Grrl Power #684 – Cosmic food court
Actually, Sydney’s wrong. The next stall over is an aromatherapy booth that sells scented candles for races with similar miasmic preferences to races like Neo-Otyugh. Scents include “Stinking Cloud,” “Boiled Durain,” “August Whale Corpse,” “Pickled Skunk Anus,” “Twelve Year Old Boy That Hasn’t Figured Out Deodorant is an Absolute Necessity – Times 1,000,” “Corpse in a Dufflebag,” “Fart Salad,” “Surprise Sweaty Testicles,” “Gas Station Egg Salad Sandwich Left on the Dashboard One Afternoon in Phoenix,” “Upsettingly Dark Urine Your Drunk Roommate Accidentally Loosed All Over a Hotplate,” and “Olives.”
If you don’t know what a Neo-Otyugh is, it’s a D&D creature that lives in the sewers and eats… well, its version of mana from the heavens. If you get my meaning. They also lurk in piles of offal to surprise attack prey. So you can imagine they don’t exactly smell pristine. Honestly lighting their farts might improve their smell.
The problem of putting a bunch of aliens or even a variety of fantasy creatures in close proximity to each other, even excluding social and racial incompatibilities, would be things like this. Some races would be incredibly sensitive to even slightly offputting smells, whereas some might communicate through smells like a race of advanced space skunks or something. And then there’s situations like, I don’t know, I don’t imagine orcs or klingons are particularly hygienic. Any number of races would have major issues with the way any other race smells, and that’s before you factor in cuisine, or what they like their detergent or incense to smell like. I really think a stellar melting pot like this station would either need serious odor scrubbers, or everyone would need to have filters installed in their noses.
For those curious, Sydney’s munching on a granola bar or something similar. She carries two with her in her utility belt. Also gum.
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Well I certainly hope that vat Lutefisk tastes a whole lot better than real Lutefisk. Thanks to my Swedish ancestry I grew up enjoying many traditional Swedish dishes. However, I never could stomach Lutefisk. The smell alone is almost enough to make me vomit.
Naw, what you want is the rakfish onna stick. ;) trust me.
3 for a frob, and that’s cuttin’ me own throat!
Oh which reminds me, I also offer complimentary emergency tracheotomy for customers with allergic reactions.
A citizen of the homeland of surströmming has no business dissing lutefisk!
But frankly, as a Norwegian, my dad likes lutefisk.
His dad *loved* lutefisk.
I can’t stand the stuff.
My family decided we needed to try it to prove our bona fides as Norwegians…
I was the only one able to get it down.
Barely.
I’m not convinced that Lutefisk isn’t really a rite of passage into manhood. No one “really” likes it, but to say otherwise would have certain implications.
Codfish pickled in lye! Yum!
Haggis and/or tripe.
Sydney will probably start a fad with a cheese onion and vat anchovies pizza
Sounds good apart from the uncharacteristic lack of spice. Since acids work well on pizza, though, what say you we pickle those onions in something unseemly?
Garrison Keillior used to call lutefisk “The piece of cod that passeth all understanding.”
I’d call it a piece of cod that tastes and smells worse than a Codpiece.
Some things never change.
Also, in Canada in the reserves I was trained to have the canteen totally full at all times. No sloshing at all.
…Which, no doubt, became a bit more difficult once you’ve had a sip or two, yes? Or did they even allow you to drink any at all so that the canteen would always remain full?
;)
No, no, they trained to swipe some water from their colleagues, so they never have to use their own.
In a tactical situation you either had a full canteen or when you did go to drink you drank the whole thing at once or poured out what was left for noise discipline purposes.
Definitely good strategy if using a canteen. In the US Army (can’t speak for the other branches) the use of Camelbacks and lookalikes are becoming more popular in field usage due to the ability to deflate with usage, encouraging better noise discipline. Also the design is inherently less bulky (think of a backpack version of bagged milk vs cartons). As an aside, the Canadian troops I worked with during joint assignments were always my favorite to work with.
Hundreds of light years from Earth and we still have drunks urinating in back alleys. I guess some things are universal across all cultures.
No, no, he’s a grafiti artist using his race’s ability to generate paint of any color on demand… Really. Eh, it is more perfomance art usually but he has a cold and tends to splash when he sneezes.
Hopefully he’ll remember to wash his hands after.
