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

Most To Be Honoured Chaiwallah:

For some reason I had always avoided those Chais offered at the fast-coffee joints, thinking that it seemed just some sort of wacky new age way of increasing sales. Then I saw your recipe and thought "oh. This looks true." After a few pots of my own, with black tea from a pressed brick purchased at, of all places, Fort Edmonton, I have now had the pleasure of introducing another to the marvels of the drink. There we stood, two muddy men on beside a muddy hole in the ground with the warm Canadian morning sun shining on us, and we felt joy as we drank your chai from a thermos jug. I think it may become a daily thing, and I expect it will spread. Soon Canadian manual labourers from coast to coast to coast will be lifting their morning "beloved"s of chai as they lift their shovels, and the world will be a better place.

And I think I will never try the stuff they sell at the coffee places. I'm sure it can be as nothing to the fresh.

Thank you a thousand times.

Dear Anhaga,

Thanks for your kind words, and delighted I am to know that somewhere that recipe has made someone happy. Curiously enough, only on Wednesday I was making a mega batch of chai for my oldest friend, ( since infancy ) and his Canadian family ( they live in Vancouver where he is Prof. of Psych at UBC ) who were passing through Dublin on their way to his brother's second wedding, in England. Included in the group was his daughter's fiancee, who'd never had proper chai before, and is now an enthusiast.

Beware addiction, that combination of hot and sweet is quite hooky, and probably not very good for you in the long term.

Cheers,

Chai

" his brother's second wedding, in England."

They allow polygamy in England?!





Seriously: I assumed that you meant volume rather than weight when you spoke of "measures" in the recipe. I also assumed that you meant before grinding. Am I correct. If I'm incorrect, it sure worked well the incorrect way.

Yes on both counts.
1) He had been divorced, of corced.

2) Measures as in proportional volume. It's pretty strong on the black pepper, but that gives it that extra zing to balance out the sweetness. There are as many recipes as there are chai-makers, but mine got the ultimate seal of approval, a request from my Indian mother-in-law, who lives in Toronto ( another spooky Canadian connection! )for a jar of my mix. You can omit, vary amounts or add ingredients as you see fit.

Oft him anhaga.....how goes the translation?

translation goes poorly in the summer due to seasonal realworld employment.

Alas yes indeed, realworld employment demands do tend to intrude on one's virtual life. Being self-employed, I suffer the terrible anguish of the daily decision to limit the amount of time I spend adding to the already interminable Ballad of Grimley Moer on the Anyone for Nonsense thread...all my fault, I started it. But then, as a potter, I can and often do work late into the night, and have, as a matter of choice, sacrificed veg-out time in front of the TV for the rigours of doggerel writing.

Try this for size

F19585?thread=283765&skip=366

I took a look into that thread but I know well the verse "abandon hope who enter here"; your poem is a curse. I'll stick to rendering the sense of Anglo-Saxon shite (although the metrics you select make yours a tempting bite). So change the type-setting of this and cut and paste a bit and tag it right onto the end of that long piece of --

Seriously, you've chosen the metrical form that I long ago chose for my translation (but I leave out the rhyme.)

Hi Anhaga,

haven't been checking out my personal space very thoroughly lately, and tend ( via alabaster ) to focus on left-column stuff.

So, the dreaded ballad metre infects your thoughts too, does it? I think that piece of p*** is indicative enough of my advanced state of infection. Rhyme and ballad metre seem to punctuate my very breath at the moment, though not, mercifully, my prose ( which has been directed at the God thread again.)

I've been throughthat situation of every thought coming out in verse. One develops one's own Oral-formulaic vocabulary and composition of verse becomes easy. Of course, it's mostly doggerel.