Day 1239: Butter Goose

Sometimes when you've really got nothing better to do, you read the packet that bread comes in. And in Sweden packets are usually covered with interesting information. Is this because there is generally nothing better for anyone to do in Sweden? Who knows.

At any rate the packet told me something I actually wanted to know but never bothered to find out until staring lazily at a packet with a slice of bread hanging out my gob, which was why the Swedish word for sandwich is 'butter goose' (smörgås).

A long time ago a person who I can only assume was partially sighted was churning some butter, saw some solid chunks floating to the surface of the milk and decided they looked like geese. I'll provide you with a handy image of a lumpy butter churn and let you decide if the chunks look geesey.

Personally, I saved this image on the computer under the filename "not a goose" but I did say I would let you decide if there are any anserine globules in there. Assuming you found a goose, I'm still not sure how ye olde Swedish person managed to get the name to stick to the object after smearing the fat over a piece of months old crust and proclaiming the resulting foodstuff a Butter Goose. "Prove it was a goose" I would have demanded after my friend had already smushed it onto the sandwich. "I've got more in the churn!" she'd claim. Then we'd both go over to the churn, see a load of butter and decide to be like the Danes and the Norwegians and just call the bloody thing butter bread (Smørrebrød) like sensible people. But then we'd have nothing to read on bread packets...