Good Lord That's a Good Gourd
This Food Tastes Funny
(SoCC Puppet or “Stream of Consciousness Creative Puppet” is a writing exercise/challenge where I will be giving myself an hour to write about something random. I will try my best not to edit as I write or plan anything ahead. The ultimate goal is to trust my knowledge of structure and potentially enter a flow state. I will return to the piece the next day and allow for very minor edits to make the piece more accessible for the reader.)
There are many things you can do with a gourd. You can eat it or you can place it somewhere as a decoration or you can hollow it out… Okay three - there are three things you can do with a gourd. For those of you not in the know, a gourd is a type of vegetable. It can be a pumpkin or a squash or a zucchini or… Three things. Okay, a gourd can be three things with a whole bunch of variations of those three things, (spaghetti squash, calabacitas, Martin gourd, etc.). How many of these gourds are poisonous? I have no idea. To be honest, I’m not the biggest fan of gourds, so I would have been a very bad food taster back in the day.
Did you know that every single thing that has ever been found to be poisonous was only found because someone ate it and died? That is a 100% fact. Not that the first person to discover the poison did so by eating it, but there has to have been someone who ate something that was already found to be poisonous by touch. There are some plants that can irritate the skin but won’t kill you on skin contact alone. You’d have to eat it for your throat to close up in order to die. There are also some poisons that will kill you if it enters your bloodstream, but not be able to seep through your skin, such as some venoms. I wonder if there are poisons that won’t kill you if swallowed but will definitely kill you if it gets in your blood. I vaguely remember snake handlers drinking venom and not dying. Maybe that’s because the toxicity is neutralized by stomach acids? I’ll have to find a snake handler church or a scientist to see what’s up with that.
I’m thinking about this because I was wondering what it might have been like to be a royal poison tester back in the day. I wonder if it ever really happened, as it is a common TV trope. I think the idea of someone coming to every one of the king’s meals and tasting everything first is a cool idea. And, I wonder if I would have taken that job if I were alive back then? I suppose it would have to depend on the year and the conditions we were living in. If life was an absolute hell hole and I was forced to eat hay and beetles all day, then maybe I’d take the gig? Palace food - even in the worst of times - had to have been pretty good in perspective. Everyone knows the king has a poison tester, so instances of attempted poisoning should have been rare based on the unlikelihood of it succeeding. If you kill a taster, the king won’t be dead, and you’ll put the entire kitchen under suspicion. It’s a bad plan.
So, maybe it wouldn’t be too crazy to have the job. You have to wonder about all the wild stuff that wouldn’t be available to peasants either. Let’s place our time in medieval England. It’s not like the peasants were always eating moldy bread and pigeons. I bet they had a pretty consistent diet that even allotted for the occasional splurging - like a goose on a special holiday. It would definitely be a step up to be a poison tester, but the real prize would be the exotic treats from countries far and wide. There might be delicious baked items from France. Maybe the kitchen used some spices from India, if they had contact at that time. Even if they didn’t have more exotic foods, you can bet your ass they were eating one of those huge, roast pigs with an apple in its mouth. The point is, it wouldn’t be too bad to be a poison tester since the food would be good and the poisonings few and far between. Of course, no one poisons a monarch to just give them diarrhea, so your first poisoning may be your last.
Of course, if you do wish, you could attempt to poison the king yourself. You would either have to comfortable with dying so someone could take over the monarchy that you approve of, or you’d use a slow acting poison and simply try and vomit it out before it kills you, but not before the king eats. You would have to know an exceptional amount of knowledge about poisons to get it right, and I’m not sure people who worked with poisons were smart enough to be like, “you need this many milligrams of nightshade per every kilogram of the poisoned person's body weight…” It’s just not that scientific down in your hamlet. We can do that nowadays, like when Gus did it to that cartel guy on Breaking Bad, but that’s TV. I don’t know of a real-life example where someone has been crazy enough to try mass poisoning a group and themselves and still lived.
Speaking of poisons, let’s talk about liquor. I’m pretty sure you can make alcohol out of most things with a high sugar content. I’m pretty sure my pre diabetic ass might mess you up, if my decaying body had enough time to ferment. I’m just kidding, please don’t experiment with that. I would make terrible cannibal wine. Pumpkins, however, seem to have the goods that can turn into wine. I’m sure you couldn’t do it with a zucchini, and such a thing would indeed be an abomination. Pumpkins do have a decent sugar content and allowing one to ferment into wine seems to be a thing people do. I’ve never tried it myself, but I’ve had artificially flavored Pumpkin Pie vodka, back when liquor manufacturers were playing god with hardcore flavor infusions, and I thought it was pretty okay. How much different can pumpkin wine taste? Well, considering they are two wildly different things… probably very different. Still, it might be kind of cool to go on a wine tasting tour one day, where I try all manners of different wines made from something other than traditional grapes. I do enjoy wine, so it makes sense that I’d try and broaden my horizons a bit. One day, I might work myself up to a gourd wine. I’m not really a big fan of gourds, but if they can get me trashed in the middle of the day while dressed all fancy during a tour of a gourd winery, then I’m willing to taste that poison.