Thursday Things: Sword of Egypt Edition
26 September 2024. Vol 6 No 39. By Dan McGirt. #268
Thursday Things is here! This week we obsess about avocados again, and cut our way through history with an ancient Egyptian sword.
Wait, did I forget my sword? Photo by Simon Berger on Unsplash
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Avocado Face-Off
Sometimes we get where we’re going by an indirect route. Today is one of those days.
“I’m going to pass on this project. It seems a little out there.” — said Nicolas Cage never.
Was there ever a more improbable action hero than Nicolas Cage? I’m hard pressed to think of one. While some of his more outré arthouse films are way too out there for me, I am a fan of cheesy Nic Cage action flicks: sky high scenery-chewing Con Air, off the books James Bond sequel The Rock, almost educational National Treasure — and, of course, the sublimely improbable John Woo-helmed, John Travolta-co-starring, identity swapping cheese platter of over the top goodness that is Face/Off.
What does any of this have to do with avocados?
It’s the slicing. I’m getting a little stream of consciousness here. Just go with it.
Last week we featured Chipotle’s avocado-slicing robot that can peel the average avo better, faster, and more efficiently than any human kitchen line worker.
Or can it? Are we to surrender forever the tactile delights of hands-on food preparation to our uncaring mechanical overlords? Is there no latter day John Henry of Guac to challenge the soulless slice-o-matic to a duel of deft de-pitting?
Perhaps there is.
Thursday Things Happy Subscribers are typically a shy lot, leaving the comments section filled with digital tumbleweeds, but last week’s comment mailbag brought an epic epistle from Happy Subscriber J.Q., detailing her “super-sophisticated, top-secret—🤫—technique for getting every last bit of mono-saturated goodness out of the wiliest of ‘cados.”
Take that, Guacbot 3000!
Before we get into it, a little research reveals a healthy debate regarding how best to cut an avocado. Most of these arguments, however, rest on an assumed fact that is not always in evidence — certainly not when I’m cutting an avocado. That is the assumption that you are only going to use part of the avocado and therefore must concern yourself with how best to store and preserve the remainder for later.
This is not an issue for me because when I cut up an avocado I eat it right away. Why wouldn’t I?
I halve my avocados equatorially, pop the little wooden ball out, half the halves into quarter sections, remove the peels from the quarters, and devour.
Apparently this is the minority opinion on how to do it, though it does have its advocates:
Why You Should Slice Your Avocados the ‘Wrong’ Way
I’m not exactly sure why splitting an avocado in half from top to tail became the way to cut into the fruit (my guess is symmetry), but if you’re only eating half or a part of it, there’s a better way. Under normal circumstances, avocados ripen from stem-end to the blossom-end. Instead of slicing from the top to the bottom and getting a hunk of fruit that’s only half-ripe, switch the angle. Cut horizontally instead of lengthwise, slicing off only the top. This part is completely ripe, and ready for your salad, sandwich, or dressing.
An even more avant garde approach is to slice the avocado into rings:
The Other, Smarter (?) Way to Cut an Avocado
Well, it turns out that there's an easier way to reduce the amount of green flesh that browns—no lemon juice, onion, or olive oil required—but it requires forgetting everything you've ever learned about
lifeavocados.Instead of slicing your avocado down the center, slice it crosswise, to make avocado rings.
I considered this method an abomination of nature until I could no longer argue with the evidence of its value:
These proposed benefits include less browning, easier portioning, increased spoonability, and greater ease of cubing and mashing the avocado's squishy green flesh.
I call this the John Woo method.
Which brings us to what seems to be the sophisticated, preferred and elegant method championed by Happy Subscriber J.Q. and avocado experts everywhere: the end-to-end cut.
Per our correspondent:
This insider-secret requires a deft hand and superb eye-hand coordination, so if that’s not on your personal menu, don’t try this at home, folks. Go to a friend’s house.
Simple Start Tips:
Step 1: Find your “Goldilocks Zone” avocado [not too blech-y & firm, not too icky & brown—juuuust right!] and wash it thoroughly. Duh.
