At my first job in Los Angeles, we had a farmer’s market truck that came once a week. It was like any L.A. food truck but also totally not, because instead of prepared food it had a sampling of whatever produce was available. One week, it had dried Blenheim apricots. Now these are the good apricots, not the sugary garbage ones you see sometimes at Trader Joe’s or those awful Turkish ones that taste like poison and are also poison. I bought a big bag of them.
The guy who drives the truck held the bag away from me before he handed it over. “Now, I have to tell you: You can’t eat all of these in one sitting.”
I looked at the brown paper lunchbag full of dried apricots, which would have been more food matter than anyone could eat in a single sitting. “Yeah, I wouldn’t do that,” I said.
“Okay, I have to tell people,” he said.
“Don’t people know that already?”
“You’d be surprised. I had one guy who came out once specifically to yell at me. Big guy. He bought a bag of dried apricots and apparently ate all of them that day, at his desk.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, so he was pretty mad because of what happened.”
“I mean, I guess I might be too,” I said.
“I just figured he knew,” he continued. “But people who live in cities maybe don’t know that.”
“Oh, it’s cool,” I responded. “I grew up in central California.”
And with that, he knew I was good to go, gave me a few extra dried apricots and sent me on my way.
The moral of the story is that the next time you make fun of people from rural communities for not being accustomed to your flashy, urban ways, remember that one of your kind once shat himself in his cubicle because he didn’t understand the power of apricots.
That’s it.
Showing posts with label food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label food. Show all posts
Friday, May 1, 2015
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
Pre-emptive Answers to Your Questions About My Apparent Wheat Allergy
A fun fact about me that readers may not know is that for the last few years, I haven’t been consuming wheat. Shortly after I moved to Los Angeles, I developed a stubborn rash. Several months and several doctors later, the only method we found to make the rash go away was to not eat wheat — no bread, no pasta, no beer. This hasn’t been so difficult, since hippy-dippy Los Angeles is probably one of the easiest cities in the nation to find gluten-free food. However, my flagrantly anti-wheat lifestyle seems to be a matter of curiosity for everyone else. Here, then, I’d like to preemptively answer any of the questions you might have about it.
Isn’t it very L.A. of you to go gluten-free right after you move there?
I suppose. This city does have a lot of people who avoid gluten for other reasons — they think it’s inherently unhealthy or that it will make them lose weigh to cut wheat out of their diet. I’m not doing it for those reasons. I’m doing it a cuz that rash I mentioned.
Wouldn’t you be kind of screwed if you had moved to, say, Omaha?
For this and so many other reasons, yes.
I’ve read about celiac disease. It affects a much smaller portion of the population than people think, and what you’re describing doesn’t sound like celiac disease. Why are you being such a stupid faker?
First off, you’re a terrible person. Second, I don’t have celiac disease, at least according to the way I have understood that disorder. I suppose you could say that I have a gluten sensitivity, but I think it’s more accurate and much clearer to simply explain that if I eat wheat products, I get a rash, and I’d rather not eat bread than be Scabbly the Rash Man. It’s that simple.
Could it be something else in those products that’s causing the rash?
Yes, totally. The process of going to doctor after doctor was an ordeal, and since not eating these products solves the problem, I’m just going to stick with it, regardless of whether it’s the wheat or something else that’s actually causing the rash.
What happens if you eat this piece of bread?
Jesus, get it out of my face. As near as I can tell, I will get a rash that’s more or less in proportion to how much wheatiness I eat.
What about gluten-free bread?
What about it?
Well, couldn’t you get by on gluten-free products?
Here’s the thing: In my opinion, gluten-free versions of typically gluten-full products suck, much in the same way that soy-based fake meats suck. These things aren’t meant to be sourdough or chorizo or whatever we’re trying to gussy them up as. You can kind of make it work, but the end product will always be an inferior substitute for the real thing. Essentially, I just don’t eat bread anymore. It’s not that hard.
Did you lose weight as a result of giving up all those wheat products?
Yes, but not for the reason you’re thinking. Essentially, I cut bread and pasta and pastries and beer out of my life. Those are things that make you fat. Because I just stopped consuming them altogether and didn’t replace them with gluten-free versions of them, I did lose weight. But people who simply switch to gluten-free foods probably would not. Gluten-free food is not inherently healthier, just more expensive. Also, in general, paying more attention to the composition of everything I eat has helped me make healthier food choices.
No beer, huh? Wait, didn’t you go to UCSB?
Yes, and I did consume a superhuman amount of beer there without any negative skin conditions resulting.
What about gluten-free beer?
As someone far pithier than I once put it, gluten-free beer tastes like someone came in a mud puddle.
Oh.
Yes. I drink wine now.
Do you miss beer though?
Yes. A room-temperature glass of red wine doesn’t really quench your thirst after a long day of yard work the way a cold beer would. But whatever.
Do you miss bread?
Not really. Instead of carbo-bombing before dinner out, I just eat nothing.
Do you miss pizza?
I wouldn’t waste my own family for a real, high-quality pizza that I could eat all on my own without any negative consequences, but I would waste your family for one, if that explains it at all.
Wait, can you eat rice?
Yes. Rice is not wheat.
Wait, can you eat couscous?
No. Couscous is just pasta.
Wait, can you eat soba noodles?
Yes. Soba is made from buckwheat, which actually isn’t wheat at all, though you still have to check the package to make sure that wheat was not added in.
Wait, can you eat polenta?
Yes. Polenta is made from corn.
Wait, can you eat whole-wheat bread?
Are you fucking kidding me? Stop.
Wait, what about bread pudding?
...
Wait, can you eat pineapples?
I don’t think you know anything about food.
Can you eat fiberglass?
No.
Can I eat fiberglass?
You know what? Only one way to find out.
Wait, if I cook this in a pan that I used to make Amish friendship bread in, will you die?
[gets up to leave]
Aren’t you just doing this for attention?
No. It’s a real pain in the ass — or wherever else the rash wants to be. And I fucking dread having to ask questions about wheat content at restaurants, because I know the server is thinking, “Oh, this guy probably isn’t actually allergic. He’s probably just a jerkhole.” I have to be picky about restaurants I eat at now, to the point that I don’t think I could ever date a vegetarian, just because our eatery options would be too few. But in the end, this is easier than, say, having to give up a food product I love more, such as fruits or vegetables, and it’s a little more elegant than walking around with the rash.
Hey, some of us were thinking about getting pizza and some beers after work.
