I would like to ask you two questions from a RD article dealing with holiday hassle - Less stress more joy. Bill, thanks a lot I feel I owe you to buy nice meal. What is your favorite food?
"Tonight's the night. You mailed invites, blanketed the pigs, hung the mistletoe and spiked the punch."
ANSWER:
"Blanketed the pigs" is a verb phrase meaning to take frankfurters (wieners, franks, hotdogs) and wrap them in bacon attached with toothpicks and then cook. Sometimes the wrapper is baked dough. We call them pigs in a blanket OR pigs in blankets OR pig in a blanket (1926). Blanket when used as a verb means to cover.
Frankfurter is the original name and a German word. Named so (1887) after Frankfurt am Main (on the Main River), a city in central West Germany. It is a smoked (cured) cooked sausage of beef OR beef&pork, etc. They are also called wieners (1900), short for weinerwurst (Vienna sausage). Wurst means sausage. Sometimes they are called wienies (colloquial).
Hotdog (c. 1900) is an Americanism colloquial term coined by Tad Dorgan, a U.S. cartoonist, probably in allusion to popular notion that the sausage was made of dog meat. Of course, it is not, Americans do not eat dog meat; perhaps, Korean-Americans do. Usually the hotdog is heated and cooked and served in a long split soft roll or bun with mustard, relish, etc. Hotdogs are sometimes called franks (c. 1904).
You have probably heard of corn dog (1967) which is similar, a frankfurter dipped in cornmeal batter, fried, and served on a stick.
"Spiked the punch" is a slang verb phrase meaning to add an alcoholic beverage liquor (to a drink), but, you can add wine or beer as well. "Punch" is originally a sweetened drink made with fruit juices (nonalcoholic beverages), carbonated beverages, sherbet, etc. that is traditionally mixed with wine or hard liquor and is served hot or cold (usually cold) in cups from a large bowl. The word punch is derived (1632) from the Hindi-Urdu word for five, thus, originally punch contained five different fruit juices. Another familiar phrase is "spike the drink" or "spike the coffee" (1624) meaning to add a foreign substance to it such as a tranquilizer, acid, etc. to get the person high or drunk or disoriented or to pass out, usually, so that one can either make a fool of the person or in order to take advantage of the person.
I hope this clears things up a bit for you. My favorite Korean food is pork-bone soup (ppyeodagwi haejangguk). My favorite American food (really Italian) is pizza. Thank you for your offer to buy me a nice meal, but for now I have to take a rain check on it. "Ambiguous Bill"
