Storytime. Cooking in a different country makes you realize how many things you take for granted are just, Not A Thing Here. Like apple juice. Surely you can find apple juice at your local Athenian grocery store, right? Wrong. Greeks drink orange juice and peach juice and mixed fruit juice and sour cherry juice, but… plain old apple juice, nope, not so much. You’ll have a hard time finding vanilla extract in Greece too, since Greeks are used to vanilla powder in little plastic capsules and you have to go to specialty shops for the liquid stuff. Sour cream is virtually nonexistent here (but hey, it’s the land of yogurt, which is a good enough substitute). But surprisingly cornmeal (which is a specialty ingredient in the UK) is everywhere, since Greeks have their own versions of cornbread and corn pudding.
So basically: I knew it might be impossible find vegetable shortening (aka Crisco) for my Thanksgiving pie crust here in Athens. Crisco is pretty uniquely American, and Greeks are more likely to use phyllo than shortcrust anyway. That said, there are a handful of specialty shops in central Athens that sell things like Heinz baked beans and custard powder and Worcestershire sauce and other Weird Foreign Foods™ so us Sad Homesick Expats don’t have to go hungry (I’m always reminded of A Passage to India and their corned beef and tinned peas). So I went on Skroutz (the search engine for buying stuff in Greece) and typed in “vegetable shortening” to see if any stores carried it.
A notification came up asking me to confirm that I was over 18 years old?
???
I clicked “yes”??
Turns out there is, in fact, one shop in Athens that carries vegetable shortening. It’s a sex shop. The shortening is listed under “sex essentials”, as lube. For fisting. It’s literally called “βούτυρο για fisting” – “butter for fisting”.
I decided I didn’t need a flaky pie crust that badly.
every time I use “they” to refer to a single gender-unknown person on Tumblr, another piece of my grammar-filled heart shatters, and the pieces scatter at the bottom of hell
“They” has been a singular pronoun for hundreds of years, you melodramatic dipshit.
well… actually… no… they is plural. people use they when they should use he, she, or it.
dense motherfucker, the pronoun “they” is an english equivalent for the third person indefinite singular and has been for literally centuries. it remains morphologically and syntactically plural therefore you don’t need to shit your little pantaloons at compromising your surely rock solid grammar rules.
i guarantee every fuckin time you’ve ever had to refer to a person of an unknown gender you’ve used “they” subconsciously. (“The post clerk gave me a message for you.” “Oh, what did they say?”) but you only have a problem with it when people specify it as a pronoun for themselves because you’re a shitlord i fuckin guess.
hypothesis: the salt & pepper diner experiment can no longer be conducted as it stands, because everyone is now fully attuned to the opening bars of tom jones’ “what’s new pussycat?”, classically conditioned into a fight-or-flight response. however, this experience can be replicated using 21 back-to-back plays of lou bega’s 1999 hit song “mambo no. 5″, as the general response to “mambo no. 5″ being played twice in a row is not, “hey someone’s playing “mambo no. 5″ again,” but rather, “hey, lou bega’s 1999 hit song “mambo no. 5″ is a lot longer than i first thought.”
So what’s the “It’s Not Unusual” in this situation
You can really tell who’s never experienced poverty and food insecurity when it comes to discussions around food costs and how unhealthy food is cheaper. Some fucker always comes in with the price of like… lettuce or… apples. And it’s like yeah bitch but can you work an 11 hour shift after eating some salad and an apple!?! Find me something cheaper, and more filling than the broke ass staples of boxed mac and cheese, hot dogs, noodles, bread, beans, and rice. I’ll wait.
It also ignores the mental toll that poverty takes like maybe your home made veggie filled recipe isn’t crazy expensive but it also involves prep time and cooking time and organization in terms of fresh food that a lotta poor people can’t manage.
Not to mention if you can only afford to get to the store once every couple weeks via bus or cab then you can’t keep fresh veg on deck.
Big Gay Dracula Does a Shitpost 