Jack and the Beanstalk

[Boreades]

Yes, it's a member of the nightshade family, and the tomato leaves can be poisonous.

[hvered]

If certain varieties of beans are poisonous, or have undesirable side-effects, one way of discouraging people is some slightly weird link with dead souls as a warning, metaphorical or even literal. More effective than a forbidden fruits ban.

[Boreades]

It's certainly discouraging people round me. They ask: "Has something died?" I try and look innocent, or blame it on the beans.

[Boreades]

[Mick Harper]

[Boreades]

Oh God, not more elite ritual goods?

[Boreades]

Perhaps the Cistercian monks wanted fine dining wares to reflect their status in society. The old upper-class job-finding habit of one for the army, one for the navy and one for the clergy certainly(?) would have filled monasteries with entitled people who expected to live well, with high-status goods around them.

Tangentially, is the image of Celtic Saints (etc) of poor folk devoted to poverty a delusion? Based on what?

Meanwhile, my status in society must be slipping rapidly. The last two times I have dined out, I have been served food on a wooden board. Less hygenic, and frustrating to use because bits keep dropping off of the side of the board. Why do they do it? What are they trying to tell me? What am I, some kind of less-entitled medieval farm labourer? Don't they know who I am? Bah. Git orf moi laand.

[Mick Harper]

[Boreades]

[TisILeclerc]