The name “Meow mein’s” is interestingly suggestive. I suppose one might enjoy the “authentic special” that’s not really on the menu; you gotta know to ask for it. 
( never mind)
Do not put knives into children
I don’t know how authentic it was but when I watched The Battle of the Bulge as a teen I remember a scene at the beginning where a German staff officer presents a chocolate cake to the general planning the operation.
“So?”
“We found it on a captured American scout platoon. It’s fresh. How can we defeat a country that can fly this in from England, if not the United States?”
- Col. Martin Hessler: General, before you go, may I show you something?
- Col. Martin Hessler: What is it?
- Col. Martin Hessler: A chocolate cake.
- Gen. Kohler: Well?
- Col. Martin Hessler: It was taken from a captured American private. It’s still fresh. If you will look at the wrapping, general, you will see it comes from Boston.
- Gen. Kohler: And?
- Col. Martin Hessler: General, do you realize what this means? It means that the Americans have fuel and planes to fly cake across the Atlantic Ocean. They have no conception of defeat.
Well, I was close.
Eeeeh - it took me a while to locate this.
Now, you may be thinking So what, it’s a perfectly sensible thing to prohibit - but context is everything. Here’s another view of the sign:
The A27/M27 is THE south coast trunk road. The Google Maps people managed to find a particularly quiet time to do their streetview thing - traffic thunders along there (when it hasn’t ground to a standstill) - heavy goods vehicles, tourists, commuters (it was my commute for a while).
It’s a harder job for me to explain why the sign is there.Best not to try.
j
It’s to keep those daredevil Amish in line.
It’s also really unclearly written.
Does it mean “Horsedrawn vehicles must not race”? (And if so, does that mean that racing by motorized vehicles is fine?)
Or does it mean “Slow down when passing horsedrawn vehicles – don’t race by them”?
I think that’s the humour in it. IMO …
It means the latter. But is worded such that, at least to American perceptions, it means the former.
It’s a prohibition of using the road for racing horse drawn vehicles on. It does happen, and it’s extremely dangerous (and a lot of other things as well). For example, YouTube video, NSFW (language) and concluding with an accident which I, at least, found distressing (though apparently the person posting this didn’t).
j
ETA: I worry that this may turn into a hijack. Not my intention at all.
If it were around Appleby-in-Westmoreland I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a sign like that, but on the South Downs? You learn something new every day.
Back to the topic:
After Googling around some more it seems to me that famine napkins seems to refer what in a lot more instances, especially in Asian countries, are called feminine napkins, i.e. menstrual pads.
Which leaves the question if famine is an intentional bowdlerisation of feminine/female, or else an instance of the Cupertino Effect.
Thank you. It has bothered me that I could not guess what a famine napkin could be 
.
Whoops! I grew up with “feminine pads” as such a standard term that it didn’t occur to me some in the thread might not recognize it. Maybe it’s gone out of style as people became more willing to discuss the subject openly? – just googled, and found a couple of references to “feminine pads”, but most now seem to be using “menstrual pads” or “sanitary pads.” (Considering the number of things that come under “sanitation”, that one strikes me as even more of a euphemism than “feminine”.)
Probably also depends on the country one’s in, of course.
It also never occurred to me that an English speaker might not recognize “famine napkin” as an error for “feminine napkin”, especially in the context of flushing things down the toilet and juxtaposed with tampons and baby wipes. I guess I should have explained it a bit more in my OP.
I can’t find a picture of it, but Seattle had a large sign for decades advertising “Buffalo Sanitary Wipes”, which always got a snicker every time I drove past. It was a sad day when the sign was taken down.
I do know of feminine pads/ napkins, I just didn’t make the connection between famine and feminine. Perhaps the explanation is that I’m mainly an English reader/writer. If I spoke more English, I might have made the connection.
And of course English is a second language to me.
You’ve got a whole lot more English than I have of any language other than English. I had to remind myself that you might not be in a primarily English-speaking country.