I drew a comic of the funniest thing that’s ever happened to me while playing among us. It was me, five of my friends, two randos (yellow and black) and this guy Pupu. He did not speak much English, called an emergency meeting to tell us he loved us, and in one round did THIS. We still have no idea how he knew, as Jacob hadn’t killed anyone and we had only been playing for 15 seconds. I miss you Pupu you absolute madlad
Last week I joked that my very cerebral, retired-police-chief-grandpa is basically Holt from Brooklyn 99 and then today someone said, “damn, we’re out of decaf” and he just deadpans “well there’s no need to get hysterical.”
Yesterday he said “if you need to insult the same person twice you’ve already failed in your goal to devastate them”
My Yaya was trying to remember the name of a guy who stole money from her in high school today and my grandpa instantly pipes up “his name was Bernie Ryan and he was a scoundrel”
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.
