[Sca-cooks] "cows eyes"

Craig Daniel teucer at pobox.com
Tue Jul 10 17:15:43 PDT 2012


On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 6:59 PM, Suey <lordhunt at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I have sent this suggestion on to academics in Madrid but it makes me laugh.
> Grahame Harrison in his book "Midnight Train to Granada" relates that he was
> invited to the director of the language school there where he taught in the
> 1950's when Spain was till suffering from hunger as a result of the Civil
> War and World War II as no countries in Europe could help Spain.
> One night the director of the language school where Harrison was teaching at
> the time invited him and a colleague to dinner. The director's wife was most
> attentive and brought out what food she could. The second course for dinner
> consisted of fried eggs swimming green olive oil. - Not only is it most
> disgusting, it smells awful. The other guest at the dinner turned them down.
> The husband shouted to his wife in the kitchen, directly translated, "Maria,
> take away Jose's balls." - due to the double meaning my friend cringed
> behind the tablecloth and ate his "balls. . "
> So I do not think Professor Harrison found any "eyes" in Spanish eggs!
> Many thanks anyway,
> Suey
>

Irrelevantly, this in turn reminds me of a story from a friend of
mine, whose father is an airline pilot. He was copiloting a flight to
Guatemala, and in the morning he and the captain ordered breakfast.
The place they were eating had some combo breakfast called the "plato
campesino" or something like that, which the captain wanted, but due
to an allergy to eggs he had to request that they be left out. Not
knowing how to say allergy (despite it being fairly obvious -
"alergia") and not wanting to have to ask his copilot for help
(apparently some pilots are like that), he did the best he could on
his own. This, reportedly, consisted of declaring that "Quiero el
plato campesino, pero" - and then, pointing down at his place at the
table (or at his lap, that naturally being right underneath said table
setting) - "pero NO HUEVOS AQUI."

The waiter reportedly offered his condolences.

(For the non-Spanish-speakers - he ordered the combo "but NO EGGS
HERE," with "eggs" also having a rather different meaning that comes
to mind when the person is pointing at his lap.)

 - Jaume



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