End of the AMA and A Visit to Prangins Museum

isit to a museum!

A few photos of a visit to the museum at Prangins, an old family manor, from many months ago:

The old school room!

I want this typewriter

And this desk!

Loom!

Cheeses of Switzerland

Apples of Switzerland

This was a temporary exhibit -- that looks like meat, but it's all knitted!

Dessert!

The litforum AMA is ending! I've compiled all the questions, both the official ones and all the ones the characters asked each other. I'll add them to the tab at the top of this blog soon.

Here are the official AMA questions to date:
Daily Question #1: What was your most recent lie?
Daily Question #2: What are you interested in that most people are not?
Daily Question #3: Who in your life has had the best and worst luck?
Daily Question #4: What aspect of daily life in your world would surprise someone from 100 years ago?
Daily Question #5: What's better broken than whole?
Daily Question #6: What would your perfect holiday be like?
Daily Question #7: Whose company do you despise?
Daily Question #8: What food have you never eaten but would really like to try?
Daily Question #9: What's the oldest thing you own?
Daily Question #10: What's been the happiest moment of your life so far?
Daily Question #11: Would you rather have your dream job, or find your true love?
Daily Question #12: If you could travel into space, would you?
Daily Question #13: Do you look forward to growing old?
Daily Question #14: Which would you choose: losing all of your memories to date, or never being able to recall new ones from now on?
Daily Question #15: If all your memories were erased, what kind of person would you be?
Daily Question #16: What’s the dumbest way you’ve ever been injured?
Daily Question #17: What’s your most unusual talent?
Daily Question #18: What’s the closest thing to real magic?
Daily Question #19: Is a hotdog a sandwich? Why or why not?
Daily Question #20: How do you feel about pineapple on pizza?
Daily Question #21: What would be the coolest animal to scale up to the size of a horse?

And here's my character Mawdlen, from London 1471, answering a few:

Daily Question #19: Is a hotdog a sandwich? Why or why not?
Daily Question #20: How do you feel about pineapple on pizza?

"You're goi
ng to need help for these two," Mercutio says, and whips his silver tray out from behind him.

As he swings it round and holds it flat before her, two items appear on its polished surface, two forms involving bread and sausage, and bread and–

"Cucumber. Trust me, it's going to be a delicacy round your way soon enough. Goes well with the tea, apparently."

"Cucumber and bread sounds good," she says. She picks up a flimsy triangle and takes a bite. "It's a bit...bland. And why is the bread so thin? And how did you get it so white?"

"Doesn't have to be that way, really." Mercutio gives the tray a little wobble. The first item sticks, but the cucumber one disappears and in its place appears half a loaf, stuffed with rounds of meat, slices of something red, even a wodge of cheese.

"Now that looks a rare feast! It'd be enough for dinner for the whole family!"

"Have a taste."

"All for me?" She sets the rest of the mushy white bread down and hoists the loaf with both hands. Takes an unmaidenly bite right from the centre, mouth filling with a delicious blend of spicy meat, soft bread, the juicy red things and a sauce she's never tasted before.

"Tomatoes. And yogurt," Mercutio tells her, pointing.

"Mmm." The words mean nothing, but the flavour is more than enough. She sets the feast down and wipes at her mouth with a bit of cloth off the tray.

"One more." Another wobble of the tray, and now there's a flat pocket of bread and inside are bits of white and green and orange, nothing she can identify, but presumably vegetables?

She bites in. "Tingly. Different. But good."

"I lied. One more. This is rye bread."

Wobble. Two slices in a flat oval shape. Butter. Strips of chicken meat. As she watches, Mercutio lays a slice of what he called tomato on top, sprinkles salt over all, then closes up the bread slices.

She takes a bite out of one end and half the insides ooze out the other end, and she goes to scoop them up with the bread, and crams more into her mouth. "Best one," she manages, between mouthfuls.

"Save some room!"

Wibble. Three triangles appear on the tray.

"This one first."

She lifts up the triangle Mercutio indicated. More bread, flat on the bottom, hot but not hot enough to keep her from holding it. She takes a bite. There's more tomato involved, now in a sort of paste. Seems to be the favourite of the future. Perhaps Santiago could import some, wherever it comes from.

Melted cheese burns the roof of her mouth.

"Good?" Mercutio asks, passing her a glass of water.

"It's all right."

"You don't like it? Well, try this one, with the knife."

"I thought you said this would help me with the questions," she mutters, setting her glass down and tearing off a bit of the second triangle with the knife. The thinnest one yet, hard to eat with the fingers, it has a sort of cream sauce, with ham and onions. "'S good," she says, and goes for a second bite.

"Wait, now try this one."

She peers at it dubiously. It also seems to have ham on it – what else could those pink squares be made of? – as well as a quantity of yellow triangles. Well, it's the last one, save for that forlorn sausage on the other end of the tray.

She picks it up and takes a bite. "Ow! What are these yellow things? They're sharper than lemons!"

"Pineapple."

"Pine Apple? But they're not sour." She plucks one off and tastes it again. "They're good. But they don't mix well with the cheese and tomato."

"Well, that answers the second question. You can think about what you'd like best on a pizza, later. For now..." He spins the tray. "This is a hot dog."

As she watches, he takes the item, now directly before her, and doctors it. Some red sauce, yellow sauce, white sauce, pickles and onions – at last, something familiar – then he stops. "Forgot the cheese. Oh well, not important."

He hands her the hot dog and she takes a bite, swallows hard. "Is all the sauce meant to hide how gummy the meat is?"

Mercutio laughs. "Sort of. So. All those other things, before the pizza, were sandwiches. Reckon this is a sandwich?"

"It's meat in bread. Why not?"

"The shape, for one. A sandwich has a top and bottom."

"So does this, if you hold it sideways. Why is the bread so pasty?"

Wibbly wobbly. All traces of the previous foods disappear, and all that's left is the half of the chicken–butter–salt sandwich.

"You can finish that one if you like."

She grabs for it eagerly and asks around the next nouthful, "where do tomatoes come from?"

"Ask one of the others." Mercutio wipes the empty tray with a cloth. "They'll all know, and love 'em, except for Arkanthia, who won't touch the stuff."

And with another wibble wobble of the tray, he's gone.

How do you feel about pineapple on pizza?