Young man [after seeing Winston Churchill leave the bathroom without washing his hands]:
At Eton, they taught us to wash our hands after using the toilet.
Churchill: At Harrow, they taught us not to piss on our hands.
This joke in general is so old that it doesn’t even qualify as a dad joke. More like as a not-so-great-grand-dad joke.
Years ago I read about a study some college did, where they had students hang out in public restrooms to tally how many men actually washed their hands after using the urinals. The result was a measly 17%. As one of the 17% who wouldn’t dream of urinating without washing up afterwards, I was appalled. This is something I learned as a child. Don’t parents teach their kids basic hygiene anymore?
*licking own genitals*
I was raised right!
And if you are in today’s US Educational system did the SCHOOL teach you to do that? because probably the 83% that didn’t were not taught by their PARENTS because they think that the SCHOOL should teach them EVERYTHING, and that they don’t have to do squat because “that’s what schools DO”… ergo, the kids grow up not knowing simple hygiene lessons… at the least (i can rant on other aspects of today’s society but won’t in the interest of forum harmony)
It might be a designated peeing zone. There are cities in the UK which have these, as a way to combat the amount of back-alley watering.
Only because they closed all the bloody public bogs. There was that report recently, not only do several large cities not have any public toilets, 3 counties in England alone have none as well.
Urban Planning maxim 12: When there are no toilets anywhere, then everywhere becomes a toilet. This also applies to trashcans.
Unless you’re in japan. Then everyone politely takes their rubbish home.
I wonder if Sydney’s fluency in Klingon could actually come in use at some point since it doesn’t appear to automatically translate.
Like a coded communication to Leon or maybe even Max (although I suspect she was never THAT much of a nerd).
It would serve her right (literally) if she ordered in Klingon and would up with a plate of Gagh.
Since Gagh has no face to be cute there is the possibility Sydney would eat it. I imagine by her standards it’s just a plant that moves, slowly.
What about roast tribble, on a stick?
“As a courtesy to our clients a bioscan will determine
what food types can be offered which will not kill them.”
Let me guess…This device is the user interface for a Nutramatic 9000? It automatically scans the user’s tastebuds, neural activity of the brain & the full biology, so that it can calculate what food-substance can not only provide essential nutrients (without poisoning) & even be individually customized for palatability. For humans, it will invariably produce a cup of fluid that is almost, but not quite, completely unlike a cup of tea.
It is going to be terribly amusing if the scanner finds out what her favorite food is, and then the cook has to flee his kitchen because of the Spicey-Fume.
AUGH MY EYES!
BOB WHAT DID I TELL YOU ABOUT SYNTHESYSING FOOD FOR EXOTIC SPECIES!
Looks at display. Double-takes… slaps display a couple times… calls over friend.
Everyone gathers around to see if she can actually tolerate the spicy food.
Soon a betting pool is started. The stakes escalate.
When Sydney devours the spice-splosion food gleefully, cheers and boos all around!
When she finishes her meal she is handed her portion of the winnings.
Nice – and a very plausible way for her to get some of the local (galactic?) currency. Leading to the next vendor having his mind blown when she tips for takeout with a coin worth more than his annual wages.
Might be the only way she can get food.
“If you can actually eat this, you don’t need to pay. Just let me watch!”
Alien chef with a pension for spicier than normal foods, falls for her.
It was love at fist bite…
:P
That would be a funny turn for her though…
Reminds me of… Oh, what was it called… An Alan Dean Foster book, about three teens who wind up going into space, and they manage to make money busking by dancing and making music. They don’t have any idea how much anything’s worth, though.
I remember that book, really liked it, but I cannot remember the name.
Same…but I think maybe it was Glory Lane?
The one with the sentient bowling ball? I read that, it was OK.
And to save on future analysis cycles, it saves and uploads the taste profile of the first specimen of a given species to the galactic nutritional database. Years later, when humans join the galactic community, they find that every restaurant in the galaxy considers “human food” to mean “heavily loaded with capsaicin”.
Maybe the scanner is just tied in to the station’s financial system, so that the vendor can debit their customers’ accounts? Oops!
I wonder what babelfish sushi tastes like. Maybe it will translate well between species.
You sir … or madam …. owe me one keyboard cleaning and a fresh cup of coffee.
Probably a commentary a bit like this…
You are not sure of this fisrt bite,but you find it intriguing.
