Time out over.

I'm back to reading Krugman. Just needed a bit of a break, and his post this afternoon helps me relate a recent accent story of my own...

Leaving the bookfest Saturday afternoon, I stumbled upon the most wonderful Peruvian restaurant, on 2nd Ave. off 1st Street in Miami. Chicken, black beans and plantains were good, but the soup was out of this world.

Finely cut vegetables, the most nutritious-tasting broth, and a piece of meat -- on the bone with the marrow leaking out -- that I identified as chicken. Chicken noodle soup, to me.

No, said the waitress, taking my bowl and heading off, as I requested another: "Ham."

Ham? I thought. The meat, maybe, was beige-ish, from the boiling, not pink. So maybe ham, but that bone? Ham, chicken ... whatever, it tasted great.

This is ham soup? I asked when she came back. "Ham ... ham ... ham!" she repeated, as though in the repetition it would become clearer... "This is pork?" I asked.

Turns out ... it was "hen".

"Hen soup!" We shared a laugh -- she thinking me ignorant, no doubt. Me, feeling a bit like Al Bundy on Modern Family, as the Peruvian and Columbian accents are close...