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The tale of the Lady's Fingers!

So another day comes to an end...but am feeling rather euphoric today...crazy kickass workout session tends to do that after fat ass lazy weekend. Today was a happy memory lane kind of day too...so here's what happened...
Once upon a time three FOBs (to paraphrase my email to other concerned parties...and FOB is fresh off the boat for those STILL not in the know) in PA, USA somewhere were enjoying frozen and thawed tiramisu...as general reading material, we turned the box around to find the ingredients only to discover an astonishing truth..tiramisu contains lady's finger.
Now, we were pretty savvy FOBs mind you. We knew of okra and eggplant and wrenches and the lack of fortnights in the land of the brave and free...but here was truly proof on printed packaging that lady's finger was known (we did ponder why they hadn't written okra but didn't waste too much time on that lead)...but how had they managed to disguise the sliminess and strong flavour of okra/bhindi/LF? Ah well, will wonders never cease, we thought, and put away that piece of trivia for later...

Fast forward a year or so...zoom into a lonely lab office and witness a grad student from India trying to make sense of what a grad student visiting from Slovakia was trying to say... "have you ever eaten okra? It's quite slimy..yada yada yada... and I've never had this weird veggie before... blah blah blah..." mostly polite disinterest...

I beg you will stay with me and watch for another short fast forward a couple of weeks... said graduate students are found in same situations... until I hear the words "tiramisu recipe"...
And so of course I beg to know since I love the dessert with the craving of the newly initiated...and so the list of ingredients begins until she says...ta-dah you guessed it...lady's fingers...
I pounced on it of course..."how come you said you had never seen okra just two weeks ago and now you have an authentic recipe for tiramisu where it's the major ingredient?" Her face ought to have been a dead giveaway..."what do you mean okra(spoken with sweet east european accent and shake of head)?" she says. "Well you know...lady's fingers...there's okra in your recipe..." After a bit of handwaving, poor sentence construction in English and much shaking of the head I figured out that lady's fingers were dainty pieces of pastry that one dunked into tiramisu and didn't grow on a plant in tropical countries!

After a lot of chagrined laughing at myself and few phone calls to the two other misguided souls (of whom I am discovering there were many) we of course went on to eat many a tiramisu..from that day on though every time I passed the baking aisle the lady's fingers were hanging in bags...just there to mock me..."go on they said" "pick us up. We're not slimy we're not"...It wouldn't have been nicer to show themselves a year earlier, would it?

But why the memory you ask? Why subject the world to a post about something so bizarre and mildly funny only to those involved...ah well...bear with me and fast forward a decade or so (ok so maybe longer)...
today's major news story in the journal of food science...
http://www.medindia.net/news/bhindi-can-make-your-ice-cream-last-longer-140338-1.htm

I KID YOU NOT!!! Journal of Food science..Not the Onion!!!
Now if it had been "bhindi makes tiramisu taste better" justice would've been served...cold, frozen and 15 years late!!!

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