Snow Melt

Creation Saturday: Watch your P's and Q's

It's Creation Saturday! The November 16, 2013 prompt for "30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS"  is
Make up your own stories for the origin of common expressions like "keep your fingers crossed," "shooting fish in a barrel," etc.

The term "Watch your P's and Q's" is a shortened version of the term "Watch your Peacocks and Quails". This term was coined by the infamous French Chef Adolphe Bastien Cuisine. Chef Cuisine specialized in creating exotic fowl dishes and the more exotic the bird the better because the more creative he became. One day, Chef Cuisine was challenged to a cook-off by the equally infamous American Chef Caleb Damian Gastronomy. Chef Gastronomy specialized in creating game fowl dishes and the more common the game bird the more creative he became.

In this cooking competition each chef was given two birds, which each one had to prepare using the same recipe for each bird. Chef Cuisine was allowed to chose one bird while Chef Gastronomy could chose the other. Chef Cuisine chose a peacock because it was his favorite exotic bird and Chef Gastronomy chose a quail because it was his favorite game bird. Chef Gastronomy took two birds, which he assumed was a quail and a peacock and went to one kitchen, while Chef Cuisine took the remaining birds to another kitchen. They were locked in their respective kitchens for three hours preparing their birds. At the end of three hours, the smoke alarms in each kitchen went off and, after the ceiling fans cleared the smoke, the chefs came carrying their culinary creations.

Chef Cuisine placed his birds on the judges table and waited for them to taste his creative effort. All the judges ate, smiled, and ask "Chef Cuisine, how did you get the peacock to have the same sweet and nutty flavor as the quail." He was a bit confused by that remark because, as everyone knows peacocks (no matter how their cooked) have a ducky chicken flavor, but he decided to hold his tongue until the judges tasted Chef Gastronomy's creations.

The judges tasted Chef Gastronomy's birds and ask "Please, tell us Gastronomy how you got the quail to have the chicken and duck flavor of a peacock." Gastronomy only shrugged.

"I think I can solve the mystery," growled Cuisine. "Unless I'm very much mistaken when Chef Gastronomy pick up the dressed birds he picked up both peacocks, which left me with the common quail."

"So," said Gastronomy, "there's nothing we can do about it now."

"We can repeat this challenge," Cuisine said with a great big grin, "but this time we need to watch our peacocks and our quails!"