My family enjoys a Danish dessert called rødgrød. I don’t know why or how we got hooked on it, but I’m pretty sure my Grandma would make it and I know that my mom and aunt like to make it, too. Since we aren’t Danish and don’t actually know how to make it, we buy mixes from the store—Junket’s Danish Dessert. The Junket brand originated in Denmark so we feel pretty safe that our Danish Dessert comes with an authentic Danish taste. We drizzle it on cake, mainly, but it’s good plain, too.
I know you can buy it in Utah, but I don’t think you can buy it in California because I remember taking my Auntie Arlene boxes of it. I can’t remember if you can get it in Alberta, because I remember my mom being really excited about being able to buy it in Utah.
She even sent me a couple of boxes to enjoy while in Egypt and last night Andrew made up a batch.
He had never had it before marrying me, but he likes it. He had never made it before, so after dumping in the powder and adding the water and stirring it over the burner for a while he began to get a little nervous.
“Ummm…what’s supposed to happen?”
“It should get clear, kind of like instant gravy…”
“Really? Because it’s not doing that. It’s getting see-through.”
“Andrew, clear means see-through.”
I’d like to tell you that the conversation ended there, because that’s a pretty funny ending, but instead we talked semantics for the rest of the evening. While we enjoyed some rødgrød, of course.
Andrew argued that clear means colourless, not see-through, but as we can see from Merriam-Webster* it definitely also means see-through.
Entry Word: clear
Function: adjective
Meaning: easily seen through
Clearly clear means see-through. It’s, like, right in the definition. And like the words translucent and transparent, it implies an absence of cloudiness, unlike opaque. So, there, Andrew. Clear and see-through are synonymous.
* While trying to decide on the way to spell Miriam’s name, we never once considered Merriam. Maryam came up, and Miryam, and a few other traditional spellings, but never once Merriam. How
coolnerdy would it have been to name our baby after a dictionary?
Re: Merriam. Once we were at a university function in Tucson and a young woman asked me what our kids' names were. I told her Miriam's name and she said, "oh, that's my maiden name!" I was really taken aback because I've never heard Miriam as a surname. So I started asking her questions about it, like where it came from, etc. and she didn't really know and seemed weirded out that I was so puzzled by it. The conversation ended and a professor who had been listening in took me aside and said, "Her maiden name was 'Merriam'" and kind of winked and sighed. Whatever, right?
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