Cool, I’ll just have one of those iceberg lettuce salads that pizzerias are so famous for. And a Fanta.
Here, I got you a muffin made out of almonds and tapioca and mashed up flax seeds.
You really shouldn’t have.
If you’d like to read more about wheat on my blog, for some reason, I have literally one other post that would be of interest, and it’s about a Greek grain goddess named Spermo. No, really.
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| wheatless |
I suppose. This city does have a lot of people who avoid gluten for other reasons — they think it’s inherently unhealthy or that it will make them lose weigh to cut wheat out of their diet. I’m not doing it for those reasons. I’m doing it a cuz that rash I mentioned.
Wouldn’t you be kind of screwed if you had moved to, say, Omaha?
For this and so many other reasons, yes.
I’ve read about celiac disease. It affects a much smaller portion of the population than people think, and what you’re describing doesn’t sound like celiac disease. Why are you being such a stupid faker?
First off, you’re a terrible person. Second, I don’t have celiac disease, at least according to the way I have understood that disorder. I suppose you could say that I have a gluten sensitivity, but I think it’s more accurate and much clearer to simply explain that if I eat wheat products, I get a rash, and I’d rather not eat bread than be Scabbly the Rash Man. It’s that simple.
Could it be something else in those products that’s causing the rash?
Yes, totally. The process of going to doctor after doctor was an ordeal, and since not eating these products solves the problem, I’m just going to stick with it, regardless of whether it’s the wheat or something else that’s actually causing the rash.
What happens if you eat this piece of bread?
Jesus, get it out of my face. As near as I can tell, I will get a rash that’s more or less in proportion to how much wheatiness I eat.
What about gluten-free bread?
What about it?
Well, couldn’t you get by on gluten-free products?
Here’s the thing: In my opinion, gluten-free versions of typically gluten-full products suck, much in the same way that soy-based fake meats suck. These things aren’t meant to be sourdough or chorizo or whatever we’re trying to gussy them up as. You can kind of make it work, but the end product will always be an inferior substitute for the real thing. Essentially, I just don’t eat bread anymore. It’s not that hard.
Did you lose weight as a result of giving up all those wheat products?
Yes, but not for the reason you’re thinking. Essentially, I cut bread and pasta and pastries and beer out of my life. Those are things that make you fat. Because I just stopped consuming them altogether and didn’t replace them with gluten-free versions of them, I did lose weight. But people who simply switch to gluten-free foods probably would not. Gluten-free food is not inherently healthier, just more expensive. Also, in general, paying more attention to the composition of everything I eat has helped me make healthier food choices.
No beer, huh? Wait, didn’t you go to UCSB?
Yes, and I did consume a superhuman amount of beer there without any negative skin conditions resulting.
What about gluten-free beer?
As someone far pithier than I once put it, gluten-free beer tastes like someone came in a mud puddle.
Oh.
Yes. I drink wine now.
Do you miss beer though?
Yes. A room-temperature glass of red wine doesn’t really quench your thirst after a long day of yard work the way a cold beer would. But whatever.
Do you miss bread?
Not really. Instead of carbo-bombing before dinner out, I just eat nothing.
Do you miss pizza?
I wouldn’t waste my own family for a real, high-quality pizza that I could eat all on my own without any negative consequences, but I would waste your family for one, if that explains it at all.
Wait, can you eat rice?
Yes. Rice is not wheat.
Wait, can you eat couscous?
No. Couscous is just pasta.
Wait, can you eat soba noodles?
Yes. Soba is made from buckwheat, which actually isn’t wheat at all, though you still have to check the package to make sure that wheat was not added in.
Wait, can you eat polenta?
Yes. Polenta is made from corn.
Wait, can you eat whole-wheat bread?
Are you fucking kidding me? Stop.
Wait, what about bread pudding?
...
Wait, can you eat pineapples?
I don’t think you know anything about food.
Can you eat fiberglass?
No.
Can I eat fiberglass?
You know what? Only one way to find out.
Wait, if I cook this in a pan that I used to make Amish friendship bread in, will you die?
[gets up to leave]
Aren’t you just doing this for attention?
No. It’s a real pain in the ass — or wherever else the rash wants to be. And I fucking dread having to ask questions about wheat content at restaurants, because I know the server is thinking, “Oh, this guy probably isn’t actually allergic. He’s probably just a jerkhole.” I have to be picky about restaurants I eat at now, to the point that I don’t think I could ever date a vegetarian, just because our eatery options would be too few. But in the end, this is easier than, say, having to give up a food product I love more, such as fruits or vegetables, and it’s a little more elegant than walking around with the rash.
Hey, some of us were thinking about getting pizza and some beers after work.
Cool, I’ll just have one of those iceberg lettuce salads that pizzerias are so famous for. And a Fanta.
Here, I got you a muffin made out of almonds and tapioca and mashed up flax seeds.
You really shouldn’t have.
 |
| the wicked witch of the midwest, basically (via) |
If you’d like to read more about wheat on my blog, for some reason, I have literally one other post that would be of interest, and it’s about a Greek grain goddess named Spermo. No, really.
Thursday, September 5, 2013
On Bukkake
I know, I know — that post title, right? How dare I title something I wrote with that when Joyce Carol Oates' On Bukkake remains the definitive text on the subject?
Know that I'm only writing this to inform you of one simple but nonetheless notable fact: the word bukkake may not always mean what you think. Now if bukkake doesn't mean anything to you, please do not Google it, especially if you're at your work computer. Please also do not inquire about the subject at your local library. Also, please don't go to the Wikipedia page for bukkake, because it's somehow even worse to see the whole explosive process explained in matter-of-fact language and diagrams. It's just one of those things you don't know about until you do, at which point you can never forget what it means and you occasionally wonder, "Wait, how did I learn what bukkake was?"
The word calls to mind some rather vivid imagery, too, and that's what makes the other meaning so strange: It's food — udon, in fact. And I know because a coworker recently wrote about ordering bukkake udon from a Japanese restaurant in Los Angeles's Little Tokyo.
Here's the photo:
Surprisingly tame, right? Compared to how you might have imagined bukkake udon, this looks rather savory, I think. (And that's savory in the sense of polite behavior, though I imagine it also tasted savory.) So why must this dish share its name with a sex act? Per my understanding, it's unlike the majority of udon dishes — which arrive soup-style, with the noodles floating in broth — in that the diner is served the noodles and topping and then required to pour the broth-like sauce over it immediately before eating. (Do I have that right? Please straighten out my understanding of the various bukkakes if not.) In case that doesn't make the connection clear enough, know that the word bukkake means "the act of splashing" in Japanese and comes from the verb bukkakeru, "to splash with (a liquid rudely)." Fair warning: that link may well be NSFW, depending on whether you work for squares.
