Even Hamish noticed this morning’s cold. As for the chickens? They’re not
sitting in the lee of the Neverbudge. Neither have they returned to their
coop; they’re under a bush, toughing it out in what is fast becoming a
blizzard. No idea why. Flock consensus. Or something to do with Mary
Poppins. (The wind is from the east.)
E. and I made a run to the shops this morning, as did half of Portland. I made
the mistake of going to the bakery isle for bread flour and so on. There were
ladies who haven’t figured out that carts block the way, ladies on the phone,
ladies asking other ladies if they can make out what the recipe calls for here.
Much fumbling for glasses. One of them said, “If I wasn’t on the phone in a
supermarket I think I’d want to cry. That’s the best news! She’s working
out!”
On my way out, I picked the self-check option and was doing fine until the
Rutabaga issue came up again. Every time I try to pay for a rutabaga there’s a
fuss about what it is. I couldn’t find it among the photos on the screen.
Typing the name in didn’t bring much reaction. Over came the supervisory
person who typed, “RHU…” and got rhubarb. It’d be altogether simpler if
Americans called the thing a Swede or Swedish Turnip or Neep. “Rutabaga" is
apparently from some Swedish dialect: rot (root) + bagge (“short, stumpy
object; probably related to bag”). That’s Wikipedia on the subject. It might
be more fun to call them snadgers, snaggers or narkies, which are Northern
English terms I’ve never heard.
In Denmark a Swede is called a kalrabi, which makes me wonder what Danish for
Kohlrabi is. The web seems to think it’s “kalrabi,” which suggests the Danes
can’t distinguish between a German turnip and a Swedish one. Odd.
I decided to see if vegetable confusion was more widespread than I’d hitherto
suspected. Sure enough in Old English (again Wikipedia is my source) "carrots
(typically white at the time) were not clearly distinguished from
parsnips"…both were called moru, meaning “edible root.” Forty five percent of
the world’s carrots are grown in China. They originated in Persia. It was the
who Dutch created the orange kind.
Narkies in the stew tonight I think. Do carry on.
David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon
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