Just Like Home – Page 1041

31 thoughts on “Just Like Home – Page 1041

  1. At least it didn’t taste like chicken…

  2. Nice digs. Could use more seating.

  3. Pretty sure I don’t want to know what they’re using for dipping butter Although, goat’s or mare’s milk wouldn’t bother me.

    After reading the first text bubble, I was already assuming it was someone else in the tribe wondering what sort of snake meat they’d brought back. Bit of a shame to take a beast like that out and not salvage meat and other body parts for use. Also, thinking upon it now, there are a lot of dragon-like creatures in this world. I wonder how closely they’re related.

    1. It could be that there was too much sudrac for them to carry back, so Zonn may have sent out a team to do some butchering to bring back (which would take some time). Or there just wasn’t anything left that could have been usable. Mentl did a real (musical) number on that thing…

  4. So, to reward the heroic newcomers, the king pulled a fuvor?

    Oh, did I mention I love Chera? Well, her “Usually on a corpse” offhand comment makes it worth mentioning again.

    Also, I like that giant bugs taste like lobster. Unless I be mistaken, a fine treat. (In my native France they are considered as such, but, y’know.)

    1. Fun fact – Lobsters were once regarded as bugs and considered practically unfit to eat.

      1. I was about to say the same thing, Larel. They’re still not kosher, not that Mentl evidently cared.

    2. Oh, another Frenchman.

      Je commencais à me demander si j’étais le seul. ^^

  5. Yeah, lobster! Nice treat. As for the ‘dragon-snake’, perhaps they already know the meat is toxic? in some case (in fantasy), meat from acid/flame/toxic spitting monster does not resist the death of the animal. Perhaps it was the same here? Or perhaps Mentl just crisp it out too much for being edible….

    1. Given that the last page showed flames coming from rather far back on the Sudrac’s tail, I would not be surprised if he carbonized most of it.

  6. I’ve eaten Rattlesnake before and it doesn’t taste like chicken. Quail or pheasant maybe, but not chicken. An acid spitting dragon/worm thing wouldn’t be particularly tasty I should think. Yuck! It’s good there’s a healer in the group. Zona’s burn looked nasty. I burnt my forearm on a hot manifold once and it looked a lot like that.

  7. Interesting; do they have trade partners for getting all that glass? Or did they make the glass for those windows themselves?

    Fun fact: Desert sand is usually not the same thing as glass-grade silica, in most instances. Silica sand for glassmaking tends to come from specific deposits, with most manufacturers preferring a source that is 99.5%+ pure silica sand. Other items, like ash, lime, and various minerals ground up fine, can be added to the glass to change its color, its melting & sintering temperature, etc, etc. You can find high-quality silica sand in a desert, but it usually has to be from a specific deposit strata.

    1. Might not be glass at all, but bone, (or bug).
      Or even muslin.

      I’m pretty sure bone “windows” were a thing, and hanging damp curtains in the window for air conditioning is still sometimes done.

      1. Sorry. Not bone. Horn.
        Horn windows.

        1. Thank you, I forgot about horn as a possibility! …Or maybe it’s bug wings? If the pillbug-like creatures get up to the size of a pig, well, pigs are HUGE (particularly medieval pigs; most people don’t realize that most of the pigs you see on television shows & ads tend to be from among the smaller breeds). Mating season wings would therefore be pretty big, fairly transparent, would come with ‘decorative” veins like stained glass, like what we can see in the first panel… Or even just peeling off a thin enough layer of chiton might work…or they could be sheets of mica…which frankly would be way easier than glass, because silica sand requires exceptionally hot temperatures to melt it and make it work…

        2. Those hot temperatures would require a LOT of fuel, which in a desert environment means wood is difficult to come by, wasteful to turn into charcoal without good reason, and unless there’s natural gas or oil, or something with a heck of a lot of bodyfat to burn…which isn’t likely in a hot climate…

          Yes, I do this for a living. I actually try to reason through why things could or could not be done under X or Y settings & restrictions. Ancient Egyptians came up with glass because they had all the trees of the Nile Delta, plus silica sand, plus ash and other materials (natron salts, magnesium salts, etc) to help temper the glass, making it easier to craft…but horn and mica could also be available…

    2. Very pure silica sand is also what is used in fracking provided the grains are rounded enough. Mount Simon, Wonewoc, Jordan and St Peter Sandstones in Wisconsin and Minnesota are the largest sources.

