Foodstuffs n stuff

There's a lot of types of food in the world. I've just invented a truism, which is that with everything that man discovers, he will either try to eat it or print pornography on it (or sometimes both, as evidenced by the existence of penis and boob shaped gummi candies). Let's just call that statement "Mahd's Law", because I always wanted to hold a sign that says "I am the law".

I digress. The point is, I'm not sure why or how we decided to eat some of the things we eat. Some, like caesar salad dressing or teriyaki sauce, were invented entirely by accident. Others took some effort.

I just had an interesting encounter with beans, for example. Being a frugal gourmet, I was going to make chili and purchased some dried beans. Now, I realize that dried beans need to soak. It's what they do, it makes them what they are. I didn't realize that they need to soak for a day.

It's this kind of thing that makes me wonder. Wouldn't it have been easier for Thog to go throw a spear at a wild monkey or something? How would he have determined that soaking the beans would release the beany goodness? At some point, you just say "Bollocks to this" and go grab a burger at a restaurant. Let them figure out how beans work.

Another one is cheese. The bulletproof scientific theory is that a nomad was riding around with some milk in a flask, and the right bacteria got in there and viola. Cheese. My question is, when you open up your flask and see that your milk has solidified, isn't it more likely that you'd say "damn, my milk" and huck the block of cheese across the horizon? Maybe that's what you did, until one foolish Saracean decided to have a taste. After that, it was just a matter of time before they invented the crappy imitation stuff they put on those terrible microwave pizzas.

I guess it's like anything else that, when you look at it objectively, it makes no sense. So let me get this straight- you're going to pull those plants out of the ground, mash them up, add a little water and tell me it's food? Riiight. After that, maybe I'll roll up some other plants, ignite them and inhale the smoke. Whack job.

So soak your beans, people. They're not going to do it themselves.