Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Wart Hog on Toast

It appears that warthogs are not allowed on the menu at our house.  This week I discovered the Russian’s animal eating threshold though a comically bizarre communications breakdown. 

One day for lunch I made him a grilled cheese sandwich and I had tuna salad on toast.  As always, I was quizzed beyond reason as to my menu selection while I was making up our lunch and I told him repeatedly that it was tuna on toast which resulted in him becoming increasingly appalled and irate.  I noted his strange response but chose to ignore it.  After we sat down to eat, he pointed in disgust to my plate and asked “You eat tuna kata?”  For the first time clearly heard what he was saying, but still failed to understand.  I, oh so wrongly, assumed that he thought I said tuna on kasha.  Kasha is Russian for porridge/oatmeal and the thought of tuna on oatmeal is unappealing.  I continued to be intrigued by how repulsed he was by my lunch, until he got down from the table and came back with the Lion King movie box and held it up to my face, pointed to Pumba the warthog and asked in total indignation, “You eat Tuna Kata?????” 

It was only then, that my light bulb came on.  Dennis loves the Lion King movie and thinks the wart hog character is named Hakuna Matata.  His Swahili isn’t good so it comes out “Tuna Kata”. 

The poor little guy thought I was eating wart hog for lunch!  It took a while to convince him I was eating fish and not wart hog. Fortunately that won’t cramp my culinary style all that much.

2 comments:

Jules W said...

You ate PUMBA!?!?!?! No wonder you got horrible looks!! The Russian is a smart kid!!
Can't believe I only found your blog now! awesome :)

Anonymous said...

This is just adorable! Gotta love misinterpretation sometimes! haha