Step 2: Grab a good chef’s knife or, better yet, treat yourself to a Santoku blade—you’ll never go back!—and carefully create a lovely little “elliptical orbit” [that’s lengthwise, for those among us whose reference point for “elliptical” is the mind-numbing trainer at the gym] and be sure to push in a bit as you channel your inner surgeon (again, I refer you to Goldilocks) and gently but firmly begin to create two “halves,” one of which will have an adorable wooden ball sitting like a yolk in the middle of a hard-boiled egg. Surprise! A toy! A choking hazard! Choose your own adventure. But save that little ball—don’t play fetch with your teacup chihuahua. [Trust me, they can’t get their teensy jaws around it, which is obviously amusing and cruel in equal hysterical parts…you may be able to surmise which side of the fence I fall on re: this neat game.]
Step 3: After you’ve “shimmied” your sharp blade [a shiv has been known to suffice for our incarcerated fellow Haas addicts] round and round for a few fun elliptical orbits, you should definitely now have these two aforementioned halves in your hot little (or not-little) hands…
Go to last week’s comment section for the rest!
There are four more equally entertaining and informative steps to the process. I’ll probably stick with my hack approach (or, as I like to call it, the Nicolas Cage Method) but feel free to choose the avocado slicing technique that best meets your needs.
Lost and Found: 1 Egyptian sword
I’m pretty sure this is the opening scene of a fantasy novel. Or perhaps a romantasy:
Sword with pharaoh’s mark found in Egypt, still shimmering 3,000 years later
More than 3,000 years ago, a long sword emblazoned with the insignia of Ancient Egypt’s Ramses II — the most powerful pharaoh of the era — was set down in a mud hut somewhere in the Nile Delta.
A team of archaeologists digging up an ancient fort in the area spotted it and cleaned it, finding a shimmering bronze blade with the intricacies of an ornamental cartouche — the personal emblem used by the pharaohs — still visible. It had not lost its reflective shine under the layers of rust and grime accumulated over millennia.
That’s a +1 magic sword at minimum, maybe +2. Roll for a Lore check.
It’s a “very striking and a truly remarkable find,” said Elizabeth Frood, an Oxford University Egyptologist who was not involved in the dig, in an email Thursday.
The archaeologists said this month they had uncovered the weapon among a cache of ancient Egyptian treasures, dug out of the Tell Al-Abqain ancient fort around 30 miles southeast of Alexandria by archaeologists from Egypt’s Antiquities Ministry.
So not a tomb? Whew! That makes it much less likely the sword is cursed.
According to a statement from the ministry, the fort served as a critical outpost guarding Ancient Egypt’s northwestern frontiers in its New Kingdom era, considered a golden cultural period of the civilization known for its political stability, military might and monumental architecture.
Though an exciting find to us in 2024, this was no run-of-the mill sword even 3000 years ago:
The fact that the sword was uncovered in a working setting — rather than inside a tomb — makes it unusual, Frood said.
“For an object to bear the cartouches of Rameses II would suggest to me that it belonged to someone of relatively high rank,” she said. “To be able to display such an object, even though it would have been presumably in a scabbard, was a marker of status and prestige.”
Browsing around interesting items in the news is one way I get ideas and inspiration for stories to write. Granted I already have more ideas than I’ll ever write, which I why I don’t mind using them for Thursday Things fodder.
This sword find suggests all sorts of dramatic possibilities. How did this high status sword come to be where it was found? What tales do the facts suggest? And how quickly can we leave the facts behind and run wild with imagination?
According to the article the excavated fort was on what was then the western border of the Egyptian kingdom, and would be part of the defenses against marauding Libyan tribes and the so-called “sea peoples” (who, spoiler alert, seem to have overthrown a number of Bronze Age civilizations before vanishing into the mists of history themselves, though Ramses II claims to have soundly defeated them.).
Was an Egyptian prince in disfavor with the pharaoh banished to this frontier fort? Was there a romance involved? Court intrigue? A desperate battle against an invading sea people horde?
Does grasping the blade and reading its inscription transport our modern day Egyptologist heroine to the distant past? Or summon our handsome hypothetical Egyptian prince to the present?
Some historians believe Ramses II was the pharaoh from the story of Moses. Perhaps this is the legendary Sword of Moses that I just made up and becomes the object of an Indiana Jones style adventure quest. Our fictional version of the artifact could have been found in the 1930s instead of the present day, or any other era we choose.
Then there is the reincarnation trope. Add mummies, cults, undead wizards, scheming priests — the options are endless! What story would you tell, using this sword as a hook? Let me know in the comments.
This would be great for slicing avocados. Or opening champagne bottles. Image: © Courtesy of Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities via MSN.com
Thank you for reading!
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