3 Things Learned This Week Over a Hazy IPA
Including: the ultimate Facebook blooper, Peter Rabbit in hieroglyphs and black carrot velvet cupcakes
Earlier this week I posted a big nature brag on my Facebook page:
It was a totally SUPERnatural day capped off by this penultimate moment. Our resident loon couple silently glided towards us, seemingly oblivious to our presence on the dock. The lake was tangerine-tinted and freckled with whirligig beetles that had taken pause from their dizzy circles.
Earlier we watched a lime-winged luna moth lift into the canopies in clumsy loops.
A wild turkey hustled across the road, not wanting to give into flight, but it did.
A female mallard bravely led her nine sunshine-yellow ducklings across the still surface of the water into the safety of the growing shadows.
An osprey effortlessly circled her mammoth nest, effortlessly, thanks to the thermal carrying her.
And now, the flicker of short-circuiting fireflies welcome the deep fold of night.
Most of the comments that followed were about the loon photo and serenity of it all but one friend (and former co-worker) was quick to point out a blooper.
Cline said, “Sounds lovely. But…Penultimate? Second last?”
Second to last? What?
All this time I believed that penultimate meant “peak experience.” Like, it couldn’t get any better, it was beyond the ultimate! I hustled to an online dictionary for clarification.
Merriam-Webster set me straight.
Penultimate adjective
pen·ul·ti·mate
1: next to the last
the penultimate chapter of a book
Well. Who knew (aside from Cline)?
I responded in gratitude of course.
“Ha. Well, technically it was the second to last of all those wild moments of the day before the fireflies came out. I should brush up on my adjectives!”
Cline held her grammatical ground, “I did think about the fireflies! 🤪 it’s a weird adjective for sure and its meaning is counterintuitive.”
Then our friend Fran stepped in, just to weigh in as she does with a dash of humour and a confession.
“If it is any consolation...I thought it meant the same as you did....but also, I thought it was PENTultimate....which is something else entirely.”
Back to the dictionary I went with PENTULTIMATE.
Apparently, a pentultimate is cousin to Rubik’s Cube. It’s a 12-sided (dodecahedron) puzzle with pentagonal faces that you twist in sequences to solve. I was a Rubik’s Cube sticker peeler cheater so pentagonal faces are not in my wheelhouse.
I’m not an English Major or Minor. I like words but not in that way. Plus, I have a copy editor, thank god, who informs me of the difference between curly and straight quotation marks, widows, orphans and hyphen misuse (and abuse). Hieroglyphs make more sense to me and low and behold, I found a copy of Peter Rabbit that had been translated into the hieroglyphic script of ancient Egypt.
The Tale of Peter Rabbit: Hieroglyph Edition
Kim and I decided to stop at a late-day garage sale in Lion’s Head. I noticed a vehicle parked off the main drag with a neon Bristol board sign taped to the trunk. Taped!
Fun fact: Bristol board has a controversial history. Is it named after the city of Bristol, England (Banksy’s hometown) or Frederick Hervey, 4th Earl of Bristol, a prolific art collector? There’s a rabbit hole you can fall down, but let’s get back to Peter Rabbit!
We entered the dim light of the garage where the tchotchkes on the table competed with jumble of items stacked, stuffed and shelved on the walls. “It’s only the stuff on the tables that’s for sale,” we were informed.
I was reminded of the garage my mother and grandmother walked into over 30 years ago. They had been on a Saturday yard sale circuit, saw an open garage door, lots of junk and assumed it was a sale. The startled homeowner entered his garage, ready for combat with the intruders. My mom was disappointed, he had several items that she would have bought.
The Lion’s Head garage sale inventory took us less than a minute to survey. I was impressed by her glass bowl of dozens (and dozens) of hotel-issued bars of soap. Kim wasn’t interested in the pairs of nylons either (brand new, in the package!). I always like to look through VCR tapes for the nostalgic wave and I’m a sucker for a stack of books. And that’s when I found Beatrix Potter’s Egyptian crossover published by the British Museum Press.
Based on the centenary edition (2002), her first tale was translated by John F. Nunn, a member of the Egypt Exploration Society and retired head of the anesthesia division of the Clinical Research Centre, British Medical Research Council. His co-translator, Richard Parkinson, is an Assistant Keeper in the Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan in the British Museum.
The translators shared their trials and tribulations when it came to words like wheelbarrow or watering can and explained their choices in the footnotes. In ancient Egypt, wheels were only used on chariots. Botanical species posed a problem too as blackberry, gooseberry, black-currant and potato were unknown in Egypt at that time. Even Peter Rabbit himself was an issue as he was a European rabbit and the closest Egyptian relative was the desert hare. Even cotton wasn’t known then (hello, Egyptian cotton) and the translators opted to use linen as a substitute.
The Tale of Peter Rabbit has been translated into 36 languages (including Latin, Gaelic, Braille and Klingon). For $1.00, I was thrilled with my treasure.
In a Jam: Black Carrot Juice Concentrate?
I was down to the last scrapings of blueberry jam and opted for a Quebec brand that I’d never heard of before. Pied-Mont Dora has been around since 1945 and was founded by the Limoges family in Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines. They originally specialized in canning seasonal veg (small beans, corn and pickles) but introduced a line of jams in 1960 which have perfumed the small town with strawberries ever since. Now they make fruit ketchups (made with tomatoes, apples, peaches, onions, apricots, vinegar, celery, pineapples and mangos), a line of jams in partnership with Laura Secord, a maple sugar spread AND raspberry jam with black carrot juice concentrate.
Fun fact: My favourite trail mix brand (Celebration) has chocolate Smartie-like candies in it that are naturally coloured with beet juice, spirulina extract and turmeric extract.
Parisian vs. Turkish Carrots
Kim and I are growing Parisian carrots in our “farm” this year. Our minimalist plantation is an old Weston five-loaf bread tray. Three loaf pans are dedicated to Parisian carrots (round, radish-like heirloom carrots) and the remaining two are for candy cane beets. I should have grown black carrots! They are antioxidant and polyphenol phenoms, out-performing blueberries and ordinary carrots by A LOT. Originating from Turkey and Afghanistan, this cool carrot is often used as a natural colouring agent. If you add a squeeze of lemon to Black Nebula carrot juice it will turn “galactic pink.” You can buy black carrot powder and add a purple punch to everything from smoothies to sourdough. Move over red velvet cake, black carrot velvet cupcakes are in town.
Black carrot velvet cupcakes. Penultimate, wouldn’t you say? And what would that look like in hieroglyphs?
What word have you mistakenly (ie. mistakingly) used? Several years ago I berated by a general store owner who I featured in a social post. I raved about the store’s "infamous" oatmeal raisin cookies. Holy moly, I was informed (in a string of ALL CAPS-laced emails) that the store had no criminal connections or mafia links and demanded an apology. That’s how that cookie crumbled.
So, do tell. What did you learn this week?
Our local grocery store is called FRED MEYER, and when my daughter was learning how to read, she looked at the store's signage and said, "I always thought it was called FRIEND MEYER." So cute :)