So there you go. Now you know. May all your future bukkakes be the kind you ordered. Just be specific with your server.
Food written about in an unappetizing fashion, previously:
Know that I'm only writing this to inform you of one simple but nonetheless notable fact: the word bukkake may not always mean what you think. Now if bukkake doesn't mean anything to you, please do not Google it, especially if you're at your work computer. Please also do not inquire about the subject at your local library. Also, please don't go to the Wikipedia page for bukkake, because it's somehow even worse to see the whole explosive process explained in matter-of-fact language and diagrams. It's just one of those things you don't know about until you do, at which point you can never forget what it means and you occasionally wonder, "Wait, how did I learn what bukkake was?"
The word calls to mind some rather vivid imagery, too, and that's what makes the other meaning so strange: It's food — udon, in fact. And I know because a coworker recently wrote about ordering bukkake udon from a Japanese restaurant in Los Angeles's Little Tokyo.
Here's the photo:
 |
| courtesy kcet food |
So there you go. Now you know. May all your future bukkakes be the kind you ordered. Just be specific with your server.
Food written about in an unappetizing fashion, previously:
Thursday, May 9, 2013
The Yogurt of Last Resort
My friend posted on Facebook a photo of an Activia flavor that I’d wager most people don’t know about: Activia Prune.
It’s such a loaded product — no pun intended — and I can’t decide what eating Activia Prune in public says about you as a person. Some options:
 |
| via twyla johnson |
- “Why yes, in fact, I am staying in tonight and maybe the whole weekend.”
- “I done ate something bad, and I want it out of my body yesterday.”
- “I have damaged my digestive system irreparably, and I’m eating this in the breakroom where everyone can see me because I really want you to ask what I did. Go on. I dare you.”
- “The guy in the apartment next door knows a lot about my intimate life.”
- “I’m a busy person. I don’t fuck around.”
- “I live on the edge.”
- “I don’t understand how prunes work.”
- “I lack shame.”
- “Essentially I’m donating my body to science.”
- “Can’t talk not, because I need to go catch a cross-state bus, and also I like being the center of attention and also I create stories wherever I go.”
- “You know how some people can only take maximum strength-level painkillers? Well, I’m the that of this.”
- “Goodbye, internal organs!”
Thursday, May 2, 2013
In Which Drew Searches for Frozen Fruit
Since I moved out of Brentwood and away from the one-block radius of a Whole Foods, I rarely have any good grocery store stories nowadays. But oh hey, look: here’s one that happened today.
Now, a few notes:
Me: “Where can I find frozen fruit?”And though I didn’t think I did, sure enough this kid was right: The frozen fruit case at the Los Feliz Albertson’s is labeled “toppings.” I’d imagine other ones are too.
Grocery store employee: “We don’t have that.”
Me: “You don’t have fruit that's frozen in bags?”
Grocery store employee: “Oh, you mean toppings.”
Now, a few notes:
- The frozen fruit wasn’t located near the frozen vegetables but with the other desserts.
- He didn’t say it cheerfully, in the context of “Oh, you silly goose. We actually put those in the ‘toppings’ section here!” He said it like “You fucking dumbfuck. Why would you ask about this product in such a ridiculous, roundabout manner when any sane person would have just asked for the toppings case. Fuck.” He said it as if I had asked him, in a the voice of a bespectacled time-traveller from Victorian England, “Good sir, can you please direct me toward the whereabouts of some bottles of fermented grape juice. We’re dining with the Sultan and his concubines tonight, and they do so love the fermented juice of the Vitis berries.”
- Wait, people know that you can eat frozen fruit out of the context of sundaes, right? Like, we haven’t come to the point that we as a nation don’t think of it just as the cold version of the stuff that grows on trees but actually supplementary material for ice cream, right? But seriously — right?
- They only had berries, peaches and cherries. Is that normal? Why the hell don’t we freeze apples?
- This is why you’re fat.
- If they change the name of the juice section to “mixers,” I’m moving to the forest.
Sunday, April 14, 2013
The Decidedly Non-Sexual Fruits of Passion
On a hike yesterday, we spotted an extraterrestrial communications antenna that later turned out to be a passion flower — the blossom on the plant that gives us passion fruit.
Coupled with the fact that the passion fruit comes from the tropics, the flower’s ostentatious weirdness makes it easy to think of the passion in question as being sexual or at least romantic — the kind of emotion you find in those places where middle-aged black ladies go to get their grooves back. This purple-fringed beauty is the plant’s genitals, after all, and my friend even pointed out that “passion fruit” doesn’t sound like it’s an actual, organic product. No, it sounds like a flavor derived in a lab, some the same guys in white coats who invented blue raspberry or wintermint or that unplaceable snow cone flavor we call “Hawaiian.” The plant is real, however, but the dreamy, romantic notions we might today make with passion fruit are way off the park when you consider how the plant got its name. It’s the other passion — the Passion of the Christ passion, in fact.
From Wikipedia:
In case you’re wondering how passion, as a word, got mixed up both in Christ’s torment and bodice-ripping, blame the martyrs. It originally came from the Latin patior — “to suffer,” in the sense of patients and patience. According to Etymonline, the meaning drifted from “torment of God’s son” to “strong emotion” when Christian conviction led martyrs to similar abusive treatment, and now we just use passionate more or less to mean “totally DTF.” I like that passion (romantic sense) retains the element of suffering, even if on a buried etymological level, since love and hardship so often go hand-in-hand, but at the same time it’s hard not to look at the evolution of meaning and say, “Damn, we really ruined that word.”
Coupled with the fact that the passion fruit comes from the tropics, the flower’s ostentatious weirdness makes it easy to think of the passion in question as being sexual or at least romantic — the kind of emotion you find in those places where middle-aged black ladies go to get their grooves back. This purple-fringed beauty is the plant’s genitals, after all, and my friend even pointed out that “passion fruit” doesn’t sound like it’s an actual, organic product. No, it sounds like a flavor derived in a lab, some the same guys in white coats who invented blue raspberry or wintermint or that unplaceable snow cone flavor we call “Hawaiian.” The plant is real, however, but the dreamy, romantic notions we might today make with passion fruit are way off the park when you consider how the plant got its name. It’s the other passion — the Passion of the Christ passion, in fact.
