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| Lucy of "Charlie Brown" fame. Proselytising the merits of ethnic foods. Pretty fly for a white girl. Disclaimer: I don't own the copyright, please don't sue me. |
Though I long since outgrew my need to produce short, if laboured, composition exercises in the vein of what Miss Rogers assigned to us in Grade 1, I thought I'd try my hand at it again, even if only for the sake of comedic exposition. What follows is horribly offensive, bordering of racist, and banal stand-up humour. Guest contributor, Ricky Varghese, assisted in creating these lists. He’s brown so you can’t complain about the Indian one. So, occupy that!
[To be read in the style of a grade school Barbie ingénue]
“How do I love dim sum? Let me count the ways”
1. I love your greasy fried goodness;
2. When I don’t like your greasy fried goodness, I can have you steamed;
3. You’re full of pork;
4. You’re also full of shrimp;
5. You come around on cute little steam carts
6. It’s the only time I will ever consider eating chicken feet or any other part of the animal used for auto-locomotion;
7. I can eat desserts who textures are entirely foreign to the Western cultural experience;
8. You come from the land of Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee so you can’t be all that bad for me;
9. My tummy gets so hungry for your goodness, that it rushes digestion so I can have more of you an hour later;
10. Mooncakes and Mango pudding are your happy ending.
“How do I love 'merican grub? I'm sure I can think of somethin'”
1. I’ve never met a carb I didn’t like;
2. Gravy is its own food group;
3. If your portions were babies, they’d have to be delivered by C section;
4. I can use your generous portions of mashed potatoes to build a recreation of Devil’s Peak;
5. Everything is better with pork fat;
6. I once heard of vegetables, but Daddy says they’re a myth. I think I saw one used as a garnish once;
7. Bacon is it’s own food group (better than gravy);
8. I like that your adaptations of international foods have been rendered bland and flavourless to suit my WASP-y palette;
9. “Chicken fried _______” is its own food group;
10. You keep America’s salt miners gainfully employed.
“¿Cómo amo la comida mexicana? Let me count the ways”
1. You are conveniently boxed for purchase in my suburban grocery store;
2. Sour cream is a food group;
3. Guacamole is like butter, except green;
4. "Yo Quiero Taco Bell";
5. Your beans prefer to be cooked twice;
6. Unlike many of your citizens, your food is allowed to transcend international borders;
7. I’ve been told I can’t get Hepatitis B from your vegetables or water, but I’ve been proven wrong before;
8. You can make anything with corn;
9. Only you could mix chicken with chocolate;
10. Salsa isn’t just a form of ballroom dancing.
“私はどのように日本の食糧を愛するか。Let me culturally stratify the ways”
1. Wasabi ice cream confuses my mouth;
2. What up with burnt rice candy?
3. Your salmon sashimi is so fresh is swims up my esophagus;
4. Seaweed is a food group;
5. Who else would have thought about fermenting beans into a paste?;
6. You use gourmet bread crumbs, unlike us crude Westerners;
7. You drink your alcohol hot;
8. If you can lift it, you can make it into a katsu;
9. I can enjoy your treasured national food, the ramen noodle, for only $.10 a pack;
10. Your rice cookers will do everything except discipline your children.
“How does one enjoy English cuisine? Let one count the multitudinous ways...”
1. It's fit for a queen?
2. Mushy peas: Looks the same going in as going out;
3. "Curry in a hurry" is not just a euphemism;
4. If it's good enough for William and Kate...;
5. Bangers and Mash is a meal, not just a fun Saturday night;
6. Seafood from the North sea burns brighter than whale oil;
7. I can read the news while I eat my fish;
8. The food on the Chunnel train is bilingual;
9. Your food is like the moors: grey and soggy;
10. Commonwealth? Common food!
“Can I love Indian food? Let me count the ways”
1. Your cheese looks like tofu, so it must be healthy, right?;
2. Your waiters refrain from laughing at me when I say “naan bread” and/or “chai tea”;
3. Butter and chicken are separate food groups, but, when together, form a compound food group tailored to my WASP-y palette;
4. You employ a panopoly of herbs and spices that aren’t just salt and pepper;
5. You don’t eat your God;
6. If you can lift it, you can put it in a curry;
7. Eating in your restaurants is a good excuse to live out fantasies of colonial power relations, and also have another gin & tonic;
8. Your pasty mono-texture makes you easily consumable when grandma forgets her dentures;
9. “Look at all the pretty earthtones”;
10. I hope that someday over a basket of naan bread and cup of piping hot chai tea, I can introduce Indiana Jones to Edward Said.
