I Say To-may-to, You Say…?
Oct 11th, 2009 by Roxana
Coming from the New World myself, it was quite a shock to meet people that cared little or simply knew nothing about Columbus Day. After all, if he hadn’t discovered America, the Swiss wouldn’t have made chocolate (yes, cacao comes from the Mayas), and call it tomayto or tomahto, potayto or potahto, neither of these would have made it to the European Cuisine (no shepherd’s pie) nor the Italian (no tomato sauce for your pasta) because potatoes come from the beautiful Island Of Chiloe) and tomatoes didn’t make it to Europe before 1492.
I’ve always had the image of Rodrigo de Triana screaming “Land, land!”, in the middle of some turquoise sea (after all, the first thing they saw was the Bahamas), and, considering that he had a tough life back in Europe, it must have been a nice surprise to find this new and exotic place.
Although things didn’t go that smoothly after this great discovery and it took around 300 years for things to calm down, October 12th was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
