warning:looooongJoy's America is in the same neck of the woods as Kyliemac's America, but I would explain a few things differently! I got so interested in this subject that I just kept open my little comment window while I listened so that I could follow along! (I'm babysitting and the kid is sleeping!)I really think that we started calling fries FRENCH FRIES because of the style of the way they were cut: long and skinny. If you cut a green bean this way, it's called a French cut, too. Now Americans call fried potatoes cut in just about any way French Fries, although some more specific names exist to differentiate them. There are wedges, there are "home fries" (that's what they're often called in Michigan, and that's the more fish & chips style fries), there are tots... :) But I'm pretty sure that the term French Fries was coined to describe a certain cut of potatoes. Coriander and Cilantro are interchangable in the US, at least on cooking shows.I don't know why the EntrŽe is the main dish in the U.S. But it is. What comes before can be called the appetizer, hors d'oeuvres, starters, or first course. Why it's like that, I really can't imagine. It's so stupid, actually. Gob made me think immediately, Shut Your Gob! So I was agreeing with Katia. But my grandmother had neighbors who used to say "a whole gob of" whatever. Gob is not a word you hear used a lot in the US, it's sort of antiquated, but I always knew what it meant. You do hear it from time to time, and you read it...Calling a refridgerator/freezer an "ice box" (it's mostly grandparents who still use this term), is just a hold-over from the days before the electric appliance, when it really was an ice box where you kept your perishable food. The term is older than "cooler", as in the kind you take with you on picnics or to tailgate parties or whatever!Ice picks can be enormous things, meant for breaking big ass chunks of ice. But mostly it is the hand tool. You have to use an ice pick if you're sculpting ice, so there's one use..;) No, but really, the thing dates back to before the advent of little ice cube trays and electric freezers, so that's why it exists! And if you really need thin chips of ice (like some cocktaills call for), you'd need one of these. Yes, yes, yes!! Jam is preserves with chunks of fruit, jelly is the fruitless version, and gelatin (jello) is that other stuff. (But you would never eat it with ice cream, barf!)Peckish: this made me laugh, because it was always kind of an ambiguous word to me. AMericans don't really say peckish, or if they do,they sound pretentious because it seems very British. When I was younger I did think that it had something to do with being the worse for hunger, as in, pale, sickly looking, that sort of thing. So I looked it up on M-W and the second definition after hungry is CROTCHETY, which is just too hilarious.To me sherbert is the same thing as sorbet... and I never heard anyone say sherbet without the R! But wikipedia says it's a Turkish drink or something like that.I also looked up lemonade and it's historically (origin 1600-something) lemon juice mixed with water and sugar. The French invented it and called it limonade. Lemonade like we drink in the US is the same thing. Then in England they started making it with fizzy waters and turned it into a "soft drink" (they also cut out almost all the lemon juice), and it's from that origin that they later co-opted the brand name Sprite just to mean any lemony carbonated drink (as in Katia's Australia).Kyliemac, we don't say washing up, but we always say CLEANING UP. You clean up the kitchen. So really it's the same thing. "Don't worry, I'll clean up. You can relax." It's wash if you have a direct object, clean(-up) if you don't. When talking about housekeeping, anyway.Thanks for keeping me occupied, girls! That was innnnnteresting. But what am I going to do now, though?... I didn't bring anything to read... :DXO,Joy

I'd really like to know the name of your theme song and who performs it. Please?