Taylor Ham or Pork Roll

Taylor ham or pork roll is a type of breakfast meat that is commonly available in and around New Jersey and Philadelphia.

Having grown up in Jersey, I grew up with this product and I assumed it was a pretty modern invention - sort of a Jersey SPAM.

Wrong.

It actually goes back to 1856 and was invented/popularized by John Taylor of Trenton, New Jersey, although other variations, including a packed minced ham, may date back to the Battle of Trenton which took place on December 26, 1776, during the American Revolutionary War.

Did General George Washington have a Jersey Breakfast sandwich before crossing the Delaware River near Trenton, New Jersey? No wonder they kicked Hessian butt!

a 3 pounder - http://jerseyporkroll.com

John Taylor kept the recipe for his "Taylor's Prepared Ham" a secret. But he was forced to change the name after the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 was passed, since the product did not meet the new legal definition of "ham".

He rechristened it "Pork Roll" and it was sold as both "Taylor's Pork Roll" and "Trenton Pork Roll".

The real thing is sold 1-3 pound unsliced rolls packed in a cotton bag. But in Jersey, you're more likely to buy it prepared at deli, diner, or food trucks. Its classic presentation is some pan-fried or grilled pork roll, egg, and cheese sandwich, known as a "Jersey Breakfast." Condiments include salt, pepper, ketchup, mustard, or hot sauce. The sandwich is normally served with American cheese on a hard roll or bagel.

Sliced halves of a Jersey Breakfast sandwich

In Philadelphia, the hard roll is commonly replaced with the local favorite "long roll" which is also used for hoagies and cheesesteaks.

Pork roll trivia:
 

When you pan-fry or grill the slices, people will make one to three cuts from the outer edges inwards towards the center to prevent the pork roll from curling up in the middle.  

The resulting cooked slices have been nicknamed things like "fireman's badges" or "Pac-Man bacon" based on the resulting shapes.

Urban, Suburban and of Cities

Let's look at the origins of five words associated with cities and towns.

The Greater Tokyo Area is the largest metropolitan area in the world

We start with urban meaning "characteristic of city life," which goes back to the 1600s but really came into usage in the early 1800s. It comes from the Latin urbanus "of or pertaining to a city or city life," and as a noun, "city dweller."

The word urbane came to be be associated with the manners of a person (especially a man) being suave, courteous, and refined in a way associated with city dwellers in contrast to those from rural areas.

A metropolis is a very large city or urban area which is a significant economic, political and cultural center for a country or region, and an important hub for regional or international connections and communications.

The word comes from Greek and means the "mother city" of a larger colony. In the ancient sense, it was a city which sent out settlers.

Later it came to mean more generally a city regarded as a center of a specified activity, or a large, important city in a nation.

Some of the ancient metropolises have survived until today and so are among the world's oldest continuously inhabited cities.

It combines the Greek word mḗtēr meaning "mother" and pólis meaning "city"/"town." Greek colonies of antiquity used the term to refer to their original cities with which they generally retained political-cultural connections.

The word was used in post-classical Latin for the chief city of a province, the seat of the government and, in particular, ecclesiastically for the seat of a metropolitan bishop.

Today the word has come to refer to a metropolitan area, a set of adjacent and interconnected cities clustered around a major urban center. In this sense metropolitan usually means "spanning the whole metropolis," as in "metropolitan administration" or "metropolitan life."

On a darker note, the word necropolis meant a large cemetery of an ancient or modern city from Late Latin, meaning literally "city of the dead" which goes back to the Greek necro (death) and polis again.

The word citadel goes back to the late 1500s and always meant a "fortress commanding a city." Its roots are in the French citadelle, Italian cittadella, which is a dimuative form of the older Italian cittade "city."

The word suburb probably seems like a modern term but it goes back to the mid-14th century and means a "residential area outside a town or city." The first recorded usage of the term in English, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, was made by John Wycliffe in 1380, where the form subarbis was used.

Its origin is from the Old French suburbe, from Latin suburbium  ("an outlying part of a city") from sub "below, near" and urbs for "city." The Old English word was actually underburg.

