ACTUAL Ancient Food Crimes; Friday, First Period [07/22].

[somethingwithturquoise]

"Morning, everyone!" said Summer, perhaps a bit too cheerfully, but that was starting to be par for the course for her classes these days, wasn't it? She stood at the front of the classroom with several little disposable cups scattered around in front of mysterious unlabeled pitchers of various different beverages. So already, you knew this was going to be...fun.

"I have very recently fallen into a bit of a wealth of beverages that prove that food crimes are not just a thing of the past: there are many of them alive and well and happening today, even outside my own kitchen. A lot of these come from the synthesis of artificial flavors and chemicals that allow food scientist to do things like make a soda taste like grass or bacon or s'mores. Which begs the question: just because you can, does it mean you should?

"Odd pops, however, are indeed thoroughly modern, but, as we learned last week, ancient people could sometimes do some weird stuff to beverages, too. Granted, their reasons typically had a lot more to do with the fact that easy access to clean and uncontaminated water was a rarity and adding things like vinegar to you drink was a good way to kill off bacteria that would make you sick, where there are arguably absolutely no benefits to consuming a ranch-flavored soda, but I digress.

"I thought, since I have all these modern weird sodas from a mysterious benefactor," who she will happily blame for all of this should anyone complain...and she expected at least someone to complain, "I thought we'd do something a little different today. Blind taste tests, on a variety of different different drinks, and the goal is for you to figure out: Ancient Beverage Crime? Or An Abomination from This Day and Age, Happening Right Under Our Very Noses? And we'll just see where that takes us."

Comments

Sign In - ACTUAL Ancient Food Crimes, 07/22.

[somethingwithturquoise]

With a nice, refreshing beverage!

Re: Sign In - ACTUAL Ancient Food Crimes, 07/22.

[notagoose]

Shane Gooseman

Re: Sign In - ACTUAL Ancient Food Crimes, 07/22.

[flamesburned]

Liz Sherman

Re: Sign In - ACTUAL Ancient Food Crimes, 07/22.

[giveittoyoursister]

Vi

Listen to the Lecture - ACTUAL Ancient Food Crimes, 07/22.

[somethingwithturquoise]

It's a short and simple set-up today for something that some of you may not actually be that surprised to have seen coming. But if there are any questions or concerns or commentary to be had before launching into the 'lesson' of the day, Summer will be happy to field them.

Drink Drinks and Discuss! - ACTUAL Ancient Food Crimes, 07/22.

[somethingwithturquoise]

Come try some drinks and attempt to determine exactly what it is and if it's a modern monstrosity or an ancient anomaly!

Offerings include (but are not limited to, if you wanted to mod something else, you're welcome to!), unsurprisingly, the infamous meat seltzer, grass soda, posca, pulque, ranch soda, restina, s'mores soda, kumis, chica de jora and its sister soda of sweet corn.

Cheers!

Re: Drink Drinks and Discuss! - ACTUAL Ancient Food Crimes, 07/22.

[notagoose]

Goose was definitely going to be trying all of these drinks and the first one that he picked up happened to be one that he definitely knew.

"Oh this one's the meat seltzer," Goose declared confidently, which was not any surprise really and then paused, "er ... I'm guessing it's an ancient beverage crime?"

Goose really had no idea, he had only found out about meat seltzer on Wednesday and he had another sip of the drink.

Re: Drink Drinks and Discuss! - ACTUAL Ancient Food Crimes, 07/22.

[somethingwithturquoise]

Summer grinned faintly, shaking her head. "Thoroughly modern," she informed him, "although I do have a feeling that one is going to go down in history all the same."

Re: Drink Drinks and Discuss! - ACTUAL Ancient Food Crimes, 07/22.

[flamesburned]

Liz wondered for a few moments if this would be something she'd be safe to try in class and she did hover near the drinks for a bit as she debated.

"I don't suppose there's really any safe ones for me to try?" she considered, tilting her head slightly as she tried to figure out if she did actually want to try one.

Re: Drink Drinks and Discuss! - ACTUAL Ancient Food Crimes, 07/22.

[somethingwithturquoise]

"Technically speaking," Summer noted, "I'm pretty sure none of these are safe for anyone to be drinking. But...."

She took a moment to consider what the options were, and rearranged a few cups to move them forward for Liz.

"These should be fine," she decided, which included all of the sodas (but not the meat seltzer, that just seemed cruel) and the posca. Everything else? Summer had no idea, but it just generally seemed to err on the side of caution with those.

Re: Drink Drinks and Discuss! - ACTUAL Ancient Food Crimes, 07/22.

[giveittoyoursister]

Yeah, Vi had a sneaking suspicion that Summer had never really had to worry about bad water. She picked up a random cup and downed it in one go, feeling the burn of some kind of booze, which was still smoother than the stuff circulating Stillwater. "Old. It's not bubbly."

Re: Drink Drinks and Discuss! - ACTUAL Ancient Food Crimes, 07/22.

[somethingwithturquoise]

That sneaking suspicion would have been wrong, but okay. Mostly right, sure, but there had been, like, at least two occasions...