From Wikipedia:
The name was given by Spanish missionaries to South America as an expository aid while trying to convert the indigenous inhabitants to Christianity. One ingenious expository device was using parallels between the parts of this common South American flower and elements of the account of the torture (the Passion) of Christ prior to his crucifixion. The missionaries said that:So the next time you dig into the deep magenta of a passion fruit sorbet following a candle-lit Valentine’s Day dinner, don’t think about engorged genitals; think about poor Jim Caviezel being tormented and then executed by Roman soldiers. (And also please don’t think too much about the whole sepal thing and why you’re pulling both Judas and Peter from the traditional group of twelve.)
- The three stigmas reflect the three nails in Jesus‘s hands and feet
- The threads of the passion flower resemble the crown of thorns
- The vine’s tendrils are likened to the whips
- The five anthers represented the five wounds
- The ten petals and sepals regarded to resemble the Apostles (excluding Judas and Peter)
- The purple petals representing the purple robe used to mock Jesus’ claim to kingship
In case you’re wondering how passion, as a word, got mixed up both in Christ’s torment and bodice-ripping, blame the martyrs. It originally came from the Latin patior — “to suffer,” in the sense of patients and patience. According to Etymonline, the meaning drifted from “torment of God’s son” to “strong emotion” when Christian conviction led martyrs to similar abusive treatment, and now we just use passionate more or less to mean “totally DTF.” I like that passion (romantic sense) retains the element of suffering, even if on a buried etymological level, since love and hardship so often go hand-in-hand, but at the same time it’s hard not to look at the evolution of meaning and say, “Damn, we really ruined that word.”
Sunday, February 17, 2013
I Swear to Betty Crocker
You know that thing where you’re reading Wikipedia and you start seeing some weird stuff and then you’re like “Oh, see, someone just screwed up the page as a joke and I saw it before the editors came and cleaned it up. Mary Todd Lincoln didn’t actually pepper her speech with the word bajingo.” Well, I wish I could say that this was the case for the Wikipedia page on Etta Candy, Wonder Woman’s best friend. It is not. Someone actually wrote all of it with the aim of dispensing accurate information.
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| via |
Throughout her adventures with Wonder Woman she is known for her moxie, her love of candy, and for her trademark call “Woo! Woo!” — a catch-phrase derived, in part, from exclamations associated with comic actor Hugh Herbert.It remains to be seen how black Etta Candy feels about her trademark lumpiness. I hope black Etta Candy’s family still owns the dude ranch. By the way, had that horrible David E. Kelley Wonder Woman TV show become a thing, the role of Etta would have been played by Tracie Thoms.
Other familiar characteristics included her junky car nicknamed Esmerelda and a variety of sassy interjections, such as “For the love of chocolate!”
Her father, Hard Candy, and mother, Sugar Candy, lived on the Bar-L Ranch in Brazos County, Texas, which provided the setting for cowboy-themed adventures.
Holiday College was the setting for science-driven stories and it was at nearby Starvard (portmanteau of Stanford and Harvard), where her boyfriend, the gangly but very loving Oscar Sweetgulper, studied.
She was shown to be brave and even stormed a Nazi concentration camp armed with nothing but a box of candy to rescue captured children.
She was aware of her weight but never let it bother her.
[In DC’s Silver and Bronze ages,] she was still portrayed as insecure and weight-conscious, and although she no longer said “for the love of chocolate,” she was known to swear by Betty Crocker.
When Etta finally collapsed due to a lack of food in front of Wonder Woman while trying on wedding gowns, Diana advised her to take better care of herself and maintain a sensible diet. Since that time Etta has gained her original weight back.
She is now African American and depicted as young and ambitious.
To conclude, here is one more depiction of Etta Candy. See if you can count how many things are wrong with it.
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| via |
Comic book characters, previously:
Monday, December 10, 2012
Things I Did Not Purchase While in New Zealand
(A round-up.)
Ham-and-tongue-flavored spread, because not only would ham and non-animal-specified tongue make for a nasty flavor combination but also this isn’t even ham and tongue. This is just the flavor of ham and tongue. So what is the spread, exactly? That’s a great fucking question.
New Zealand’s weirdly personalized Coke, which encouraged me to drink with a bunch of people I don’t know. The biggest strike, however? No “Share a Coke with Drew.” Sure, there’s “Share a Coke with Meena” — Meena! — but not Drew.
“Come on, kids — don’t you want to eat Santa’s legs?”
No joke here. I just don’t understand the tagline. Is “See how it runs” supposed to underscore that the salt pours smoothly out of the container? Is that Cerebos table salt’s greatest virtue — pourability? And is the kid pouring salt on a frog?
“Come on, kids — suck on something gay!”
If I were an inanimate human-shaped object and not a real human, I’d look less self-satisfied.
Having visited New Zealand since childhood, I’m heartened to see that it’s developed a real national culture to rival that of the other colonies.
I suppose the existence of a New Zealand pig-hunting magazine called More-Pork is weird enough, but it gets even weirder when you consider that there’s a native New Zealand owl called the morepork. So it’s a pig-hunting magazine whose name is a pun on a native animal that is not a pig. Just baffling, really.
What I hope happened is that this dog belongs to the owner of the company, and this is the best picture they could get, because the owner has not realized that his beloved canine is a criminally insane monster who only wants to sink his teeth into soft child-meat. Because if that’s not the case, then it’s just unknowable how anyone would have okayed this photo for the box design.
I pray he does not haunt your dreams as he does mine.
Bovil, because I presumed it tasted about as good as it sounds.
Ham-and-tongue-flavored spread, because not only would ham and non-animal-specified tongue make for a nasty flavor combination but also this isn’t even ham and tongue. This is just the flavor of ham and tongue. So what is the spread, exactly? That’s a great fucking question.
New Zealand’s weirdly personalized Coke, which encouraged me to drink with a bunch of people I don’t know. The biggest strike, however? No “Share a Coke with Drew.” Sure, there’s “Share a Coke with Meena” — Meena! — but not Drew.
“Come on, kids — don’t you want to eat Santa’s legs?”
No joke here. I just don’t understand the tagline. Is “See how it runs” supposed to underscore that the salt pours smoothly out of the container? Is that Cerebos table salt’s greatest virtue — pourability? And is the kid pouring salt on a frog?
