Coke, Pepsi, Sprite." I said, "oooohhh, you mean soda?" Yep, apparently that's what they mean. No one here calls it soda. Just pop.