This bit you put.a bit of sause on, and chew slowly to bring out that translation goodness.
This bite lather it that buttery savory juices as they trickle down your chin.
… later…
Well this is the last bite you wolfed down and thoughly enjoyed….you monster :)
Thank you, I was in need of a laugh today.
Halo: That’s right, I want hot tea. Not boiling, I just want water-soluble hot sauce in my tea.
I don’t know if I’d appreciate the vinegar element but putting dried chilli in with your tea leaves can be quite pleasant and wasabi green tea has a certain special charm.
I do believe that. It may however also alert the local authorities of her breach of entry protocol… if there is such a thing.
A bit more dark: It may however be a scanner which tells the cook if the meat of the person is edible… if it will grow back… and if it is tasty. If this is a butcher shop for people who want to sell a few organs or bodyparts (which they may or may not regrow) for the other meat eating races, that is
…For a restraunt cook, I’ll bet his library also includes a widely popular (at least in this galaxy) book, “To Serve Man.”
Now the trick is to know whether that book is about making food FOR humans or FROM humans. Just saying “It’s a cookbook!” isn’t really illuminating on the subject on its own, methinks.
To some aliens, “cookbook” might mean a book one cooks to eat. Their word for library is synonomous with “soup kitchen”.
Love the OG Twilight Zone reference. :)
Twilight Zone?
I recognize it from one of “The Simpsons’ Treehouse of horror”.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Serve_Man_(The_Twilight_Zone)
Remember many of the things that showed up in the Simpsons actually are tributes or hand waves of information from other sources repackaged for the then current generation.
That would be my guess too.
But why NEO- Otyugh? Just plain Otyugh would work as well.
Maybe that’s The Chosen Otyugh.
Because a Neo-Otyugh might actually be smart enough to figure out space-travel :P
Or just figure out how to manipulate its environment once it realized how this particular matrix operates.
There were the (fortunately) rare Neo-Otyugh ship in SpellJammer… just had to recognise them before they shared their air envelope with you…
So we can assume the palm scanner will analyze Sydney’s physiology and produce appropriate food, and possibly identify her planet of origin and present prices in the corresponding languages.
That $17 might come in handy, after all. hope she didn’t just toss it. (It might also help if her utility belt runs out of tp)
If this is, as most of us suspect, a stopping point for tourists on the way to earth, someone somewhere is bound to want Sydney’s money.
In Robert Asprin’s Myth Adventures series, in the Great Bazaar, the Pervect’s species food was considered so offensive that their restaurants had to magically move around, so everybody got the smell, but only for a little while.
Then there’s the other big problem with Pervish food: making sure the goo doesn’t crawl out of the bowl before you can eat it.
I would guess keeping the dining room stocked with ammo -and the forks always loaded- might be another problem.
There has to be at least one Deveel with a stall in this place.
Being as I live in Minnesota I felt a brief urge to defend Lutefisk, but then I remembered what that stuff is like.
That stuff belongs in that food court.
The lutefisk count in the part of Minnesota I live in now is much lower than where I was born.
You betcha.
Potentially time to find out if her spice tolerance is on a Galactic level. Hell of a way to get her back home though if she gets deported back to Earth from causing a station wide evacuation due to successfully consuming their version of the Unmaker.
Cook: Huh must be one of those exotic silycon based species *puts on a welding mask*
The hand (or tool manipulation appendage) scanner presumably checks to make sure whatever is being prepared as food isn’t instantly deadly and whatnot to the customer. Also probably converts the menu to “primary written language of your species’ home planet.”, which might be bad if it calibrates to Mandarin Chinese.
Also +1 for the Ur-Quan chef in the next stall.
Hmmm… that’s either a way to pay, a translator, or a scanner that detects what on the menu is harmful to various customers. I like the third option best actually. When you have as many varied species as we’ve seen so far it’s only common sense that not all of them can enjoy eating something the same things and survive the process so having a scanner that helps with that would actually make good business sense.
Yeah, there’s something else about how many different species we see wandering around here. I would expect that at least some of them would not be compatible with the same kind of atmospheric-mixture as, say for example, a human like Sydney. Even among planets that might evolve a humanoid species, the variety of planetary ecosystems alone should mean that some of the “people” around Fracture Station should be wearing some form of “atmospheric compensator” equipment just to be wandering around in the open. Granted, if there are places here that might correspond to function like “hotels” here, they would most likely have to provide for specific needs. Even so, out in the open “Commons Areas” we might expect some people to be equipped with “portable” means of breathing.
