Grains

ed : It's our 101st post! and dedicated to Jane. This was supposed to be a continuation from the Rego post. (Aug 16) but didn't have enough time to do it before Ms. J left.

Part 2 :

With the bad weather behind us and my lunch in tow, I was looking forward to gorge myself with the curries we bought down the mall.

As the aroma of Vindaloo and Buttered Chicken wafted through the break room, Rayana, Jane and Michelle came by and decided to join us.

Which led us to an interesting discussion about food. I think it started out with what Jane brought in for lunch.

"Grain Salad!" She enthusiastically says (as what Jane does). "Made of short grain rice, quinoa, slices of lime and some veggies."

"Quino-huwwat?" I say as I peered curiously at her lunch, sitting proudly in a little plastic container.

"Quinoa" Jane says "The oldest edible grain ever recorded. A staple diet by the Incas (or was it Mayans or Martians?) long before the Spanish conquistadors came looking for the fountain of youth?"

(As a side note, I actually went on wikipedia afterwards to look it up. Had an interesting read about this grain. link here. Yeah, that's right, I thought she was making it up like how she makes up stuff about the urgency of projects. But... it was true, it does exist.)

"So is it like couscous?" I ask without even knowing what that meant.

"That's totally different" Rayana says. And goes off describing what they're made off, what's it like, how you cook them, blah, blah, blah etc etc. The look on Jared's face was just pure amazement, you see, he's a potatoes man (or kumara boy depending on the mood - I think it's kumara for candle light dinners). It's only just recently that he found that rice is actually NOT a dessert.

(Pause. Another distraction as I just saw an odd shaped nut sitting on my desk as I was writing this. Hazelnut, I think upon closer inspection. Where in the world did that come from?)

Then Rayana says something about not worth the effort cooking Risotto. I haven't cooked risotto yet, but the way she described it sounded like it's easier to hunt buffalos than cooking this 'exotique' dish.

"What's Risotto?" Jared asks

Jane's absolutely shocked that there weren't that many people in the table who even knew what these dishes are. The look on her face was priceless. It's as if we were all like neanderthals gathered round the table, wet and dripping after recently thawing out from the ice age.

"I can't believe you guys are not adventurous enough!" Jane says.

Jared was also amazed that there were other veggies out there - so different from his staple meat and potatoes diet.

"Risotto's short grain rice, cooked slowly in stock/water with veggies or meat" Jane says. She also mentioned something about why you're not supposed to pour cold water during as it halts the cooking process.

"I like mashed potatoes best!" Jared says from out of the blue.

Which made me wonder why we quickly jumped from that topic to "Tabouleh" (wiki link here)

"Taboulehuwat?" I ask again.

"I'm sure you've eaten that stuff with kebabs before." Rayana explained "You just didn't know it."

"Was that the green thing they stuff in there?" I ignorantly say.

Jane definitely knows what that is as she quickly rattled off what it's made of. I didn't even have the courage to ask what vulgar wheat is - sounds like porno wheat.

Anyway, we moved on to how we eat or cook eggplants. (Here's a trivia for you : Jared has never ever knowingly eaten an eggplant before!)

"Stuffed!" Michelle says

"Mashed eggplants" Rayana says.

Poor Jane was reeling from the trauma. She must've been thinking "How could these savages mash an eggplant like that?!?!"

This is where I got lost as everybody was pretty excited when Michelle asked what their fave vegetable is. It's like the evolutionary clock was turned back a tick. You could see monkeys jumping up excitedly and screaming.

"Oooghhhhh ei ei ei ah ah ah ah eggplants! eggplants! hoo hoo hoo." said one hairy Canadian monkey.

"Urk urk urk Okra okra okra shriek shrieeeek!" Said one of the orangutans as he smelled both his armpits.

"Rrrrrrrrrr ooh aah ooh ahh ooh ahh Potatoes Potatoes!!!" Said one big ape-like gorilla.

"Hoo hoo hoo mushrooms! mushrooms! giggle giggle snort snort!!" (Guess who this monkey is.)

Then Jared suddenly freaks out and jumps up and down screaming and turning the big table over. Like a big gorilla, he utters a low guttural sound. "Hroook hroook hroook!!!" and takes a sniff at our terrified guest. He says loudly "Me TARZAN!!!... you Jane!" He then makes a "Thump thump thump" as he beat his hairy chest like there's no tomorrow.

Jane can no longer take the madness and runs away screaming.

And that's pretty much how our lunch ended (and how monkeys came to be in BI.)