"While a lot of this is definitely hinging on modern sodas," Summer allowed, "which are bubbly, that's not necessarily a hard-and-fast rule. Plenty of gross modern drinks are bubbly, and fermentation can sometimes cause ancient ones to naturally fizz. The difference between carbonated fizz and natural fizz, though, yeah, are pretty different."

Re: Drink Drinks and Discuss! - ACTUAL Ancient Food Crimes, 07/22.

[guillermothegreat]

Guillermo was not really sure about trying these different drinks but he could at least give them a try and the first one that he picked by some weird coincidence happened to be sweet corn, "oh," Guillermo made a face as he tried it, "I ... it tastes like sweet corn," he decided.

Guillermo liked sweet corn, he just didn't like it in soda form, "I'm going to go with that this this more modern," he considered.

Re: Drink Drinks and Discuss! - ACTUAL Ancient Food Crimes, 07/22.

[somethingwithturquoise]

Summer grinned faintly, and nodded, then gestured to the chica de jora beside the sweet corn soda. "You should try that one, too," she suggested, "and do a comparison. They definitely have something in common."

Re: Drink Drinks and Discuss! - ACTUAL Ancient Food Crimes, 07/22.

[mother_love]

Billy grabbed one of the drinks and made a face as he took a taste. He didnt know what Kumis was but it was not good.

"Tastes like fizzy sour cream..." he said with a slight wince. "Actually reminds me of the drinks we handwavely ran into while in the jungles on one of our missions. And that tastes just as bad as this."

Re: Drink Drinks and Discuss! - ACTUAL Ancient Food Crimes, 07/22.

[somethingwithturquoise]

"Well, that one comes from the steppes of Central Asia," Summer offered, with a faint grin, knowing that the reveal of exactly what Billy had been drinking was about to come up, and that was usually pretty fun, "but it wouldn't surprise me at all if various forms of fermented mare's milk managed to make it into other parts of the world as well. And stuck around for some of them, too."

Re: Drink Drinks and Discuss! - ACTUAL Ancient Food Crimes, 07/22.

[napking]

Unlike some of these people, Gray had the good sense to at least sniff a cup of mystery liquid before putting it in his mouth, which was the happy story of how he was once again able to avoid drinking the meat seltzer. A second cup got, "Oh, that's the retsina," and then the high schooler downed the wine. "It's actually not bad, especially if you mix it with ambrosia. Now which one's the ranch soda? I wanna try it."

Gray. No.

Re: Drink Drinks and Discuss! - ACTUAL Ancient Food Crimes, 07/22.

[somethingwithturquoise]

Summer took a moment to consider the restina, before noting, "I'm going to just assume you don't mean the mid-Western staple of potlucks and picnics when you say ambrosia, but, hey, I could be wrong. Also, telling you which one is the ranch soda defeats the whole purpose of the activity. Be adventurous, and take those chances."

Although she did consider just telling him based solely on the fact that he was actually requesting it.

Re: Drink Drinks and Discuss! - ACTUAL Ancient Food Crimes, 07/22.

[heroic_jawline]

Do you know what is not delightful? Ranch soda.

Steve's face was a picture.

Re: Drink Drinks and Discuss! - ACTUAL Ancient Food Crimes, 07/22.

[somethingwithturquoise]

Ohhhh, a face like that from Steeeeve was a rare treasure, indeed.

And very delightful.

"Not a fan?" Summer guessed.

Re: Drink Drinks and Discuss! - ACTUAL Ancient Food Crimes, 07/22.

[sharp_man]

Hannibal wrinkled his nose as he tried a few of the more pungent ones. He could tell the modern from the ancient, though, purely on the basis of which ones had modern chemicals in them.

There was a reason he didn't drink a lot of soda unless he made it himself.

Talk to the Teacher - ACTUAL Ancient Food Crimes, 07/22.

[somethingwithturquoise]

Yes, Summer has plenty more where that came from, if anyone is interested!

Re: Talk to the Teacher - ACTUAL Ancient Food Crimes, 07/22.

[sith_happened]

Anakin came into the classroom after the class was over and no one could yell at him about the sodas with a koala that had been artistically dyed with vegan, animal safe hair dye to look like an extremely rainbow-y version of himself.

"Stark isn't really safe in my house," Anakin admitted. "My daughter got adventurous."

Re: Talk to the Teacher - ACTUAL Ancient Food Crimes, 07/22.

[somethingwithturquoise]

Some of those sodas had been a surprising hit, actually, you might have had some people who would have liked to have shaken your hand, Anakin.

Whether or not you wanted people who genuinely liked those sodas shaking your hand was an other issue, but that was neither here nor there because Summer was sort of hoping that was an entirely different koala with him, but....alas.

"Ohhh, nooo," said Summer, who was not laughing right now, absolutely not, how dare you even suggest....

Okay, no. No, she was definitely laughing.

We'll see how long that lasted though.

"It's a good look!" she added, for good measure.

OOC - ACTUAL Ancient Food Crimes, 07/22.

[somethingwithturquoise]

Not gonna lie, I could not stop wondering how that buffalo wing soda and that ranch soda might compliment each other after Wednesday....