"It's like a bread bowl"
Ponies vs. Pizza
Admiral Biscuit
Everything about the human world was strange and confusing, from the portal to the airplane ride to Florida. The four mares had all thought that they were ready for it; they’d met with humans and read through So You Want To Go To Earth. They’d seen newsreels and corporate training films, and as a result none of them froze up as they got their first actual view of Earth, unfiltered through a window.
It was close, though. Cherry Jumble in particular cast worried glances around at all the cars zooming by on the other side of a grass island populated with weeds and stunted trees. She’d never been any further than Ponyville until just recently and still hadn’t completely come to terms just how big and diverse Equestria actually was—she was completely unprepared for Earth.
Penny Ante finally poked her with a snout to get her moving. There was a lot to do and only so many hours in the day.
•••
“Sometimes it takes animals a while to get used to their new environment,” Wrangler said. “I’d expect the same holds true to ponies. Like, I don’t feel relaxed at all even though that bed looks nice.”
“It is.” Posey tapped it with her hoof. “It’s soft and springy. I wonder how they do that?” She leaned over the edge and started examining the bottom sheet. “You couldn’t put springs in a mattress, could you? They’d just poke through.”
“At least we’ve got a good view.”
Cherry shook her head. “I don’t like it. It’s too high. I’d rather have my hooves on the ground, not up in the air like this.”
“It’s only the fourth floor,” Wrangler protested. “That’s not so high. The airplane flew a lot higher.”
“I didn’t like that, either. We should have taken a train. What happens if the building tips over?”
“It won’t, it’s very strong.” She tapped her hoof against the wall, then pulled it back out of the divot she’d just made in the drywall. “Hmm.”
“See?”
“The floors are strong,” Penny said. “I didn’t feel them move underhoof, did you?”
“Lots of buildings don’t carry their structure in the walls, anyway. Just the beams that hold up the floors and the roof. Our barn had lots of flimsy partitions in it, just enough to divide up the space, that’s all you need.”
“Well, I don’t like it. Maybe I’ll get used to it.” Cherry rolled on her back and sighed. “Does anypony have any food?”
“There’s lots of restaurants we can order from, if we want to experiment with human food.”
“Not today.”
“Posey?”
“I should because I’ll be grouchy in the morning, but my stomach’s still not settled from that stupid airplane.”
“Penny?”
“Same.”
•••
The dorm didn’t fall over in the night, and by the next morning the four ponies were feeling more comfortable with their new surroundings.
They were ready when there was a soft, polite knock at the door. Wrangler stood up on her hind hooves and peered through the peephole—she’d figured out what that was for last night.
A dark-haired woman was standing in the hall outside. Wrangler assumed she was, anyway; it was hard to tell with humans.
She dropped back down and pushed the door lever, then tried to work out how to make it open. It wasn’t easy to pull by hoof and she didn’t like the taste of metal in her mouth.
I could put a short length of rope around that. A project for later; they still had plenty of moving-in to do.
“Hi, I’m Haruna.” The girl crouched down to be more at their level. “That means ‘Spring Flower’ in my language.”
The ponies all made their introductions, Wrangler first.
•••
Breakfast was provided downstairs in a large buffet. It was a chance to meet all the other ponies in the dorm, and to go over some ground rules before the intense training would start. It contained a mix of human foods and traditional pony foods.
The afternoon was another training session, covering the basics of the dorm, including how things in their rooms worked. Cherry didn’t have to ask about the soft walls; another pony raised her hoof first and brought the subject up.
They got a full tour of a sample room and explanations of how all the machines in those rooms worked. Haruna demonstrated how the telephone worked, how to look up telephone numbers; how the TV worked and how to look up TV shows; how to get a DVD player or a computer if they wanted one for their room.
After all the training was over, they all returned to their dorm room with Haruna. She put a card up with her telephone number as well as the telephone number for her office, in case they ever needed help. And she prompted them to order food for delivery.
The number of choices were overwhelming. They finally settled on China Spring, since Penny not only knew what egg rolls were, but liked them. Her hometown had a Chinese restaurant with a cook who had been trained in San Francisco which was where Chinese food had been invented.
It took an hour for the food to arrive and they had to go downstairs to get it. It came in trays that seemed to be made up of cloudstuff.
Haruna didn’t bother to explain how the chopsticks were meant to work. The ponies simply ate out of the styrofoam cartons.
•••
A week in, the training sessions weren’t any less intense, but they’d all started to become accustomed to Earth. Wrangler had tied the rope to the door handle like she’d intended, which made it a lot easier to use. Haruna noticed it, reported it to her bosses, and before too long every dorm room had them.
