Wednesday, September 23, 2009

The kind of e-mail that makes my day.

Sender: Simon P.
Subject: QUESTION
Body of e-mail: How horrible would it be if I brought Somali food to my lab "pirate food potluck"?

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My response to this was: Oh that's funny, I love it.

To which Simon P. essentially said: No, seriously. Is it wrong?

To which I would like to publicly state that: Yes, of course. But it is still funny. AND GEOPOLITICALLY* AWARE, which is important. Then I suggested an alternative dish involving weevils, because if you're going to have an historically accurate pirate dinner, you might as well go all out. It transpired, however, that Simon P. was way ahead of me, already studying the feasibility of bringing wormy biscuits, so I guess there's no reason for me to start that pirate potluck advice column after all.

*I am waiting for the day when Inigo Montoya comes up to me and says, "Stop using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." Until then, though, I'm going to keep using it.

5 comments:

Ivan said...

I would bring scurvy and grog.

Katie said...

Wormy biscuits won. Only they don't look wormy, so much as they look like candy puked on them. Which is, in essence what happened. Pictures coming soon to a blog near you. I hope. I also hope other people eat them, cause I don't like gummy worms on the best of days, let alone baked into scones. Gag.

Ivan, if you have some ideas on how to bring scurvy to a potluck, please let me know. As for grog, it's a potluck at a University and no booze is allowed :( otherwise I'm pretty sure the potluck would just be 25 bottles of rum.

Simon P said...

Random Fact. My recipe for Somali stew wasn't very exciting, which is in part why it got vetoed. It was kindof like my mom's stew. So I figured I'd wait til this weekend or next and make Ethiopian Chicken Wat which has cinnamon and other cool spices like that in it. (My cookbook is also biased cause it has more recipes for Ethiopian food than Somali food...)

Anne said...

Dear Simon and the hordes of readers: Report of the wormy biscuits had already reached me via the grape vine, and the pirate cook has confided that they were not a good choice - few of the pirates ate them, and the pirate cook's personal taste tester also found them lacking. I was disappointed to read that the Somali stew "wasn't very exciting...kindof like my mom's stew" - how disappointing to have been raised by a pirate mom who made unexciting stews! I think that Ivan needs to get out more - even a rudimentary social life would reveal that scurvy is not one of the favorite dishes at most post-lucks. However, as other readers noted, grog would likely be welcomed.
To mention another subject - I got your mailing address but never did send a thank you note - so here's a big THANK YOU for your lovely hospitality to us this summer. It was delightful to meet you and share your lovely home for a while. Also, thank you for not serving us scurvy and grog - I have enough dental problems without adding scurvy to the mix!

Simon said...

I was very happy to have you visit! Please come back any time! I have neither scurvy nor grog, so I promise your teeth will be safe.