> wrote

>I find North American English, with its propensity for inverting
> syntactically sound expressions and creating verbs out of sows' ears
> (to Christmas shop, to grocery shop, etc.), has produced some rather
> unappetizing terms for food usually as some sort of abbreviation. A
> few came up recently and I thought I'd start a thread on this, as a
> form of recreation (because this is after all a rec.* newsgroup).

Tell me, are you a native British speaker?

> NOTE: I specifically said North American as this aberration can also
> be found in parts of Canada.

Of course. The usage is largely the same as their smaller southern
neighbor.

> "from scratch", or worse "scratch" (as in "scratch cake"...oy, the
> mental image of cake made from flaky dead skin or dandruff)

Sorry, term way predates us as a country.

> "tub" as in "tub of margarine" or yogurt, or worse "tub butter". What
> the hell is "tub butter" and who would want any? The word "tub"

Thats the old name for a bucket and milk was placed in a bucket with a chirn
on top and made into buetter.

> "tablespread" or the use of "spread" to mean a soft substance...I'm
> not even going there.

New one on me.