h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Spicy Slumgullion: An Emergency Meal - A87977876
Author: Dmitri Gheorgheni - Not Banned in China - U1590784

There's nowhere to go, and limited ingredients in the house. We got creative, and thought we'd share this silly recipe.

If you ask for more precise (metric) measurements, I will delete this entry. It's mugs or nothing.

Also, I can't help it if you can't find US breakfast sausage. Any suggestions for alternatives will be gratefully incorporated in a hilarious footnote.

'Moby Dick' footnote added, courtesy of Phred Firecloud.

Thank you for this Entry Very topical, and useful for the people who stockpiled the pasta

The word 'slumgullion' tastes funny when I say it (a bit gloopy) but the food itself reminds me of my family's recipe for spaghetti bolognese

The current link on 'food improvisation' is not what I was expecting - should it be something like A87892573 instead? The other link could be worked in somewhere else, less prominent...

Very clear description of the measurements in proportion

I like the phrase 'elbow macaroni' - is it short, narrow tubes of pasta that are slightly curved?

Aha! I can visualise breakfast sausage - my family buy something similar each year at Christmas to make stuffing and it is just called sausagemeat No spice in it, though, so we add herbs to make the stuffing flavoursome

" It is not necessary to see this food very clearly – in fact, that would be detrimental to the experience." - Similar with this A87869371 - a photo of the raw ingredients was much more pleasing to the eye than the food, even though the food was tasty

Thanks, Sasha - both for reading and for the suggestions!

I changed that link, and added your explanation of elbow macaroni. That's it, exactly - here, it actually says 'elbow macaroni' on the packages. Like an elbow pipe...

You've got it with the sausage! In the past, nobody had a lot of spices in their kitchen - nor did they know how to use them, there's a running joke about families who thought black pepper was a pretty risky choice - so buying the pre-spiced sausage was both a savings and a treat.

Aha, scouse. Yes, similar.

Isn't a beaker a toddler's cup?

<BB<

You tell me - I thought it was what youze guys called a mug.

This interpretation, however, I got from Patricia Routledge in 'Keeping Up Appearances'. She said she'd give the poor nervous lady 'a beaker' because she was so terrified of breaking the Royal Doulton. And she gave her a mug, so I thought that was the word over there?

I have to do this by detective work.

If you meant, do *we* call a sippy cup a beaker? No, we don't. We call it a 'sippy cup'.

All the grownups have sippy cups, too, nowadays. The ones for their coffee on the road. But they call those thermos mugs...

Aha I see a 'beaker' is an archaic literary term for a mug, so that would be why Hyacinth would call it that! My hands shake when I'm trying to drink hot tea, so I have great sympathy with Elizabeth, but I didn't fully understand the 'beaker' scene until now

A modern beaker isn't a sippy cup - it's the lidless plastic receptacle that you graduate to when you have mastered the sippy cup http://www.amazon.co.uk/Rosmarino-Kids-Plastic-Cups-Reusable/dp/B07XLLCMGL

I see! Hyacinth Bucket is responsible for a lot of funny ideas we have about the British. Such as that you all have princess telephones.

So, is it okay to leave the joke in there? Just to make people laugh?

If it was up to me, I personally wouldn't.

Does the fact that the word 'beaker' was used to mean 'mug' in a sitcom 30 years ago make people laugh or simply confuse them?

There'll be plenty of opportunities to include 'known as X in the UK' comments in the future where things actually are called 'X', so I don't see the need to say it when they're not called that at all.

<BB<

Whereas I would say leave the joke in as a footnote but change 'The English' to 'English people like Hyacinth Bucket from Keeping Up Appearances' so that you could work in a link to the forthcoming Entry A87978073 about the sitcom that may be 30 years old but is well known around the world in the 21st Century More Entries should contain the phrase 'laboratory equipment', I think

Thanks for clarifying Elbow Macaroni, by the way Do you have other types of macaroni as well?

Footnote restored, with link to Mrs Bucket and no reference to English people.

I have known quite a few US people, male and female, who reminded me of Hyacinth Bucket. I haven't seen the show since the 90s, but I remember a coworker in Philadelphia who disliked her intensely. He claimed he wanted to strangle her. (I suspect, as Twitter says, he was in that picture and didn't like it.)

We mostly label our pasta using Italian nomenclature - rotini, ziti, etc - but I'm not sure if angel hair pasta exists in Mediterranean nature, or if we made it up.

For some reason, elbow macaroni is our default go-to for comfort food recipes and school lunches. Even parts of the country in which no Italian cook has ever set foot know to eat elbow macaroni with their cheese food.

Great recipe and very entertaining!

We call them Hörnchen

Oh! Great name!

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"I remember a coworker in Philadelphia who disliked her intensely.... (I suspect, as Twitter says, he was in that picture and didn't like it.)" - Yes, I know a few Hyacinths, too - one was ever so proud that her new house had a built in ramp, so she invited me in, but then realised my wheels were the equivalent of shoes and she couldn't ask me to take them off, so I didn't get past the hallway

Yes, shops here mostly use the Italian nomenclature for pasta, but with the odd exception. Elbow macaroni is just called macaroni, but it is definitely the pasta that goes with cheese food. Angel hair pasta is a direct translation of capelli di angelo, so that's fine (literally). I used to be able to get 'flying saucer pasta' from one shop but now they go with the Italian and call it messicani

Aha, so you know these people, too! She could've offered to clean your wheels for you...that would have been a service, like foot-washing...

I had to look up messicani. Oh, *those* pasta bits, I thought. Never knew what they were called. I like 'flying saucers'.