Posts Tagged With: foreign languages

Today Was Better

First, I did finances. This activity keeps me off the street where I would only foment revolution. And we don’t want that, do we? No, we do not.

I hope I spelled it correctly. It would be so much easier if we could only agree to call it “Tacos Yabba Dabbo Do.”

So, I tried to make a pizza. For some reason the bread maker produced not dough, but little pellets. Ah well, some good did come out of it. I learned how to keep yeast longer.

Exclesior. I made a good pizza crust. Toppings were: pasta sauce and a cheese blend of asiago, Parmesan, and mozzarella. I made pork sausage meatballs with Italian seasoning.  They went on the pizza as well along with red bell-pepper strips. The natives loved the pizza. This made me happy.

My wife got a little gizmo that translates foreign languages. She wants to use it to translate Tagalog. She had some problems, so she had me speak French into it.

Me: Tu es ma petite choux. (I know, I know, I should have said , “Tu es ma petite choux choux.” Which means, “You are my little cabbage.” Where “little cabbage is slang for dear, sweetheart, or something life that.

Translator try #1: You are a little thing.

Translator try #2: You are little garbage.

There are a few bug left in the system.

 

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

 

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Sow (Milk Drink from Senegal)

Senegalese Appetizer

SOW
(Milk Drink)

INGREDIENTS

8 cups (2 quarts) buttermilk*
⅔ cup sugar
¼ cup vanilla sugar**
¼ teaspoon nutmeg

* = Traditionally made by letting fresh milk go sour outside then adding sugar and ice.
** = Can be ordered online. PenzeysTM has it. Or make your own with vanilla beans and sugar.

Serves 8. Takes 5 minutes.

PREPARATION

Combine all ingredients into pitcher or jug. Stir with spoon until well blended.

TIDBITS

1) “Sow,” if pronounced incorrectly, in Woolof, a Senegalese language, means something bad.

2) What if calling someone “sow” in Woolof means something that would you get you roughed up, put in prison, or expelled from Senegal?

3) You wouldn’t want that especially after spending thousands upon thousands of dollars on four-star hotels and flying there for its magnificent food and scenery and friendly people. Okay, friendly as long you don’t say “sow” the wrong way to them.

4) So what can you do to keep your words from getting yourself assaulted?

5) Go to another country? Nope. Won’t work. Foreign countries have foreign languages just chock full of okay words that are similar in pronunciation to dirty words, offensive words, and words that if said a little different that will get you dumped off all alone at a glacier when all you really wanted was an ice cube for your orange juice.

6) Learn Woolof. Learn all the languages that are spoken in Senegal. Take those intense language courses! Conjugate those Woolofian verbs every chance you get.

7) Or just smile and point to glass of sow. Just be careful how you point? Pointing the wrong way in a foreign country can get you trouble.

Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

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