Sweet potato, for those of you not from NZ. I wouldn't usually go all regional dialect on you, but "kumara" alliterates so much better than "sweet potato".
Thursday, April 20, 2006
Kumara like to cuddle too
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7 Comments:
Awww, how cute! :)
I think I am going to name my child Kumara.
Shrinky -- you need a shrink :)
I had this weird experience when I first came to Australia and bought sweet potato at the supermarket. At the checkout the girl asked me what they were, and without thinking I said "kumara". She spent ages trying to find "kumara" on her price list, and then called her supervisor to come tell her the price.
The supervisor was equally baffled, and then I suddenly made the connection of "Originally Maori word: not likely to be in use elsewhere on the planet." And then had to rack my brains for what the rest of the world must call them.
I understand that the Maori Battalion used ordinary Maori as code during the War. The Germans were unable to crack it. :-)
I didn't know that, Grace. That's really neat.
Have you read about the Navajo code talkers in WWII? That's really interesting too, and along the same lines, except that the US army actually took Navajo people along specially to be radio operators for that purpose.
Something that would never work now in these days of immediate googlability. Unless you kidnapped people from an unknown tribe deep in Brazil or something.
weirdly sainsburys (uk) have started selling proper kumara (pinky flesh rather than orange). Its actually called kumara on the pack and is imported from NZ. stupidly expensive though.
Nice. You can sometimes find those ones here, but not very often, and also twice the price of these fake ones :)
What I really miss is kumara chips. The fish & chip shop down the road from where I used to live in NZ did great kumara chips for the same price as ordinary ones. I haven't seen those here at all. Or any decent fish and chip shops, either, for that matter. They all charge about $9 for a scoop of chips and a fish, and the fish is usually cooked all healthily and from an identifiable species. And they often include salad, too, the freaks.
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