“Come on, kids — suck on something gay!”
If I were an inanimate human-shaped object and not a real human, I’d look less self-satisfied.
Having visited New Zealand since childhood, I’m heartened to see that it’s developed a real national culture to rival that of the other colonies.
I suppose the existence of a New Zealand pig-hunting magazine called More-Pork is weird enough, but it gets even weirder when you consider that there’s a native New Zealand owl called the morepork. So it’s a pig-hunting magazine whose name is a pun on a native animal that is not a pig. Just baffling, really.
What I hope happened is that this dog belongs to the owner of the company, and this is the best picture they could get, because the owner has not realized that his beloved canine is a criminally insane monster who only wants to sink his teeth into soft child-meat. Because if that’s not the case, then it’s just unknowable how anyone would have okayed this photo for the box design.
I pray he does not haunt your dreams as he does mine.
Sunday, November 4, 2012
The Bacon of Grief
We all deal with adversity in our own ways — usually by putting something into our bodies, occasionally by taking something out of our bodies and in certain cases by putting something into our bodies and then quickly out and then in and out again and again until the grief is forgotten, at least temporarily.
Here’s a sanitized alternative, regardless of how it might sound.
I’ve used a lower-case “K” and offered what seems like a reasonable English pronunciation simply because this is a fun word to say and it names a familiar concept for which we have no single, tidy word. We should steal it. Kummerspeck comes from the German Kummer, “grief,” and Speck, “lard.” (Note: I previously translated Kummerspeck as “grief bacon,” but Speck apparently means “lard” in German, though it can refer to bacon-like foods in other languages.) We actually use speck in English to refer to a Tyrolese variety of juniper-cured ham, which would sound delicious even if I wasn’t sliding down the garbage chute of misery
If you’ve happened across this word before and you’re neither German and nor suppressing your emotions with a wad of cheesecake, then you’ve probably seen it on those omnipresent listicles that have headlines like “X Crazy Words Other Languages Have!” They are plentiful, to say the least, but I can’t complain, because they’ve generated a few of the words I’ve featured here, including culaccino and slampatado, both of which are as fun to say as kummerspeck is.
Here’s a sanitized alternative, regardless of how it might sound.
kummerspeck (KUM-er-speck) — noun: excess weight gained due to emotional eating.Look, I even found a visual aid. Is this not the best-ever stock photo for illustrating this concept? Thank the scary .ru website that tried to infect my computer!
I’ve used a lower-case “K” and offered what seems like a reasonable English pronunciation simply because this is a fun word to say and it names a familiar concept for which we have no single, tidy word. We should steal it. Kummerspeck comes from the German Kummer, “grief,” and Speck, “lard.” (Note: I previously translated Kummerspeck as “grief bacon,” but Speck apparently means “lard” in German, though it can refer to bacon-like foods in other languages.) We actually use speck in English to refer to a Tyrolese variety of juniper-cured ham, which would sound delicious even if I wasn’t sliding down the garbage chute of misery
If you’ve happened across this word before and you’re neither German and nor suppressing your emotions with a wad of cheesecake, then you’ve probably seen it on those omnipresent listicles that have headlines like “X Crazy Words Other Languages Have!” They are plentiful, to say the least, but I can’t complain, because they’ve generated a few of the words I’ve featured here, including culaccino and slampatado, both of which are as fun to say as kummerspeck is.
Previous words of the week after the jump.
Thursday, October 11, 2012
This Lemon Chicken Has Something to Say
I have a chicken recipe.
This is a sentence I’d never thought I’d say, because for so long I felt like I couldn’t cook. But the last time I visited New York, I tried some leftover chicken that my friend Kristen had made using this recipe. It was no mere lemon chicken; it was Meyer lemon chicken, the difference between Meyer lemons and regular lemons being along the same lines as that between a Rolls Royce and a shopping cart that you sit in and push down the street with a pole. This recipe got me to not only cook my first-ever whole chicken but also to turn that bird into food that tasted good. In fact, I was so pleased with my most recent iteration of this dish that I photographed it, and I’m not usually one to photograph what I cook.
(It’s a little obscene, yes, but cram your bottom full of lemon wedges, half a garlic head and a thyme bouquet and then sit there with splayed legs and see how you look.)
And I’ve since recommended the dish to anyone needing a dish that seemed special, that suggested a higher degree of skill than he or she actually possessed.
Since my friend Dina is shambling toward matrimony, I passed it along to her, so her husband won’t abandon her once he realizes her wifely skills are lacking. That suggestion resulted in the following GChatted conversion today.
This is a sentence I’d never thought I’d say, because for so long I felt like I couldn’t cook. But the last time I visited New York, I tried some leftover chicken that my friend Kristen had made using this recipe. It was no mere lemon chicken; it was Meyer lemon chicken, the difference between Meyer lemons and regular lemons being along the same lines as that between a Rolls Royce and a shopping cart that you sit in and push down the street with a pole. This recipe got me to not only cook my first-ever whole chicken but also to turn that bird into food that tasted good. In fact, I was so pleased with my most recent iteration of this dish that I photographed it, and I’m not usually one to photograph what I cook.
And I’ve since recommended the dish to anyone needing a dish that seemed special, that suggested a higher degree of skill than he or she actually possessed.
Since my friend Dina is shambling toward matrimony, I passed it along to her, so her husband won’t abandon her once he realizes her wifely skills are lacking. That suggestion resulted in the following GChatted conversion today.
Dina: interesting factAnd I couldn’t be happier than the chicken recipe continues to entwine itself into my life. Soon we will be one.
i was trying to clean chicken juices off my keyboard yesterday
after attempting to make your lemon chicken
after i finished cleaning i looked at what i had accidentally typoed
and several times i wrote "drewsdrewsdrews"
because that is where the chicken was spattered
and now i know i can write your name by rubbing my finger in a circle
which sounds terrible
and that is all
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Apricots, Loquats, Kumquats and at Least Two Other Fruits
The assumption: The words loquat, kumquat and apricot all refer to small fruits. The end syllables must share an etymological connection. Right?
Nope. But arriving at that answer was educational. You know, as reading the extracurriculars often are.
