AKICIBF: Whelks?

[akirlu]

WTF is a whelk, anyway? No, let me rephrase. What are whelks in the context of selling them in England at roadside attractions not particularly near the sea? A whelk is, as far as I know, a sea mollusk with a rather prettily shaped shell -- are they sold in the shell, raw, cooked, empty shells only, or what? Are they meant to be a snack, a souvenir, or raw provender? Is this the quaint English equivalent of boiled peanut stands in North Georgia?

Yours sincerely,

Confurzled

Comments

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Kentish downs, actually, and only in the subjunctive counterfactual. I'm really enjoying getting the little snapshots of everyone's experience of whelks, though. Seems there's a bit of difference depending on when and where.

[cobrabay.livejournal.com]

A snack. They are boiled (or steamed) and traditionally served with a dash of vinegar and sea salt. Served in a bag, and you get pin to extract the whelk from it shell to eat. Same goes for winkles, and the pin is referred to as a winkle-picker (also the nickname for a type of shoe).

[frostfox.livejournal.com]

Ah, in t'north they were often sold shelled, with a wooden cocktail stick to eat them with.

FF

[stevegreen.livejournal.com]

All I know is that they're supposedly dead easy to sell (as in the phrase "couldn't run a whelk stall", which is similar to "couldn't run a piss-up in a brewery").

[frostfox.livejournal.com]

Sold cooked in little waxed paper cups.
Sometimes in vinegar, sometimes in brine with vinegar for sprinkling on them, from seaside whelk stalls on the seafront, pier or in seaside towns.
Sometimes late at night in city centre boozers, miles from the sea, the whelk man would do the rounds, selling them off a tray rather in the fashion of the ice cream seller at the cinema.

Eaten with a cocktail stick.

Well, that's how it was in my childhood/teens/twenties (60's/70's/80's)

My great grandmother, while staying in Wales as a young newly wed, went whelking with her beloved (Perseverance, my granddad) and put the whelks in a bucket of salt water by the door of the cottage. The tide turned in the night and all the whelks crawled out of the bucket and went a wandering all over the cottage, looking for the sea.

An acquired taste. I like them.

[frostfox.livejournal.com]

Oh, and fairgrounds, both by the sea and the mobile ones, you used to see whelk stalls at fairgrounds too.

FF

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

They're the standard UK test for management ability; apparently a whelk stall is approximately as easy to run as an egg is to boil, or as a brewery trip is to organise.

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

In my experience, a brewery trip is even more difficult to organize than your standard convention dinner expedition for seven. I have mastered the dinner expedition for seven (announce destination, gather four people total, leave hotel immediately; compatible group of seven arrives at destination about ten minutes later), so perhaps I should try the brewery trip again.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Well, I've had my challenges boiling eggs, and while I've never tried to organize a brewery trip, I do some wrangling to make sure there's a regular pub meet, and in these parts, that's not a trivial thing to do.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Sold, cooked, as a snack. No, I don't know why.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

People will eat most anything, given sufficient applications of hunger or Tradition.

[kateyule.livejournal.com]

What is that "B" doing there?

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Specifying Britishness in the anticipated respondents, mostly. Or fucking with your expectations, as the case may be.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Having recently looked at the mss for "Ay, and Gomorrah," all I can think of is: Est-ce que tu un whelk?

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Er, Est tu un whelk surely?

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

That's what I thought, too, but then I googled it to be sure. (Even in Spanish!)

[iggyspawn.livejournal.com]

Non, je n'est pas un whelk, et toi?

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Je ne sais pas, parce que je suis un whelk.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Non, je ne suis pas un whelk. Je suis une winkle.

[iggyspawn.livejournal.com]

Doh, I used the wrong verb. The look my FR102 instructor gave me yesterday when a spanish word burbled up off the cuff was priceless. ;-P

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

No, right verb, wrong conjugation, actually. "Est" and "suis" are both forms of the verb être: Je suis, tu es, il/elle est, nous sommes, vous êtes, ils/elles sont.

I sometimes mush together French and Spanish too. Ghu help me if I ever take Portugese or Italian.

[jcochrane.livejournal.com]

if a whelk is remotely edible, it bears damn little resemblance to North Georgia boiled peanuts. and I say that as a North Georgia native. boiled peanuts have to be the most disgusting thing on earth, or among the top 10, anyway.