The ponies got tours of the park, including visits to the various attractions. Some of those were at night, after the park had officially closed—the ride engineers were diligently working to make the rides more accessible to ponies, and needed volunteers to test out the modifications.
That was optional, but Wrangler at least got a thrill of seeing some of her ideas implemented.
Group training fell off, and were replaced with individual training. Cherry had to learn how to use a cash register and a bar code reader, while Wrangler got to practice her rope show and practice her part in a stunt show with other cast members.
Posey got intense park training; she was a tourist group leader. That meant she had to be familiar with every attraction the park had to offer, as well as what was pony-friendly and what wasn’t.
Penny, meanwhile, got her training in Frontierland.
For now, their dinner breaks all lined up, and for as long as that lasted, they agreed to all meet back in the room for a group meal where they could both unwind and experience some new human cuisine.
•••
“What’s a pizza?”
“It’s kind of like a bread bowl, but flatter,” Penny said. “You know how sometimes you can get soup in a hollowed-out loaf of bread?”
“No.”
“Really?”
Cherry shrugged. “We didn’t have those. What keeps the soup from leaking out?”
“The crust, I guess.”
“Don’t they have cheese soup that’s called fond dew that’s served in bread?”
“I heard somebody talking about it,” Wrangler said. “You take little forks and spear the bread on it and then dip it in the cheese. I don’t think it’s in bread, though, I think it’s in a special sauce pan.”
“Do you want to try a pizza?”
“We could, we haven’t had that yet.” Posey tapped her hoof on the restaurant guide. “There are a bunch of them, so it must be popular. You can choose your toppings, or get one that’s pre-configured.”
“Wasn’t that one of the things that humans sell frozen in grocery stores?”
“I think so,” Penny told her. “We should go to a grocery store on our day off, just to see what they have. We’ve got an electric icebox, we could put some snacks in it.”
“They’ve got four different crust options,” Cherry said. “Which is the best?”
“The hand-tossed has a nice border that would keep the toppings from spilling off,” Posey suggested. “That’s probably the best.”
“What about sauce? They have tomato, buffalo, creamy garlic, and barbeque.”
“I don’t like red sauces, they make my muzzle and throat tingle.”
•••
Half an hour later, the ponies had successfully made their order: one large hand-tossed pizza with creamy garlic parmesan sauce, extra cheese, mushrooms, onions, and black olives. Jalapenos on the side—both Wrangler and Penny enjoyed them, while the other two hated them. An order of Quepapas with blue cheese dipping sauce, and a triple chocolate brownie for dessert.
A half hour after their order, the food arrived. Penny used their plastic money card to pay for it, then brought the food back up to the room and laid it out on the table.
The food looked and smelled delicious. Posey popped a Quepapa in her mouth while Cherry struggled with the foil lid on the blue cheese dressing. Meanwhile, Wrangler and Penny studied the pizza.
“How do we eat this?”
“I think . . . just lick the topping off? I don’t know why they cut guidelines in it, that would make the topping leak through.”
“The box was greasy,” Penny said. “I could feel it on my back.”
“I can smell it on your back.” Cherry grabbed one of the leftover China Spring chopsticks and used it to stab the foil open. The chopsticks had been surprisingly useful for stabbing foil lids, poking telephone buttons, and poking television remote buttons.
“I can’t help but feel—” Posey began, but then Wrangler stuck her muzzle in the pizza and started licking off topping.
“This is really good,” she said, after she’d swallowed her mouthful. “The sauce keeps it from sticking to the bottom.”
•••
It was two full months before they learned how they were actually supposed to eat a pizza.
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Silly ponies! How I LARF at your misunderstandings!!
I see you skillfully avoided the Great Question with regards to Pineapple. :D
Mini-feedbags.
God, this is so relatable. I don’t understand pizza either. One time I went to pizza hut, entered a fugue state, and emerged from it covered in Windex and surrounded by Yakuza strongmen. Nobody slept well that night.
i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/mobile/000/028/223/hmlspst6qjo11.jpg
Pizza Time!
11276532
To be fair, a non-zero amount of people don’t eat the edge of the crust, since it’s toppingless. The obvious next step is to avoid any of the crust.
The ponies are living in the year 3000.
11276536
I did consider it.
Given that any pony pizza sold in Equestria would include toppings like carrots and hay . . .
Fact is, pizza is a vessel, just like a slice of bread. You can put whatever you want on it, and nobody can stop you.
11276537
Exactly! Food’s meant to be eaten out of things, whether it be a disposable styrofoam feedbag or a ‘bread bowl.’
