"Woman's weapon," my ass.

[amanuensis1]

I read an interesting fic this morning, and it made me think: if you're going to serve someone poisoned food--the kind that needs cooking and assembling--how can you tell if the food's cooked to palatability before you serve it? You can't very well taste it and see. So you'd have to put the poison in at the end. But then you'd have this pot sitting on the stove and what if someone came in and said, "Oh, stew!" and sampled some? So it'd be safer to put it in the individual bowl it was going to be served in. But then you'd have to mix it around in the bowl to mix in the poison. And be careful not to lick the spoon after. And what if it got sloshed around the edges of the bowl and didn't look pristine for serving; then you'd have to put it in another bowl. And wash the first one real quick, before you took the poisoned one out for serving. And what gets out poison residue from dishware? Do you just use regular liquid detergent? Maybe you should throw away the bowl. But what if someone finds it in the garbage; then that's evidence. And what if it's the kind of poison that needs to be cooked into the food a little so the victim doesn't taste it? Then we're back to the pot on the stove. Damn, this is tricky.

Yes, I think about this kind of stuff.

Comments

[lyttlelucyfer.livejournal.com]

I think all vitamins are deadly if you have too much in your system. I know that if you were to eat a polar bear's liver, you'd die of vitamin A poisining.

That'd be an interesting dish to serve at a dinner party. Especially if the person you want to kill loves liver and the rest don't. So the only left-overs available for analysis are, what, calves liver? Something like that.

[dancing-moon.livejournal.com]

Only the fat-soluble vitamins are deadly, the rest get out the natural way. So they can only hurt very small children (no vitamin C additives for babies, for instance) who can keep less water in their bodies.

Heh. polar bear liver... I can't imagine that tasting too good anyway. Maybe you could have a themed party where every guest gets a special exotic dish? Then you could always blame ignorance if someone got suspicious!

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

Ooh, there's a great bit in a Tanith Lee novel where a character serves a meal where each of the courses are foods of one color (red appetizers, white main dishes, green desserts) and the last course is a blue course--all poison, of course--at which her enemies must sit and partake.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

I remember the polar bear liver thing! It comes back to me every time I read the His Dark Materials trilogy (even though it was never discussed there, heh).