There’s a fourth option, of course: the scanner detects and removes from the menu anything that might eat the customer. Gotta cover all the bases, right?
As genre savvy as Sydney is, you’d think she would have realized that those foul odors she smelt was nothing more than a group of Terserins engaged in a lively debate in their native tongue.
The real question is, how many independently evolved species even developed a sense of smell?
Must be super freaky for them “They can just detect almost any aerosolic substance at minimal levels, how’s that even possible, that’s crazy”
seeing smell developed multiple times independently on this planet alone the sense of smell is going to be a very common thing in the universe
Nothing on this planet developed indepentently. Everything on this planet developed in conjunction with Earth and with each other. A planet where there is a constant falling mist, or strong wind would probably not have animals with a strong sense of smell, but may have animals who can chemically analize things by touch.
It’s believed that eyes (as opposed to eyespots, which are found in many bacteria and can only detect light intensity) developed at least four times independently, based on fundamentally different eye designs: once in molluscs, once in vertebrates, and twice in arthropods.
(Squids, by the way, have the best design.)
“Klingons fart in airlocks”. A description from long ago.
The hat is a cultural thing of his species, right?
A species of cooks.
The hat is for his assistant. You’ve seen the movie ‘Ratatouille’ right?
Old US TV shows are just that popular.
I see Sydney is open to non-vegetarian fare as long as it’s artificial.
The commenters discused that a few strips ago.
The static medium of sequential illustrations doesn’t show the hand scanner
cycling though various hands/paws/tentecles on its screen.
I assumed it determined what she could eat.
If it identifies her as an Earthican she might be able to pay in USD.
Her immediate need would be a glass of water.
H2O shouldn’t be a problem in the food court.
I was going to comment on the 5-fingered humanoid interface as well. I’m guessing either it cycles through all options as you suggest, or it has a sensor that detects the nearest customer and switches to their appendage type.
If you look at the interface, there’s also a four fingered (in blue neon) and claw (in purple neon) option.
I think her view was mostly ‘non-cute’ foods. So Tribble-scargo would be right off the menu
Tribble is off my menu for purely practicsl reasons. They’re a species comprised almost entirely of hair.
Smells? Before that, there’s potential of incompatible breathing gas mixures to consider. Or should, except galactic humanoids seem to share a common respiratory metabolism.
I suppose that, very soon, Sydney will look at her “food” & ask herself the first question that all living entites must ask if they are to continue surviving: “Can I eat this, or will it eat me?”
Food that talks is not food.
Is that an Ur-quan from star-control in panel 2?
Indeed, he is selling the cuisine of Now and Forever. It dictates that since any sentient species is theoretically capable of eating an Ur-Quan, to prevent this, the Ur-Quan must ensure that all other sentient species are already too full and satisfied to consider a large green snack.
Hah hah!
SCII was such a good game…
If we assume that Earth is an example of the main progression of life development, then majority of planets would eventually have oxygen breathers for their higher life forms. This based on our own progression of simple primitive life forms existing until their waste product (oxygen) reaches the point that oxygen breathers evolve and eventually dominate. But at what percentage of oxygen, what other trace gasses, and what aversion to other gasses evolved on each biosystem, these things would make a good portion to need breathers and/or filters. With a large number of species in one place, you’d have a mix that would be ‘acceptable’ to a majority. That would probably be what you would keep as your primary atmosphere and the rest wear breathers or entire envirosuits. Food on the other hand…. Now you’re dealing with a lot more complex molecules that would make this kind of food court rather questionable. What is a vitamin to one species may be a deadly neuro-toxin to another. You could not even move from handling one dish to making the next without completely cleaning every surface and utensil.Consider Chocolate on Earth. We humans love it. It is toxic to dogs. Who are a LOT closer evolutionarily to us than the Ice Warriors of Mars. Many thing on Earth survive eating things that are deadly to other things on Earth. Cross-food contamination would be a huge issue in a spaceport. And remember what you are smelling, it tiny bits of what is emitting the oder. The very smell of your foods could be dangerous to another species.
Not to mention that proteins come in 2 mirrored versions: left handed and right handed.
As life on earth use left handed proteins, getting the same proteins but the right handed version will starve us to death.