11276552
That happens more than you’d think at Pizza Hut. You can’t out-pizza the Hut.
This was simultaneously funny and adorable.
Another masterpiece by the Admiral.
Perfect Pizza Parable.
Wait a minute did Silver Glow ever have pizza when she went over? Then again this is probably before her book has been published. Silly ponies experiencing all the fun human collage stuff,
i can only imagine what eating Pizza the first time as a pony would be like.
11276536
From what I've read online, sausage is the most popular topping, pineapple the least. Although, people joke about anchovies on pizza & I've never been anywhere that even offered them.
Hilarious and adorable as usual!
Helpfulnerdy video on why certain means of eating pizza work.It makes me wonder what else was in So You Want To Go To Earth.
You know, that may not be all that much of an exaggeration. I have heard tale that a lot of foods Americans associate with Chinese restaurants and thereby the Chinese actually had, in reality, originated in America and thereby are technically American inventions (I couldn't give you exact examples off hand though).
It's not just the Chinese though--this is true of a lot of foods that are seen as foreign. Take spaghetti and meatballs, a dish typically seen as Italian...but was almost certainly first invented in New York City.
And it's a phenomenon that happens in the rest of the world too, not just America. Y'all should take the time to look up what some other countries think constitute as "American" food that they've otherwise wholly invented themselves.
It occurs to me now that the same thing would probably happen with Equestria some day in this universe, so maybe that's a future premise for a story for ya there, Admiral Biscuit--a group of ponies laughing over some of the bizarre foods the humans have at some point invented but are trying to pass off as "traditional Equestrian food."
Fun little story!
11276559
Haggis. Actually really good.
Chicken Tikka Masala. Also very good.
Swedish fish. (Yeah, the sorta gummy candy ones.) Not as horrible as you might think.
Spinach. Why?
California Roll. Not bad. Would be better if you could make the roll bits half-sized.
Refried beans. No bueno.
Spaghetti. Tastes like a brawl in an Italian restaurant.
Alligator tail. A little odd texture-wise, but very tasty.
11276629
Most of what the UK thinks of as Indian food, particularly curry, came from Glasgow.
11276716
Because spinach on pizza is tasty! Nothing like a stuffed-crust pizza with pepperoni, spinach, and pineapple.
Pizza. the Trencher Bread that stops you having to get Medaevil with it?
Used to have a bolt on foot operated door wedge laying around. Add a string to that for opening the handle and you have a winner? Add a toe plate for dragging the door open with non hands?
In canon theres that Mobdaughter who stuck pencils to her forelocks with elastic bands? Pokefingers?
Delightfully short, simple, and well written
Mlem.
Sequel when? Can't say Florida without cars, hurricanes, and...people from new jersey.
11276732
Make sense, actually, considering how much influence the Brits had in India back in their imperial days. Lots of cultural sharing happening both ways, and that would of course include food.
11276716
11276783
I once had artichoke on a peanut-butter-based sauce. It was surprisingly good.
I'm sort of on the ponies' side, here. Toppings on pizza are like the icing on a cake, or the filling in a cookie. Meant to be eaten with their container, but perfectly fine without them.
Also, I don't think that I've ever before seen a correlation drawn between Styrofoam and cloudstuff. I don't think, given that, that there is any cause for the ponies to complain about the flimsiness of human houses.
11276629
On that note the Hotdog was invented by a german immigrant. At least that is how I heared it.
Lots of foodstuffs that get associated with cultures were not invented there.
She's the complete opposite of Ponyville's OTHER Cherry pony, then!
If Bubbles can pull it off, so can Ponies! Follow your dreams!
11276783
That sounds like it might be good, but mostly because of the other ingredients. The one I had with spinach, green peppers, and peas was just bland. Vegan "cheese," too, which absolutely did not help.
11276909
Now that sounds great! Bread+cheese+stuff really adds up to limitless possibilities.
The other great debate in the pizza world (besides pineapple) seems to be whether you eat the crust or not.
11276915
Quesadillas are also an American invention, as are a lot of "Mexican" dishes.
Should clarify what you mean by Chinese Food. Yes a lot of dishes in America."Chinese Restaurants" where invented in San Fan,but there are more Chinese Style American Food.
Not sure Ponies don't have Pizza (they certainly do in G5) though food you need to pick up and eat would have been inverted by Unicorns,or an Equestria species with hands.
11277027
About the quesadilla, do you mean "America" as in "the United States of America?" Because that seems to be wrong, every source I could find points to colonial Mexico with Spanish involvement. And if that's not what you meant by "America," Mexico is part of the North American continent, so is technically American in the same way that Spain or Germany is European.