“How do I love Eye-talian [sic] food? Let me count the ways”
1. Pesto is a food group;
2. If I can’t get you at Olive Garden, I might find you in my mall foodcourt;
3. There’s a song about meatballs on top of cheese-covered spaghetti;
4. You are immortalised in Disney’s hit animated feature film, Lady and the Tramp;
5. All your chefs play the accordion and know Puccini’s opera oeuvre by rote;
6. Your pizza can also be dessert;
7. I broke my tooth on a biscotti, but your espresso was so good, I didn’t care;
8. You don’t just eat ice cream, you eat gelato;
9. A nice chianti can make even fava beans taste good;
10. Ordering Tiramisu makes me sound cosmopolitan.
“Comment est-ce que j'aime la nourriture française? Je compterai les raisons”
1. CROISSANTS!!!!!
2. Béchamel is a food group;
3. Cheese is philosophy;
4. Your wine is cheaper than water, why bother with religious intervention;
5. Julia Child liked you. I’m not sure if you heard, but she’s dead now;
6. Your bread is crusty, like your immigration officials;
7. I want to rub your desserts all over my body as a fashion statement;
8. Whipped Cream? Yes, please!;
9. It’s not ‘chocolate’ it’s ‘chocolat’;
10. A meal without butter is like a picnic without an accordionist.
“Why should I love Russian food? Let me ration the ways”
1. CABBAGE!
2. BEETS!
3. BORSCHT!
4. Ration cards;
5. Ice is a food grou... Is there a camera in that cabbage head?
6. You can both eat and drink potatoes;
7. “In Russia, coffee drinks you!”;
8. Зеленый цвет Soylent плоть балета;
9. Shostakovich isn’t a cooking method, but it sounds appealing anyway;
10. Cuisine in the gulag is... STALIN IS THE GREATEST LEADER WHO EVER LIVED!!!;
“How do I love Korean food? Let me count the ways”
1. Kim chi is both a delightful appetizer, and she’s also my best friend;
2. You have metal chop sticks and really big spoons;
3. Your BBQ is so delicious that I’m compelled to pay for something I can make at home;
4. Your waiters are surly but, thankfully, short on conversation;
5. The heat level of your food is colour coded like the American terrorism index;
6. You have seaweed like the Japanese, but yours isn’t so neutral;
7. You have fridges designed especially to store your fermented cabbage;
8. Your vegetarian food has only a little bit of beef in it;
9. “Like, OMG, she just dropped an egg into my soup”;
10. You eat so many foods, but only the Southern half. Why?
“How do I løve Swedish food? Let me count the ways”
1. SEAFOOD!
2. You’re available at Ikea, no assembly required for consumption;
3. You can steam salmon in your saunas;
4. I love lingon berry jam. What is a lingon berry anyway?
5. We also eat smoked salmon, except here we called it “smoked salmon”;
6. Dill is a food group;
7. You have to eat your food quickly in winter before it gets dark again;
8. “Did you steal the meatballs from the eye-talians?” [sic];
9. If anyone could make pine cones edible, it would be you;
10. Jim Henson introduced Swedish cooking to international audiences.
“How do I express my admiration for German food? Let me count the ways”
1. Cabbage and turnips keep me coming ‘Bach’ for more;
2. Sausage is the wurst food group;
3. Sauerkraut makes your citizens’ faces all scrunchy;
4. “Angela, Ihre Mahlzeit ist eckig und schön”;
5. You develop highly complicated and impractically elaborate recipe directions;
6. Your Pope makes the best Eggs Benedict;
7. You like curry more than the Indians;
8. Your food digests very efficiently;
9. If you can ferment it, you’ll make it into beer;
10. Your large Turkish population keeps out the Greek food.
“How do I love Jamaican food? Let me count the ways”
1. Jerk isn’t just a pejorative, it’s what you do to your chicken;
2. Plantains aren’t a large property for colonial forced labour;
3. ACKEE! “I put that sh*t on everything!”
4. Beans and rice are not mutually exclusive;
5. “Give me dat chanah roti, gurl”;
6. Roti is a food group;
7. Why doesn’t Bob Marley have his own brand of breakfast cereal?;
8. You don’t put dreadlocks on bagels;
9. You’re the world’s leading consumers of Ox tails;
10. If you can lift it, you’ll jerk it.
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