Common language, division by
Mar. 15th, 2011 12:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceI may have the world's most extravagant collection of recipe books, but actually most of my cooking happens in my head. I assemble ingredients on the principle of "oh, hey, that should taste quite well with t'other thing..."
Which is an approach that can be utterly sabotaged when a word turns out to mean not what I think it means.
Spanish chorizo, I learn, is not the same as Mexican chorizo. Not by a country mile. Not by a country, indeed.
Spanish chorizo is a sausage, with all that that implies. Even chorizo fresca is a semi-dry sliceable sausage. Mexican chorizo? On this evidence, is a paste contained within an artificial skin, only waiting its opportunity to ooze.
Also, the spicing is entirely different.
So my kale-and-chorizo lunch dish (topped with fried eggs, since you ask) turned out to be almost entirely different to what I was expecting.
Still, she ate it. And then took me to the bank, where I opened an account. Which was all exciting enough on its own account (and US banks supply candy and cookies to their customers, which is just - well, two nations divided by a common appetite), but what you don't yet know because I haven't told you is that my new US bank is -- drum roll, please -- Wells Fargo! (Which, for those of you who grew up accustomed, is a phrase redolent with cowboy excitements to those of us more distant. Wells Fargo is all about Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday and so forth. I had no idea that Wells Fargo still existed, let alone that it was a bank and you were allowed to belong to it. They even have a stage coach on their cards!) (And as it happens I am not at all interested in Westerns these days, but the childhood thrill still abides.)
So, yup. Ex-pat. Half assimilated, half bewildered. I even remembered to say "sidewalk" on one of my FogCon panels, because I knew that "pavement" would only confuse the issue. But by the time my new ATM card arrives, I'll be back in the UK.
Which is an approach that can be utterly sabotaged when a word turns out to mean not what I think it means.
Spanish chorizo, I learn, is not the same as Mexican chorizo. Not by a country mile. Not by a country, indeed.
Spanish chorizo is a sausage, with all that that implies. Even chorizo fresca is a semi-dry sliceable sausage. Mexican chorizo? On this evidence, is a paste contained within an artificial skin, only waiting its opportunity to ooze.
Also, the spicing is entirely different.
So my kale-and-chorizo lunch dish (topped with fried eggs, since you ask) turned out to be almost entirely different to what I was expecting.
Still, she ate it. And then took me to the bank, where I opened an account. Which was all exciting enough on its own account (and US banks supply candy and cookies to their customers, which is just - well, two nations divided by a common appetite), but what you don't yet know because I haven't told you is that my new US bank is -- drum roll, please -- Wells Fargo! (Which, for those of you who grew up accustomed, is a phrase redolent with cowboy excitements to those of us more distant. Wells Fargo is all about Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday and so forth. I had no idea that Wells Fargo still existed, let alone that it was a bank and you were allowed to belong to it. They even have a stage coach on their cards!) (And as it happens I am not at all interested in Westerns these days, but the childhood thrill still abides.)
So, yup. Ex-pat. Half assimilated, half bewildered. I even remembered to say "sidewalk" on one of my FogCon panels, because I knew that "pavement" would only confuse the issue. But by the time my new ATM card arrives, I'll be back in the UK.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-15 07:18 am (UTC)