11276556
*is the kind of mare that leaves the crust after eating a few* >.>
11277044
Yeah, the "American" thing is confusing semantics to foreigners. It's commonly used to refer to US citizens because Usaian is a completely stupid word. Both Mexicans and Canadians use it, and everybody (over here) knows what it means. Technical accuracy doesn't trump popular usage, I'm afraid.
Internet sources...
Yeah, it's more complex that that, and nothing springs fully formed from a vacuum, but... I grew up on the border and spent a lot of time in Mexico and watched this all play out in realtime. For a snack, Mexicans would melt some cheese on a tortilla, but there were no toppings, and it wasn't called a quesadilla. "A little cheese" was a description, not a name. At that time "burrito" wasn't in usage either; stuff wrapped completely in a tortilla existed, but it was a called a "burro." It was American (Usaian) restaurants that needed names for menu items that came up with those (or altered them;* the "ee" sound at the end is supposedly cute and/or attractive?) and messed with the original recipes until they were unrecognisable to the people where they originated.
--------------------
* For some years, quesadillas were called "cheese crisps" on menus.
11276629
Love me some nutritional anthropology. I knew about how spaghetti and meat sauce or "Chinese food" like Panda Express originated in America, but now I'm extremely curious what other countries came up with for "American" food.
Good story.
11277074
I grew up on the border too, in a Hispanic majority town. Love me some nopales.
Might just be a region thing then, like burritos in northern Mexico are called something else in the southern parts as explained to me by a friend who immigrated from Mexico
11277095
Oh man, there are so many great foods in Mexico that we never get up here! (I miss molotes so much.)
Yeah, regional differences probably account for a whole lot of confusion. I only have direct knowledge of western Sonora, and that only in the mid to late 1900's. If I'm remembering correctly, molotes were a traditional Oaxacan dish.
11277074
Also in Spanish we simply call US citizens "estadounidenses". Sounds far better than "Usaians".
11277144
Anything sounds better than Usaians!
Hmm.. I'm pretty sure I've seen pizza in the show...
...what the heck is a "quepapas"?
11276629
Kinda-sorta. Many "American Chinese" dishes did start out as "authentic Chinese" recipes, which the waves of 19th-century Chinese immigrants who came seeking work as miners and railroad workers brought with them and then adapted over time. Initially, they adapted the recipes mainly for themselves, to substitute ingredients which they could get or grow locally if the originals weren't available (or were prohibitively expensive to import) in America; then, as time went on and the Chinese shopkeepers and restauranteurs who had settled into the "chinatown" districts of various towns and cities discovered there was money to be made by attracting non-Chinese patrons to their shops, they further adapted them to cater more to the tastes of the local populations around them.
11276556
Ah to be so wealthy and frivolous you can throw away parts of the pizza. Grow up
poor"thrifty" and you'll always eat the crust... and also pick up any toppings that fell off too. Pizza is not a dish to be wasted!Eh, not wholly inaccurate.
11277074
It gets especially confusing when the people from said "foreign country" decide they like the dish so much that they adopt it themselves, adding to the illusion that it originated there when it didn't really.
Yeah, that's often how a lot of these supposedly "foreign" foods come about--through a combination of marketing and extensive alteration of an original, but otherwise considered separate, recipe. Sometimes it's from immigrants adapting their native recipes for the locals they now live with, sometimes its just businessmen trying to draw in customers by presenting a dish that seems "foreign," and they're perfectly content to let customers believe as such...even if it's not technically all that true.
I don't know enough about the quesadilla to say one way or another, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was a combination of both Mexican and American influences that created it.
11277242
It does sort of depend on how you want to define "American." In my case, I'm generally referring to "American" as "created within the nation of the US" and not so much "created by specifically an American person" (although considering the extensive immigration America has had over the years, properly defining an "American person" can get tricky too, from ethnicity perspective).
That said, I do know there are definitely at least some popular Chinese dishes that were wholly American creations in every sense, but I'm not confident enough on which ones to definitively name specifics. Maybe I can find the time to do some research and get back to you on that, but we'll see--it's the summer rush at my place of work, so my spare time is scant.
But honestly, the real point I want taken from my initial comment is that the same phenomenon could totally happen with the ponies, and I really want to see Admiral Biscuit's take on that now.
11277086
Here's a vid that discusses that very topic:
Same youtuber also does a couple of other videos on the same subject of the phenomenon of "foreign" foods which is where I got some of this myself, so probably worth watching those too.
11276574
Thank you!
11276586
Thanks!
11276589
Thank you!