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Get Stuffed - Eating our words

Sussing out the food behind our thoughts

Gave my ankle a good twist this weekend. Grabbed the ice packs, threw the pillows on the sofa and turned into a real couch potato. Couch potato? Why not a couch turnip? Or a couch carrot – hey, carrots are pretty inert. So off I went on a true nerd-felt journey, looking for the tales behind the words from foodland we like to use. Good idea – everything on the boob tube was pretty lame anyway.

Boob tube? Turns out "couch potato" is a direct play on it, what with potatoes being plant tubers and all. Then there’s "hot potato", referring to a tricky or delicate situation needing to be handled with care, and that ain’t no small potatoes – something (or someone) of such little importance they’re like small potatoes, hardly worth the effort to peel them.

Well, as my English friend would say, doesn’t that take the cake – which alludes to the cakewalk, basis for a charming little Debussy piece and the name of an intricate, marching-line kind of dance originated by African-Americans in the southern US. Prize for the best dancer: a cake, item of long and noble provenance as a prize for various dance and athletic contests in a string of cultures going back to ancient Greece (the rare and exotic spices used to "spice up" said cakes were really the prized prize everyone was after).

On the other hand, "piece of cake" alludes to something as easily done as taking and eating a piece of cake. Ditto for "easy as pie", referring to the eating of same, certainly not the making – when was the last time you pulled out a rolling pin and made one from scratch?

Speaking of easing things along, if you think I’m stretching the truth here, guess you’ll take it all with a grain of salt – nice image for making something "hard to swallow" just a little more palatable. And while we’re salting things up, here are two expressions I think we kind of mush together in Canada.

Ever heard your old aunties and uncles call old Joe or Verla the salt of the earth? This is actually a Biblical reference from Matthew in which Christ told his disciples they were the "salt of the earth", meaning the worthiest or most perfectly chosen or elected. Then there’s the expression "old salt" for a crusty old sailor with years of experience and well-salted by the sea. I think our colloquial use of "salt of earth" has taken on a bit of the "old salt" and come to mean someone who is equal parts experienced and natural, sincere and down-to-earth.

But that’s just my take on it, so if I’m wrong, please, whatever you do, don’t make me eat any humble pie. Eeugh. "Humble" is a play on "umbles", the heart, liver and entrails of a deer. In medieval times, these were the perqs (more properly "perquisites", so don’t believe your etymologically-challenged spell-check when it changes "perqs" to "perks") of the able huntsman. While his lord and ladyship were dining on venison at the high table, the huntsman and his henchmen, squired away in the lower seats, scoffed down the umbles made into a pie.

But I guess that’s better than eating crow, done when you do something really distasteful or humiliating. There’s another tasty story attached to that: In the Anglo-American War of 1812-14, a New England hunter unwittingly crossed British lines and shot a crow. An unarmed British officer – note the operative word, "unarmed" – heard the shot and by Jove, he was going to punish that devil, whoever he was. He tracked down the American, and, pretending to praise his marksmanship, asked to see the offender’s weapon, then turned it on the poor guy and made him eat a mouthful of raw crow (free from avian flu, we hope). When the officer returned the weapon to its rightful owner, he in turn turned it on the officer, forcing him to eat the rest of the crow.

It’s a real dog eat dog world sometimes, eh? Especially in the Big Apple, a name synonymous with New York, especially since a successful P.R. campaign established as much in the early ’70s. But the term has been around a lot longer than that. It was popularized in the 1920s by a reporter at the Morning Telegraph, who first used it in reference to the city’s racetracks. Supposedly he got the idea from black stableboys in New Orleans. Black jazz musicians in the 1930s then took it up to refer to New York, particularly Harlem, as the jazz capital, or big apple, of the world.

The big apple... the ultimate prize to be plucked from the tree. But I can’t leave us hanging there, what with the Big Smoke still up in the air. Who in Whistler hasn’t heard Vancouver called that? More to the point, where the heck did the term come from? London, England, it turns out, thanks to all those polluting smokestacks and coal-burning hearths in homes. Possibly it arose prior to that in Edinburgh. "Old smoky" it was known as, or, in Scottish, "auld reekie", a phrase, I think, with enormous potential for expanded usage.

Speaking of the Big Smoke, Salmagundi is one of my favourite stores in same, located on Cordova Street in Gastown. It’s perfect for killing a rainy afternoon exploring its drawers stuffed with funky treasures from around the world. The name, as exotic as the merchandise, is from the 17th century. While the origins of "salmagundi" are a bit hazy – it may be a play on the Italian "salami conditi", or pickled salami, or it may have been the name of a lady attached to the court of Henry the IV of France – it definitely refers to a concoction of minced veal, chicken or turkey, anchovies or pickled herrings, all chopped together with onion and served with a bit of fresh lemon juice and oil.

That sounds good enough to me to grab my crutches and head to the kitchen. Now, if that doesn’t whet your appetite, I’ll eat my hat, or at least my words, and presume you won’t bite my head off for walking you through this afternoon meander.