It's interesting that in earlier usage, suburbs of places like 17th century London meant something negative and was associated with an inferior lifestyle. A "suburban sinner" was slang for a "loose woman" or prostitute."

Suburbs first emerged on a large scale in the 19th and 20th centuries as a result of improved rail and road transport, which led to an increase in commuting. They tended to grow around cities that had an abundance of adjacent flat land. Any suburban area is referred to as a suburb, while suburban areas on the whole are referred to as the suburbs or suburbia, with the demonym for a suburb-dweller being suburbanite. The even more modern colloquial shortening gives us burb and the burbs.

A more modern city-related word is barrio which appears around 1841 meaning a "ward of a Spanish or Spanish-speaking city." In that way, a barrio was a district, much like a suburb.
The word has earlier roots in the Arabic barriya  meaning "open country" from barr meaning "outside" of the city.  In modern American English usage, it generally means a "Spanish-speaking district in a city" with an early (1939) reference being to the Sanish Harlem area in New York City.

Agent Orange

Agent Orange is an American punk rock band formed in Orange County, California in 1979. The band is one of the first to mix punk rock with surf music. They first gained attention for their song "Bloodstains," released on their debut 7" EP in 1979.

A demo of the song "Bloodstains" was given to Rodney Bingenheimer, a DJ at Pasadena radio station KROQ-FM. The song soon became one of his show's biggest hits.

Agent Orange is also considered to be the originator of "skate rock" after their music was used in the Vision Skateboard video Skate Visions that crowned them "King of the Skater Bands." That video spawned many imitators and is the best-selling skateboard music video of all time.

By way of an email from James Levesque, a founding member of Agent Orange, comes this origin story.

A number of punk bands on the West Coast such as Black Flag, Redd Kross, and China White used colors in their band names. In 1979, the horrors of the defoliant known as Agent Orange used in the war in Vietnam was still in the back pages of the newspaper. Levesque claims the bands interest in spying and being that they were one of the first punk bands in Orange County, CA was the catalyst for the name, though they were also aware of the political nature of the name.

The power trio's original lineup was Mike Palm on guitar and vocals, Steve Soto on bass, and Scott Miller on drums. Soto played on the original "Bl

Soto left the band to form The Adolescents and James Levesque was added on bass. The group recorded the Living in Darkness LP on Posh Boy Records in November 1981. "Bloodstains" was rerecorded and that version of the song later appeared in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4

The band has had a number of lineup changes over the years and is still playing shows. They had a Brazilian tour in 2012.

As of this writing, the current lineup is Mike Palm: Vocals/Guitar; Bruce Taylor: Bass Guitar; Dusty Watson: Drums.

Sample some tracks: http://www.myspace.com/agentorange
Official site: http://www.agentorange.net

Bayonet and Bayonne

World War II soldier with rifle & bayonet

The bayonet is a word known back to 1610. Originally a type of dagger it was later afapted as a steel stabbing weapon fitted to the muzzle of a firearm.

It comes from the French baionnette  said to be from Bayonne, a city in Gascony, France where supposedly they were first made. It may also have entered the language as a diminutive of the Old French bayon  meaning a "crossbow bolt."

The city name is from the Latin baia "bay" and probably the Basque words meaning "good" and ibai "river" - good bay. The place served as a kind of link between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea and by the 13th century, the city was an important port.

The New Jersey city of Bayonne is a peninsula that is situated between Newark Bay to the west, the Kill van Kull to the south and New York Bay to the east. The city name is probably from from Bayonne, France, from which Huguenots settled for a year before the founding of New Amsterdam.

Angora Wool

Angora rabbit
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/EnglishAngoraRabbit.jpg

Angora wool refers to the downy coat produced by the Angora rabbit.

Angora wool (AKA Angora fiber) is distinct from mohair, which comes from the Angora goat. It is sometimes confused with cashmere, which comes from the cashmere goat.

This wool is known for its silky softness, thin fibers, and what knitters refer to as a halo (fluffiness). It is warmer and lighter than wool due to the hollow core of the angora fiber.

This type of wool gets its name from Angora, a city in central Turkey which gave its name to the goat (1745 in English), and to its silk-like wool, and to a cat whose fur resembles it (1771 in English). The city's name is from the Greek word for "anchor, bend"