The first day of Christmas: A partridge in a pear tree.

I know I haven't blogged for, oh, a month and a half. If you'd like to know why, please send me a request including a self-addressed, stamped envelope to:

Domonic Potorti
Nashville, IN 47448

Note on the sending envelope the phrase "I'm Whiny for Absolutely No Good Reason" and I'll make sure to send you very special holiday greetings, perhaps with a photograph of me proffering an obscene Mediterranean hand-gesture.

***

Long ago, in a distant, herb-and-lamb perfumed land, I found myself retiring most nights to an eleven-floored, single-sex dormitory on the edge of the Anatolian steppe. After greeting the danışma dudes who were ensconsed in a wee glass box in the threshold of the dorm - and, more often than not, dodging their well-meaning yet irksome requests to teach them how to play guitar (which, apparently, all American males are able to do from the moment of their blessed nativities), I'd retire to my ground-floor room and await the inevitable.

Many nights, it would usually only be a few moments before a young gentleman would, having discerned that I'd returned from my daily toil, knock on my door with a very special request.

*knock knock knock*

Me: Hi, [insert Turkish man's name here].
Young Turkish Male: Hey there. [averts eyes to ground, kicks floor shiftily]
Me: What's up?
YTM: So, yeah.
Me: Let me guess: you have a shopping bag full of random meats and other sundry ingredients and you're wondering if I can transform them magically into something edible, yet savory.
YTM: You're the best.
Me: You are aware of my cut, no?
YTM: A plateful of whatever you come up with, check.

I would then retire to the ghastly little kitchenette on our floor, pots and pans under each arm, a bag of weirdness in tow, to make some magic happen. Usually it was a box of pasta, some extruded meat products, some butter/olive oil/prepackaged herbs, and perhaps some tomato paste. That wasn't usually too hard - "American chop suey" became a staple dish that semester - but occasionally I got thrown with what I was presented with, given my meager cooking talents.

[As an aside, these weren't lazy boys. They often were ashamed to ask for my help, but given that many of them were raised in families where a woman, usually their mother, was a stay-at-home, they'd never had to cook for themselves at any point. This, coupled with the fact that many Turks distrust pre-packaged dinners, meant that my ground floor Yurt Yetmiş Sekiz angels were about as useful in the kitchen as a jar full of warm sputum.]

One late spring day a chap from down the hall came to me with a little box of macaroni, a jar of salça (spicy pepper/tomato paste) and a curious carton filled with impossibly small, speckled eggs.

Me: Uh, what the hell are those?
YTM: They come from the bird.
Me: Yes, I am aware of that, as I assume you'd not consume, say, reptile eggs. But what manner of bird squatted these out?
YTM: I don't know their name.
Me: Look: you're a nice enough chap. But if I am going to be making - and partially consuming! -an omelet fashioned out of endangered songbird ova, I'll need to know now.

While I prepped the rest of the ingredients, I held one of the miniature eggs in my hand. You'd need at least twenty of them to make a decent single helping of scrambled eggs, I surmised. In the meantime, he'd scuttled away to his room to pore over his Turkish/English dictionary, and came back with triumph written on his eighteen-year-old face.

YTM: From a partridge. They come from a partridge.
Me: You're kidding me, right?
YTM: What do you mean? They're delicious. [makes smacking sound, licks lips and rubs belly in the international sign language for tastiness]
Me: OK, fine. Let's cook this crap up.

Twenty minutes later, my fork was hovering hesitantly over a tiny portion of partridge eggs. I'd not asked how they were collected, or where, but I felt as though I had to experience them if for no other reason than to be able to say at a later point in my life that I'd done it. I find that this is the impetus for many of my more rash, hasty decisions, and eventually the part of me that commands that I do things like this will be the death of me.

Upon consumption, I found them to be...eggier?... than that which is extruded by hens. It wasn't an altogether unpleasant taste, but I can't say that I would - given the amount of work involved in breaking dozens of eggs for a decent meal - be eager to experience it again.

Later on - much later, and in the US - I found out that the eggs in question were not actually partridge eggs, but had come from farm-raised quails, as this is popular in Turkey. My friend's dictionary had betrayed him and I was robbed, ultimately, of a good story.

However, to this day I choose to believe that they came from a partridge because a) I am insanely stubborn and b) because I just want to, OK?

And so, on this, the first day of Christmas, I am reminded of that Anatolian partridge who provided me with the ability to consume what I have to assume was the most minuscule omelet ever recorded.

Until tomorrow, I remain,

Domonic (quailsandpartridgesareinthesamebirdfamilysoit'snotincoceivablesoleavemealone) Potorti