Complex Numbers

Fonio

Entry #7 for the November edition of "Journalistic Intentions"  [18+]

Fonio  

I'm moderately adventuresome when it comes to food, in case you haven't noticed. While I won't try the truly weird stuff, whenever something new comes along that's not, like, mud or bugs or something else with a high grossness factor, I'll usually give it a shot.

It took me a while to try Ethiopian food. If you've already clicked on the link, you'll see that fonio comes from about as far away from Ethiopia as it's possible to get while still being on the same continent, but I'm getting to a point here, so bear with me. So. Ethiopian food. When I was young, Ethiopia had a pretty well-known famine going on. There were all kinds of concerned PSAs on television with malnourished kids who had flies buzzing around them and whatnot. Very sad. And it turned out that, if I remember correctly, any food aid delivered to the country was intercepted by corrupt officials and rarely got to the kids with the bloated abdomens.

So when I first heard of an Ethiopian restaurant, I was like, "What, you go in and sit there with empty plates and watch rich people eat?"

But it turned out, when I finally went, they have an intriguing cuisine with a lot of tradition behind it -- as I would hope, since Ethiopia is probably one of the cradles of humanity -- but it also turned out that I didn't like it at all.

Does this mean I don't like any food from Africa? No, probably not. Africa's a big continent with lots of different cultures with foods I cerainly haven't heard of, just like I never heard of fonio before seeing it on the prompt list. And apparently fonio is supposed to be even "better" than quinoa, whatever that means. Also probably easier to pronounce. What is it with these grains and their nonstandard orthography for names, anyway? I couldn't find a source for how to pronounce fonio. I'm nearly certain, though, that it's not phony-o, which is what the plain reading of that word would be. Oh, no, we can't have that; it's gotta be a big secret, so people in the know can look down on us ignorant slobs, like with quinoa. "Yeah, I think I'll try the quin-o-a." Sneer. "You mean the keen-wa?" "Well, how in the fuck was I supposed to know how to pronounce it? Is your menu audio? No, it's got words written on it, and words are supposed to be spelled something like they're pronounced, unless you're French." "Ahem, anything else, sir?" "Yeah, lemme have the gee-oh-duck." Sneer.

No, I'm betting the pronunciation is like "phone-yo." But I'm not taking actual bets. For all I know it's pronounced like "asterisk."

Apparently, it's gluten-free, which to me is a major downside. I don't have celiac, so I like my damn gluten, thanks. But that's not a dealbreaker, unless I'm someplace where they're gushing about being gluten-free, in which case I'd leave and find a baguette somewhere made with actual wheat flour. So yeah, I'd like to give it a try, but only if smug trendy foodies who would gloat.

Best of all, though, you can even make beer out of it,   and I'm absolutely down for trying that. At least once. I've had beer made with non-barley grains, and some of it doesn't completely suck.

Now, let's try making whiskey out of it, too. That's healthy, right?