May fizz suddenly without warning in presence of certain catalysts

[freckles_and_doubt]

If my enthusiasms bring me out in a flood of babble, it's worse when they're combined: favourite TV shows and academic analysis, for example, are bad enough in their own right, but academic babble about favourite TV shows is downright exhausting to the hapless onlooker. The same, apparently, is true of cooking and teaching. A nice young man, a deadlocked black dude with a British accent, came up to me in the booze aisle of the supermarket this afternoon and incautiously asked if I minded suggesting what sort of wine he should use for cooking.

Me (enthusiastically): Yes, of course! what are you cooking?
Him (slightly taken aback): Um, lamb.
Me (even more enthusiastically): OK, you want a fairly robust red, I usually go for some sort of blend because they're cheaper. Cabernet, pinotage, that sort of thing.
Him (backing away slightly): Oh, thanks, I -
Me (waving my hands around wildly, which is apparently intrinsic to my teaching process): The first rule is never to cook with anything you wouldn't drink, a really poor quality wine will have a harsh taste which will come through into the food ...
Him (alarmed): ...!
Me (undaunted): ..although conversely, a really good one is a waste, the subtleties of the flavour will be lost. I'd go for a cheap bottle rather than a box.
Him (gamely): The price isn't too much of an issue...
Me (rifling through the shelves manically): Good, but you could go with this cab/merlot blend for under R30, or this Rough Red - I tend to look for something which says "fruity" on the label, the flavour is better with meat than something very dry...
Him (ruefully): I certainly seem to have asked the right person...
Me (a bit conscience-stricken): Oh, sorry, this is probably far more detail than you really wanted. I take my cooking seriously.
Him (gracefully, if a bit wild-eyed): Not at all, I feel like an expert now.
(He grabs a random bottle and flees before I can start holding forth again.)

I suspect I should try to do more formal teaching, insufficient quantities thereof are possibly dangerous to innocent bystanders. On the upside, now he never has to stick his neck out by asking the same question of anyone in a booze aisle in future, and the overall education level of the world has risen by a tiny but vital fraction.

Comments

[grumpyolddog.livejournal.com]

I hate to simply assume, so a question; did you mean dreadlocked?

Also, the correct term if one has an English accent is "black geezer". I don't know why, but no other synonym for "man" really seems to work quite so well.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Oh, dear, yes, I do. Typing in a hurry owing to the desperate need to go and finish Bioshock 2 before the Evil Landlord returned and booted me off the computer.

I associate "geezer" with the aged, is this some new, more general usage I'm unfamiliar with?

[pinkthulhu.livejournal.com]

"Geezer" can refer to a young man too, although it has a slightly chavvy/working-class connotation.

I'm sure he was astonished to receive more than the usual polite shyness/bemusement you'd normally get from asking somebody in a supermarket! :-)

[tngr-spacecadet.livejournal.com]

I had a similar experience last week, a young man asked me where to find cornflour. I gathered it was maizena he wanted, and explained what it was. He was doing a big shop for his mum. Honestly, he just about fled...

[khoi-boi.livejournal.com]

No man would just walk up to a random woman and ask for advice on ... anything, really....unless there was ulterior motive.

You missed being picked up, there, Doc. No Jungle Fever for you!

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Dear khoi_boi, thank you for this sop thrown to my amour propre, but honestly, I'm twice his age and apparently redolent of the vanilla of domesticity. I look like a Woman Who Cooks. His ulterior motive, I suspect, was impressing some younger woman with his l33t lamb casserole. I'm OK with this. Universal Auntie, that's me.