I had forgotten all about chirality, been a long time since college chemistry class – here’s a quick, relevant article on space becoming left-handed which starts with your point about proteins needing to match.
You got me.
Don’t mix your spice chirality!
Go to the right cooking school!
I think I remember reading that chemists have determined that there are only, like, 4 or 5 environments that can physically support self-replicating molecules (which, when we get right down to it, is all that life is). One is O2-rich environments like ours, one which is Silicon based and I think requires extreme pressures, one which is basically found on the surfaces of Dwarf stars, and one that’s akin to Titan’s methane-based atmo, at extremely low temperatures.
… are those chemists related to Patent Office Commissioner Henry Ellsworth who said the quote later attributed to Charles Holland Duell, “Everything that can be invented has been invented”?
Sure, we can determine that these 4 or 5 environments can physically support self-replicating moleculesphysically support self-replicating molecules. However, we can NEVER say there can’t be something else, until we completely understand the universe and became gods.
Aspirin is toxic to cats, as is onion and garlic to both dogs and cats (causes anemia).
now, what I want to know, is who are these three caped baldies followed by a much bigger likely bodyguard.
Combat Nuns.
Sister Boom Boom
Sister May Hem
Sister Vicious
Perhaps they are the famed Nun Chukas. Beware lest they strike you in the balls.
Those three baldies look some what like the Guardians from the Green Lantern.
Too bad can’t get another angle view of this walk-way.
Tri-Nun and their mecha?
Looks like they’re wearing fishbowl helmets, they’re feeling very familiar to me…. I’ll research later.
And the bodyguard kinda makes me think of Killowog’s species.
Hmm, that makes me think of:
“When the Drink button was pressed it made an instant but highly detailed examination of the subject’s taste buds, a spectroscopic examination of the subject’s metabolism and then sent tiny experimental signals down the neural pathways to the taste centres of the subject’s brain to see what was likely to go down well. However, no one knew quite why it did this because it invariably delivered a cupful of liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.”
I see a 15 mile high statue of Sydney in the future.
I assume that Sydney either forgot that “Aliens don’t speak English” or she was just talking to the chef assuming he’d not understand her. Probably the former.
The Kyrxyrcyt don’t speak.
(Can’t or won’t? )
with that few vowels, wouldn’t you rather they not speak?
Reminds me of a race in the RPG SLA Industries. The Shaktar (or, more accurately, the Shktr)… they have no vowels in their language. Fortunately they don’t mind if the less “vocally talented” races add a few when trying to speak in Shaktarian.
I’d like to point out that the ’12 year old who hasn’t….’ smell now has a new, shorter and easy to remember name; ‘ComiCon’…
I did a blog post a few days ago that specifically mentioned our refined garbage guts, and how much of our food could be defined as “edibly spoiled”. I don’t think Sydney will have any problems finding something edible. Now meeting her taste and species requirements, well if it never moved does it still qualify as “animal” with or without a face?
On the gas breathing thing: depending on how far we want to go down the magitech rabbit hole, having different zones with specific gas mixtures, having nanobot clouds that follow individuals around and filter the air for them, or some kind of transdimensional bullshit where it phases you into the dimension that won’t make your eyes boil are all possibilities.
I’d expect that any meat would be vat based, if not simply some kind of algae with flavor and texture modifiers of some kind. While the station is far from small, I’d expect the vast bulk to be ‘useful’ stuff for a trading hub, old fashioned farming is very land hungry.
This is the part that we hope the unknown orb makes the newly introduced microbes don’t kill the hero.
Or, vat meat (that hand thing looks a lot like the thing at the QuikTrip in Wichita, Kansas. the cashier even acts the same. Unwilling to talk to you until you make an order using the thingy) might be tasteless like it is for our astronauts, since flavor (no ability to prove hypothesis) actually comes from the microbes, not the meat cells.
Then again Sydney, that might not be ‘requesting food’ but ‘offering yourself as it’. Did you see the stains on their apron?
I don’t think there are any microbes evolved to infect a human on this space station, since I assume no homing ever visited here yet
It pleases me greatly that you pointed this out. One of my pet peeves is people who don’t realize that human diseases (bacterial/viral ones anyway) actually have to be specically evolved to infect humans. Even on Earth we have a tremendous variety of immune systems, so out in space would actually be a pretty tough life for a disease.
