I'm proofreading an Icelandic story (in English) called "Sworn Brothers," set in the past but written in 1924. I'm also listening to a book on tape set in Iceland, about an American white-knight sort of paramilitary-style informal PI. Lots of Iceland going around.
The modern book is by Nick Petrie, his "Peter Ash" series, which I recommend for mindless entertainment, better than usual in that genre.
Tom, every culture has it's offal and organ dishes, it's just that as they got more prosperous, most of them dropped that stuff and stuck to the good cuts. The far Northern peoples and the Asians though, they seem to like the weirdness and also maybe it's their deeply pragmatic nature- 'sure things are good now, but if they tank tomorrow, we're still prepared to eat the miscellaneous bits and weird seafood.'
Once when I lived in China, I was eating a kind of stir fry that I recognized was made with stomach. A female Chinese colleague asked me, in English, what I thought of the food.
“Well, it’s offal,” I said by way of excusing my tepid reaction.
“It’s awful?!?” she replied, genuinely upset.
She hadn’t cooked the stuff or else I would have found a way to praise it. It was just from a cafeteria. I had to explain about the homonym.
I'm proofreading an Icelandic story (in English) called "Sworn Brothers," set in the past but written in 1924. I'm also listening to a book on tape set in Iceland, about an American white-knight sort of paramilitary-style informal PI. Lots of Iceland going around.
ReplyDeleteThe modern book is by Nick Petrie, his "Peter Ash" series, which I recommend for mindless entertainment, better than usual in that genre.
We've seen CCP before. They are the Eve Online crew.
ReplyDeletehttps://youtu.be/uqoxRcP5kbo
And what is it with northern cuisine in general? Is it just as the video suggests? This is what we eat when we're about to starve?
Tom, every culture has it's offal and organ dishes, it's just that as they got more prosperous, most of them dropped that stuff and stuck to the good cuts. The far Northern peoples and the Asians though, they seem to like the weirdness and also maybe it's their deeply pragmatic nature- 'sure things are good now, but if they tank tomorrow, we're still prepared to eat the miscellaneous bits and weird seafood.'
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteOnce when I lived in China, I was eating a kind of stir fry that I recognized was made with stomach. A female Chinese colleague asked me, in English, what I thought of the food.
“Well, it’s offal,” I said by way of excusing my tepid reaction.
“It’s awful?!?” she replied, genuinely upset.
She hadn’t cooked the stuff or else I would have found a way to praise it. It was just from a cafeteria. I had to explain about the homonym.