  8. What I’m most interested in are the fruits in the bowl, next to the “Fuvor” meat. Fruit trees are often finicky, and needs lots of water to produce a good sized fruit, which those seem to be. There are a number of ways to get that for them. One wonders how they did so.

    1. Maybe a nearby oasis? Perhaps they’re sweetbreads, and not fruits at all?
      Maybe they dug a stepwell, and irrigating a handful of trees seemed more feasible than flood-irrigating a few fields of barley?

    2. Some cacti produce fruits and are unsurprisingly drought-tolerant (eg prickly pears, dragonfruit). You also get some very drought resistant fruit trees (eg pomegranate) and shrubs (eg goji berries). However, it’s also not unlikely that there would be an oasis or two somewhere.

    3. I live in Nevada – as in, the Mojave desert. There are indeed fruit bearing plants native to the Mojave desert. Cactus, of course – “prickly pear” cacti that produce the delicious cactus fruit you can buy in a supermarket if you’re lucky. And “nopales,” which is the big paddle shaped “leaves” that make up the body of the prickly pear cactus and can also be eaten. Other cacti as well, some of which are known for having water-rich flesh that can quench thirst, others that produce berries. There’s chia sage, there’s mesquite (which produces bean pods) , there’s pine trees (which produce pine nuts, which are not just edible but fairly expensive to buy in a supermarket and yet are essential to making classic Italian style pesto sauce: pine nuts, olive oil, garlic, parmesan, and LOTS of freshly chopped basil). And of course the classic yucca plants, which provide sources of food and also hygienic products (soap and shampoo). And then there’s squash and gourds, also an American native crop. And bAnd that’s just the Mojave; there’s also fruit growing in deserts on the other side of the ocean. Some examples of desert fruits include: Figs, almonds, pomegranates… my father has a couple of pomegranate trees in his backyard. They tend to produce vast quantities every year, though last year was a bit of a disappointment.

  9. Can I assume ‘Jeevik’ is the guy with the water pitcher? And if so, I have to ask is it a version of ‘Jeeves’?

    1. Knowing JED’s sense of humor (and since the Fry version showed up in Mentl’s castle), I’d vote YES.

      1. I zoomed in, and the face does not look dissimilar. I would not be surprised if that was the base face used to model “Stephen Fry”.

  10. Dumb question, If Mentl is Jewish, how does he know what lobster tastes like?

    1. You can be Jewish and not necessarily follow every little dietary requirement. Surprisingly, Jews are every bit as much individuals as anyone else, and there is plenty of room for interpretation. Discussion, if you will. Perhaps even heated argument. I know. I know. Hard to imagine …..

      1. Dinosaur would taste like chicken.
        Or like any other bird, because all birds are dinosaurs, the way all humans are mammals.
        Really, bugs are fairly closely related to lobsters, so that taste isn’t particularly surprising.

      2. A friend told me that the first time she ever had shrimp cocktail was at a Bar Mitzvah – and the (Reform) Rabbi had a big plateful. So, yeah.

      3. What 3Xp4t said, yes. I’m Jewish – but I don’t keep very kosher. I try to, but I wasn’t exactly raised to be. My mother is very aggressively against anyone, even G-d Himself, telling her what she can or cannot eat. Needless to say, she has health issues as a result.

        There’s even subgroupings within Judaism as a whole, ranging from Reform Jews (who generally only eat kosher food when they’re attending temple prayer) to the Ultra-Orthodox (who keep kosher, keep all the other rules as well, and tend to look down on all the others for not being Jewish enough). And interpretation is indeed key: the word “Rabbi” doesn’t translate as “priest,” but as “scholar” or “student.” A Rabbi isn’t supposed to be a religious authority so much as someone who is especially knowledgeable in the scriptures on account of studying them. The Passover service involves reading from the “Hagganah,” which (among other things) relates how four ancient Rabbis got together and stayed up all night arguing over minutae in the Book of Exodus regarding the Departure from Egypt, until their students told them it was time for morning prayers.

        1. What if a doctor says to her, with undeniable proof and evidence, that her eating certain foods will be harmful to her?
          How would she react, if I’m not prying too much?

    2. In 37 years of working with many Jewish people and several of living in a largely Jewish neighborhood, I’ve seen all kinds of levels of observance from very loose Reform to very strict Orthodox Hassidic.

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