Now, parasites on the other hand…
Isn’t it possible for a microbe to just be able to thrive in our biochemistry and our immune system, having never encountered it, has no resistance to it replicating unhindered and medical problems happening because of it?
…everything deep-fried in vat fat.
Must not be lunch rush there. Sparse crowd.
Maybe it’s always the equivalent of 2:45 am.
The Space Truckers come and go continously.
No Sun except for whatever that thing is under their feet.
However, I get the impression she’s on the wrong side of the portals.
Deus and Vale are in the upscale area for people with lots of money.
As Otyughs go, I am reminded of Slurr, from Yet Another Fantasy Gaming Comic:
https://yafgc.net/comic/0033-this-is-slurr/
And his more articulate, classier cousin, Ken:
https://yafgc.net/comic/0034-the-sophisticated-cousin/
^ This.
That scanner better also check the person’s credit rating. She still doesn’t have a way to pay. And I suspect this place knows how to deal with dine-and-dash.
If you can’t pay for your current meal you become someone else’s next meal.
That was my first thought, too. As for food compatibility, I’d a small stall like this might have a policy of “the buyer beware.”
“I’d think”
I’ll take a Good Burger, a Nuka Cola, and an order of curly fries.
I remember hearing one order: Large Fry, Large Sub, 6 of those giant cookies, ..oh, and a diet soda, gotta watch my figure
You’re saying it smells like roses?
Too many comments to verify if this has already been noticed. The stench probably isn’t helped by the biped species pissing on the wall in frame two.
He’s leaving a chemically coded message.
I prefer to think of it as “sending pee-mail”.
He is probably a Googley Mooglian then. Naturally, a great guy.
Gotta love the Starjammers reference in the commentary.
Well played, Dave
The hand panel is either a “biometric account access” for payment, or a food court scanner to ensure biocompatability and prevent poisoning customers.
Why not both?
“Upsettingly Dark Urine Your Drunk Roommate Accidentally Loosed All Over a Hotplate”?
That sounds suspiciously like a personal experience, Dave. Either that, or a webcomic reference that I don’t understand.
I agree. It’s far too specific.
I find this some of your funniest commentary yet, Dave! By “Durain,” I assume you meant “Durian.”
DaveB could have meant durain, but I suspect you’re correct that he was referring to the offensive durian fruit, which has the funnest description I’ve ever heard from a food writer: “its odor is best described as…turpentine and onions, garnished with a gym sock.”
It doesn’t taste bad, though.
No, it’s like alliums meet melon with slight nutty undertones, IIRC. Not my favourite weird fruit but certainly not an offensive flavour.
What are the odds that this is where she meets up with Deus? She needs a way to pay for this after all.
You need go no farther to understand the gist of this strip than the difference between Koreans and Americans. Koreans eat a lot of Kimchi… basically fermented cabbage, heavily spiced… To Americans, Koreans exude a rather pungent, stomach turning smell. God help you when they fart. Americans who take to eating Kimchi wind up smelling the same way. To Koreans, we smell like rotted meat. (One of our troops mentioned the stench once and a Korean soldier overheard and added his opinon of us.) So yeah… having experienced that myself, I can totally understand what Syd is going through right now… Oh… Bulgogi is good… Kagogi is bad, unless you like the idea of eating rover…
Sure there’s a difference in smell but it’s not that bad. That said I was only ever among the general public not in a crowded barracks full of soldiers.
Speaking of Kimchi, I would think that would be a Sydney favorite, since it’s vegetarian and super spicy.
I don’t know, maybe I’m just getting westernized lacklustre stuff but I’ve never had a hot kimchi. I have, however, found it an excellent way to make vegan burgers palatable, adding a much needed juicy component.
A friend of my mothers was Korean and made Kimchi in the traditional way (Burying it in jars in the back yard) and hers was pretty hot-spicy because she included Jalapenos in the mix (If Ghost peppers had been a thing at the time, she probably would have put some of them in there)
Even in Korea most kimchi wasn’t spicy. Granted every family has their own recipe so some of it might be but spicy kimchi wasn’t very common.
There was an older couple from an Eastern European country that shopped in my first store. They must have eaten garlic in every meal. You could smell them half the store away, and it wasn’t that small a grocery store. One day, I was driving to work in the summer, with the window down, and I started to smell them. Turns out they were almost a quarter mile ahead of me (by sight-lines). :Gag: