Moron

Exceptionally, the title of this article is exactly descriptive of the content thereof, except not in this language. As you perhaps intuited, we will be discussing the vegetable list.

First and foremost, the moron, which is how the locals call a nice red bell pepper. I confess the name has caught with me, because English is silly. If you call it "pepper" simply it's impractically ambiguousⁱ and too many times you end up delivered the pepper mill. If you go to all the trouble of saying red pepper you might miss out on the perfectly fine pale orange ones. It's just... it's a dumb name for Ardei, what do you want from me. Moron it shall be henceforth.

So, this fine country that does fruit exceedingly well -- far above and beyond any other land I've visited, and consider I'm an Old World European that comes from the lands of perfect fruit, like say if you were from the 50s and from New Jersey or something, it's not entirely clear how to translate eighty centuries of Iranian horticultural practice into the forms comprehensible to the ESL-er -- nevertheless does vegetables middling-poorly. How could such a wonder be ? I don't know, but it can, somehow, because it fucking does.

The Moron is pretty much the only really good item. Their broccoli, arugula, artichoke, asparagus and so following are supermarket-okay, and evidently imported. The tomatoes are terrible, universally and ubiquitously, and it's a sad fate indeed, proper Italian canned sauce is actually better than what you can produce out of the fruits of the local earth! Olives don't grow here, cucumbers they don't understandⁱⁱ. The various gourds are okay, I guess, but I never really liked them. The girls mostly do, which is nice -- for them. But what does it do for me ?

Fortunately the eggplants import well, along with cauliflower (speaking of which, do you know what is the difference between a conopida and a coropisnita ?) and things like that, but seriously now... Mushrooms don't grow here, at any rate nothing you'd eat, so I'm stuck with these gallon jars of dried French stuff imported by Roland (do you know Roland, btw ? Because if you don't you haven't travelled). Their onions are actually very good (and they're very proud of them too, poor dears, they have like yearly onion festivals and whatnot, you'd think you're in Oregon) but just how much onion can a person eat ?!

The corn is terrible, by the way, they use this original strand I guess, the kernels widely spaced apart and the fructose content deeply insufficient. I miss the Romanian hybridized stuff, believe it or not, the corn here is barely worth putting on the embers.

Everything else is canned, peas, naut, beets and so following. The beans are ok, I guess, but they don't really have enough sense to sell fresh green beans, all they have are these tiny black guys, which are ok for many things but not all -- I can't make refried beans for lack of the big white ones, for instance! Cabbage is I guess ok, but of course they don't know about pickling it, so I have to import it all the way from Saxony! They have great celery, but they only sell the stalks, which is ridiculous (then again they also don't know what soup is, not really). And of course they sell raw sugar cane, if sugar needs a caning I suppose, as I've not been able to find any other uses for it (and bamboo is better at the task anyways).

How's your day been ?

1. There's nothing wrong with ambiguity in principle, but then only. [↩]
2. Cucumbers have to be picked early, before they seed. The locals evidently imagine cucumber's just another kind of gourd, so they let them grow to sizes vaginally incomfortable and consequently orally unpalatable.

   What, you didnt know that's the criteria ? Let me tell you sonny -- barbatii au doua capete, iar femeile au doua guri. [↩]