According to Etymonline, the syllable in loquat and kumquat is the same, even though the former is a stonefruit and the latter a citrus. (Linguistics, I guess, don’t care about no fruit breedin’ or nothing.) In Cantonese, kwat means “orange” — the fruit, presumably, and not the color, though loquats and kumquats are similar shades of yellowish-orange. Kumquat, in fact, means “golden orange.” Loquat, however, means “rush orange,” and I’m assuming that “rush” isn’t in the sense of hurrying but rather the grassy kind of plants in which the princess found Baby Moses, though not being present at the fruit-naming ceremony, I can’t be sure. Cantonese-speakers, what say you?
So while those two words from the Sino-Tibetan language family, apricot is Indo-European. However, the path it took to the form we know now is long and meandering. Etymonline lays it out: It entered English in the 1550s as abrecock, which came from the Catalan abercoc, which is related to the Portuguese albricoque, which in turn came from the Arabic al-birquq, which came from the Byzantine Greek berikokkia, which finally goes back to the Latin malum precoquum, which means “early-ripening fruit” on account of ancient peoples thinking it was an type of peach that got ripe sooner than others. And that precoquum also gives us the word precocious. See? Meandering — from Point A to Point B like a drunk guy trying to find a bathroom.
Two random notes, however: First, in looking up apricot, I found the Etymonline entry for gingko, which is a Japanese word drawn from the Chinese ying-hing, “silver apricot.” Second, the same search also pulled up aubergine, the fancy British name for eggplant, which, as you may know, is a fascination of mine on account of them being nasty. Of the two etymologies provided, one says that aubergine — a diminutive of auberge, “a kind of peach” — comes from the Spanish alberchigo, which also means “apricot.”
Cots and quats, I tell you.
Nope. But arriving at that answer was educational. You know, as reading the extracurriculars often are.
According to Etymonline, the syllable in loquat and kumquat is the same, even though the former is a stonefruit and the latter a citrus. (Linguistics, I guess, don’t care about no fruit breedin’ or nothing.) In Cantonese, kwat means “orange” — the fruit, presumably, and not the color, though loquats and kumquats are similar shades of yellowish-orange. Kumquat, in fact, means “golden orange.” Loquat, however, means “rush orange,” and I’m assuming that “rush” isn’t in the sense of hurrying but rather the grassy kind of plants in which the princess found Baby Moses, though not being present at the fruit-naming ceremony, I can’t be sure. Cantonese-speakers, what say you?
So while those two words from the Sino-Tibetan language family, apricot is Indo-European. However, the path it took to the form we know now is long and meandering. Etymonline lays it out: It entered English in the 1550s as abrecock, which came from the Catalan abercoc, which is related to the Portuguese albricoque, which in turn came from the Arabic al-birquq, which came from the Byzantine Greek berikokkia, which finally goes back to the Latin malum precoquum, which means “early-ripening fruit” on account of ancient peoples thinking it was an type of peach that got ripe sooner than others. And that precoquum also gives us the word precocious. See? Meandering — from Point A to Point B like a drunk guy trying to find a bathroom.
Two random notes, however: First, in looking up apricot, I found the Etymonline entry for gingko, which is a Japanese word drawn from the Chinese ying-hing, “silver apricot.” Second, the same search also pulled up aubergine, the fancy British name for eggplant, which, as you may know, is a fascination of mine on account of them being nasty. Of the two etymologies provided, one says that aubergine — a diminutive of auberge, “a kind of peach” — comes from the Spanish alberchigo, which also means “apricot.”
Cots and quats, I tell you.
Sunday, August 26, 2012
Does Nintendo Hate Eggplants?
Though literally late to the game, I’m playing through Nintendo’s new Kid Icarus. As I get older, I forget sometimes how much I enjoy playing video games, so it’s nice to have one to unwind. And it’s especially fun to see Nintendo’s take on characters that I first met more than twenty years ago and largely hadn’t seen since.
This includes the Eggplant Wizard.
For those who never played the original NES Kid Icarus, the Eggplant Wizard was a recurring enemy that attacked by transforming the hero, Pit, into an eggplant with legs. Eggplants not being known for their nimbleness or courage, an eggplantified Pit had little recourse aside from jumping about and trying to dodge the sharper-clawed monsters coming at him. In Kid Icarus: Uprising, the Eggplant Wizard returns, looking a bit more polished than he did back in the day, but ultimately being every bit as annoying.
In fact, there’s even a Tempura Wizard that will transform Pit into a tempura shrimp on legs and then try to eat him, but that’s a different story, to be told in my nightmares. No, this article is about eggplants. People who never played Kid Icarus might have known the Eggplant Wizard anyway because he was a featured villain on Captain N: The Game Master, the mostly terrible Saturday morning cartoon series that featured characters from NES-era video games.
The series placed the wizard alongside actual big bads — like King Hippo from Punch-Out!! and the Mother Brain from Metroid — as if he were more than a generic annoyance, but that’s hardly the weirdest creative made by a show that tried to promote the Game Boy by introducing a sentient, stretchable Game Boy as a character. But the Eggplant Wizard’s presence on Captain N probably marks the highest-profile moment for aubergine in a video game-related medium.
But here’s the weird part: There’s kind of a history of Nintendo featuring evil eggplants. I’m not the only one to notice the weird preponderance of eggplants in video games. The website Sydlexia actually features a whole history of the eggplant on the Nintendo Entertainment System. That list begins with Ice Climber, a vertically scrolling title where your Eskimo heroes can collect various produce items for bonus points, Pac-Man-style.
It’s in Wrecking Crew, released six months after Ice Climber, that the eggplants turn evil. In this quasi-Mario Bros. spinoff, Mario has to contend with three headaches: ambulatory wrenches, a burly, Bluto-esque foreman, and the Eggplant Men.
As far as Nintendo-produced games go, Sydlexia’s list ends with Kid Icarus, which came out in 1986. A handful of third party games feature eggplants too, however, sometimes in a negative context — the very Mario-like Adventure Island games feature it as an anti-power-up that saps your strength and slows the music down — and sometimes in a positive one — the princess in Kickle Cubicle has a guard of eggplant retainers. I’ll leave it up to you how to assess the eggplants in Princess Tomato in Salad Kingdom, which are a sexy anthropomorphic barmaid and a Fidel Castro parody, respectively. But after sorting through the extensive files my brain keeps on useless video game knowledge, I can think of two more recent, but less-than-pleasant Nintendo eggplants.
In Wario Land 4, the first boss is a doll-toting toddler eggplant that gets a lot less cute once you’ve roughed her up a few times.
In one of the Mario baseball games, Waluigi — who himself is eggplant-colored, even if it’s Wario who’s eggplant-shaped — has a power-up called the Whiskered Eggplant. It’s an eggplant with a mustache, and yes, “eggplant with a moustache” could essentially be a description for Waluigi himself.
And then there’s Smash Bros. Brawl, where the story mode features an army of little foot soldiers that, to me, looked so much like the Eggplant Men from Wrecking Crew that I just assumed they were. Apparently they’re not, but you have to admit, the resemblance is really strong, associated purple clouds and all.
And truly, what could be more harrowing than facing down an army of eggplants bent on world domination?
A better question: What gives?
Well, it’s possible I just forgot all the positive depictions of eggplants I’ve ever seen in a video game, and I’m twisting Nintendo’s gallery of products to reflect my own anti-eggplant agenda. (It’s possible. I don’t actually care for eggplant.) Or I could have just not played the majority of pro-eggplant games out there. However, it’s also possible that the eggplant might be more commonplace in Japan than it is here in the U.S., and that fact’s being reflected in the games that Japan makes. But if that’s the case, maybe the eggplant carries certain connotations in Japan that are inspiring video game designers to make it evil. I looked. I found next to nothing, aside from an old wives’ tale about eggplants causing infertility in newly married woman.
Maybe it’s just that someone at Nintendo regards eggplants the same way I do — purple and gross?
This includes the Eggplant Wizard.
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But here’s the weird part: There’s kind of a history of Nintendo featuring evil eggplants. I’m not the only one to notice the weird preponderance of eggplants in video games. The website Sydlexia actually features a whole history of the eggplant on the Nintendo Entertainment System. That list begins with Ice Climber, a vertically scrolling title where your Eskimo heroes can collect various produce items for bonus points, Pac-Man-style.
It’s in Wrecking Crew, released six months after Ice Climber, that the eggplants turn evil. In this quasi-Mario Bros. spinoff, Mario has to contend with three headaches: ambulatory wrenches, a burly, Bluto-esque foreman, and the Eggplant Men.
As far as Nintendo-produced games go, Sydlexia’s list ends with Kid Icarus, which came out in 1986. A handful of third party games feature eggplants too, however, sometimes in a negative context — the very Mario-like Adventure Island games feature it as an anti-power-up that saps your strength and slows the music down — and sometimes in a positive one — the princess in Kickle Cubicle has a guard of eggplant retainers. I’ll leave it up to you how to assess the eggplants in Princess Tomato in Salad Kingdom, which are a sexy anthropomorphic barmaid and a Fidel Castro parody, respectively. But after sorting through the extensive files my brain keeps on useless video game knowledge, I can think of two more recent, but less-than-pleasant Nintendo eggplants.
In Wario Land 4, the first boss is a doll-toting toddler eggplant that gets a lot less cute once you’ve roughed her up a few times.
In one of the Mario baseball games, Waluigi — who himself is eggplant-colored, even if it’s Wario who’s eggplant-shaped — has a power-up called the Whiskered Eggplant. It’s an eggplant with a mustache, and yes, “eggplant with a moustache” could essentially be a description for Waluigi himself.
And then there’s Smash Bros. Brawl, where the story mode features an army of little foot soldiers that, to me, looked so much like the Eggplant Men from Wrecking Crew that I just assumed they were. Apparently they’re not, but you have to admit, the resemblance is really strong, associated purple clouds and all.
And truly, what could be more harrowing than facing down an army of eggplants bent on world domination?
A better question: What gives?
Well, it’s possible I just forgot all the positive depictions of eggplants I’ve ever seen in a video game, and I’m twisting Nintendo’s gallery of products to reflect my own anti-eggplant agenda. (It’s possible. I don’t actually care for eggplant.) Or I could have just not played the majority of pro-eggplant games out there. However, it’s also possible that the eggplant might be more commonplace in Japan than it is here in the U.S., and that fact’s being reflected in the games that Japan makes. But if that’s the case, maybe the eggplant carries certain connotations in Japan that are inspiring video game designers to make it evil. I looked. I found next to nothing, aside from an old wives’ tale about eggplants causing infertility in newly married woman.
Maybe it’s just that someone at Nintendo regards eggplants the same way I do — purple and gross?
Saturday, August 25, 2012
Of Kebab and Helicopters
The setup: There’s now a doner kebab place up the street from me, and until I looked it up, I didn’t know what doner kebab was aside from a vaguely meat-related thing. Spoiler: It’s not free, donated meat. Probably for the best.
The background: I like it when words get broken up in a way that’s different than how they originally came together. Like helicopter. If you asked most people to guess what two word parts formed helicopter, they’d probably say “Why are you talking to me about word parts? You’re ruining my cocktail party.” But if you pinballed off everyone else at the gathering, you might eventually end up talking to the second-most boring person there, and, lacking other options, he or she’d probably guess that helicopter was formed by the word parts heli, which we use today in words like helipad, and copter, which is actually a word on its own today. But that’s not actually how the word formed: it’s helico — from the Greek word for “spiral,” helix — plus pter — from the Greek word for “wing,” pteron, as in pterodactyl. And while that makes sense, it’s just not what most people would guess.
The tasty nugget of knowledge: The word kebab works in a similar way, I learned today. If you were, say, roasting vegetables on a barbecue, you might not hesitate to call them kebabs. In fact, in preparing to cook them, you might explain that you were going to stick some vegetables on a kebab and throw them on the barbecue. That’s not what kebab meant in the past, however: According to Etymonline, shish kebab goes back to a Turkish word siskebabp, with the sis meaning “skewer” and kebap meaning “roast meat.” Somewhere along the line, Americans switched it and decided that the kebab was the pointy thing and the sish was the delicious thing, and that thinking exists even though we have doner kebab — the Turkish version of what might be called gyros in a Greek place — being all delicious and meaty but lacking a pointy component in spite of that kebab being there.
One more thing: Doner means “turning,” which makes sense if you’ve ever seen the meat being sliced off an endlessly rotating spit. But I feel like a lot of people don’t put it together that gyro means the same thing, and gyro comes from the same Greek word that gives us gyrate and gyre. Doy. Why didn’t I ever realize that?
The background: I like it when words get broken up in a way that’s different than how they originally came together. Like helicopter. If you asked most people to guess what two word parts formed helicopter, they’d probably say “Why are you talking to me about word parts? You’re ruining my cocktail party.” But if you pinballed off everyone else at the gathering, you might eventually end up talking to the second-most boring person there, and, lacking other options, he or she’d probably guess that helicopter was formed by the word parts heli, which we use today in words like helipad, and copter, which is actually a word on its own today. But that’s not actually how the word formed: it’s helico — from the Greek word for “spiral,” helix — plus pter — from the Greek word for “wing,” pteron, as in pterodactyl. And while that makes sense, it’s just not what most people would guess.
The tasty nugget of knowledge: The word kebab works in a similar way, I learned today. If you were, say, roasting vegetables on a barbecue, you might not hesitate to call them kebabs. In fact, in preparing to cook them, you might explain that you were going to stick some vegetables on a kebab and throw them on the barbecue. That’s not what kebab meant in the past, however: According to Etymonline, shish kebab goes back to a Turkish word siskebabp, with the sis meaning “skewer” and kebap meaning “roast meat.” Somewhere along the line, Americans switched it and decided that the kebab was the pointy thing and the sish was the delicious thing, and that thinking exists even though we have doner kebab — the Turkish version of what might be called gyros in a Greek place — being all delicious and meaty but lacking a pointy component in spite of that kebab being there.
One more thing: Doner means “turning,” which makes sense if you’ve ever seen the meat being sliced off an endlessly rotating spit. But I feel like a lot of people don’t put it together that gyro means the same thing, and gyro comes from the same Greek word that gives us gyrate and gyre. Doy. Why didn’t I ever realize that?
Sunday, July 29, 2012
My Only Regret Is Dying of Cheese Poisoning
Because if you’re in your final moments, your bowels pulsing with some bacterial fiesta, this makes for a fun word to scream.
The second part of tyrotoxism should make sense, but are you curious where we get that tyro from? It’s not apparently related to a previous word of the week, tyro. Instead, it comes from the Greek tyros, meaning cheese. Tyros actually figures into another major food name: butter. According to Etymonline, butter comes from the Greek boutyron, which may just be the word for butter plus bous, “cow.” So if that etymology is correct — we’re not sure it is — butter is just cow cheese. And that is neat.
Now, if you’ll allow it, I have thoughts about cheese and language that are unrelated to food poisoning.
Etymonline’s entry for cheese covers the non-food-related uses of the word and speculates that cheese’s use as a photo prompt word could have playtime associations that actually predate photography. A quote: “To make cheeses was a schoolgirls’ amusement (1835) of wheeling rapidly so one’s petticoats blew out in a circle then dropping down so they came to rest inflated and resembling a wheel of cheese.” And that’s just adorable. Secondly, our expression the big cheese comes has different etymology that the food word, which comes Old English and traces back to the Proto-Indo European root kwat-, “to ferment.” The big cheese, however, comes from the Urdu chiz, “thing,” which Britons picked up during their colonial period in that part of the world.
Doing nothing to change my perception that Moonraker is the worst James Bond movie and overall just a bad film, there’s a British insult word moonraker that refers to people from Wiltshire who were so stupid that they saw the moon’s reflection in a pond, thought it was cheese and tried to rake it out of the water. And that is also adorable, but for different reasons.
The weirdly named, inexplicably punctuated and deathly boring-sounding website English-Word Information offers a variety of words that, like tyrotoxism, use some form of the Greek root tryo, and holy hell, let me tell you that it’s not pleasant territory to cross into. Basically, if something seems cheese-like but is not actual cheese, the situation has taken a turn for the worst. Among the cheesy horrors on this list are tryemesis (“the vomiting of milk curds by an infant”), tyroid (a fun word that can mean either “necrotic” or just “cheeselike”), tyroma (a tumor that contains cheese-like material) and tyrophagus (a certain species of mites that live in flour or cheese and “cause grocer’s itch,” which no no no I just cannot even).
And finally, an alternate take on how one should pronounce tyrotoxism:
tyrotoxism (TAI-roh-TOCKS-izm) — noun: poisoning by cheese or some other dairy product.This is a handy word to know, given that we make cheese by doing something that we generally go out of our way to avoid: letting food spoil. Of course, we don’t just slide a pan of milk under the radiator and then have at it six months later. (Well, I don’t do that anymore.) No, it’s a very particular process of letting it go bad in a certain way. And in the end, we’ve got a little miracle — a chunk of tasty, isabelline food matter that we stick on a toothpick and eat at parties without considering the logistics of it all.
The second part of tyrotoxism should make sense, but are you curious where we get that tyro from? It’s not apparently related to a previous word of the week, tyro. Instead, it comes from the Greek tyros, meaning cheese. Tyros actually figures into another major food name: butter. According to Etymonline, butter comes from the Greek boutyron, which may just be the word for butter plus bous, “cow.” So if that etymology is correct — we’re not sure it is — butter is just cow cheese. And that is neat.
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| (modified from a photo by flickr user zooboing) |
Etymonline’s entry for cheese covers the non-food-related uses of the word and speculates that cheese’s use as a photo prompt word could have playtime associations that actually predate photography. A quote: “To make cheeses was a schoolgirls’ amusement (1835) of wheeling rapidly so one’s petticoats blew out in a circle then dropping down so they came to rest inflated and resembling a wheel of cheese.” And that’s just adorable. Secondly, our expression the big cheese comes has different etymology that the food word, which comes Old English and traces back to the Proto-Indo European root kwat-, “to ferment.” The big cheese, however, comes from the Urdu chiz, “thing,” which Britons picked up during their colonial period in that part of the world.
Doing nothing to change my perception that Moonraker is the worst James Bond movie and overall just a bad film, there’s a British insult word moonraker that refers to people from Wiltshire who were so stupid that they saw the moon’s reflection in a pond, thought it was cheese and tried to rake it out of the water. And that is also adorable, but for different reasons.
The weirdly named, inexplicably punctuated and deathly boring-sounding website English-Word Information offers a variety of words that, like tyrotoxism, use some form of the Greek root tryo, and holy hell, let me tell you that it’s not pleasant territory to cross into. Basically, if something seems cheese-like but is not actual cheese, the situation has taken a turn for the worst. Among the cheesy horrors on this list are tryemesis (“the vomiting of milk curds by an infant”), tyroid (a fun word that can mean either “necrotic” or just “cheeselike”), tyroma (a tumor that contains cheese-like material) and tyrophagus (a certain species of mites that live in flour or cheese and “cause grocer’s itch,” which no no no I just cannot even).
And finally, an alternate take on how one should pronounce tyrotoxism:
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