Title translation seems weird this time, but I tried Google and DeepL. Google says “and the preserving”, DeepL says “and the canning”.
As always, stay tuned here on !comicstrips@lemmy.world for a slow trickle out of Jucika comics, but if you want to find more, here’s a good post with a large collection that /u/JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social posted last year: https://piefed.social/post/1258520
**Also, check out some Jucika fan art! https://piefed.social/c/eurographicnovels/p/2128207/the-best-of-jucika-fan-art-12-pieces-with-two-videos
After reading all the comments, I think the issue is the panel work. Usually these Jucika strips are very clear, this is a rare one that isn’t.
IMO, in the first panel she should be right next to the fruit stall instead of it being so far away. Ideally she would be holding up her hands full of jars, maybe with a helpless expression. For extra clarity the vendor could be trying to hand her some fruits.
Second panel as is. Old Lady seller comes along with a solution.
Third panel, old Lady should be seen walking away with her empty basket, ideally holding it in her arms instead of her head to emphasize that it’s empty. Jucika walking as is, carrying her own hat full of fruits.
Back in those times, fruits used to be quite seasonal, only available during certain times of year. It was very common for many families to preserve fruits in glass jars at home, either as jams, or whole - my family used to do it (as well as make sauerkraut out of cabbage, in a large ceramic crock)
The joke is that Jucika is carrying all the jars to do her preserves, and realizes she has no room to buy the actual fruit, the most important part of the whole thing! But being resourceful as she is, and inspired by the old lady, she comes up with a clever solution, using her hat.
I’m not sure why people don’t understand.
You harvest food during harvesting season. You end up with a lot of it. When you have a lot of food that will spoil later, you preserve it in various ways, like by making pickles and jams.
She is holding a bunch of containers. She is obviously preparing to preserve food in the containers. She finds a woman selling a bunch of food. She wants the food, but her hands are already full. She smartly decides to use her hat the same way the old lady was carrying the food, which is a common thing to do in certain countries.
That guy carrying all that bread with the seagulls in the background gives me anxiety.
what should give you anxiety is that my man there grabs that bread from the bakery at 5am and walks around town until it’s all sold, so its constantly open to the elements and everyone eats it. He handles the money and all the simit.
The comic tends to have a twist/subversion/alternate meaning and not just a literal reading.
Is the joke not that she repurposed the fancy hat as a basket?
That’s what the way I took it for sure.
It is possible that the hat is the twist part.
The seller sells the apples, not the bucket & apples, hence the improvised bag.
I think the twist is, as Mark with a Z says, reusing her (fancy) hat as a basket.
Usually people carrying goods on their head are selling the good, and she is the consumer of the good, so it’s ironic.
No pun on this one.
Maybe the interesting part: back in those days the sellers didn’t provide any bags or baskets for the purchase.
Maybe she got the idea of how to carry more when all her bags were already full.
she’s carrying jars and fruits so it’s definitely referring to that but I feel like there could be some missing cultural meaning, a euphemism, perhaps for keeping your figure and aging gracefully?
Yeah, I definitely feel like I’m missing some cultural piece here. Maybe some sort of known seasonal event?
(edit: I’m probably reading too much into “the canning” and it’s just a market or something where people are canning food like normal.)
Native Hungarian speaker: I don’t think there’s a pun or double meaning. The word “befőzés” specifically means "cooking [preserves/jam]“, it doesn’t sound similar to anything else either really. So canning or preserving seem pretty apt.
Based on the title I imagine those are meant to be canning jars.
I’m completely speculating but the old lady has fantastic posture for her age (based on clothing style), so maybe she recommends balancing the fruit on the head to preserve posture?
Something about adapting the old ways to her young, modern style.
This feels like there’s a pun that doesn’t translate.
I assume the joke is she liked the idea of carrying fruit on her head and flipped her hat upside down to use as a container.
Canning is a method to preserve food. Idk about any cultural meaning but I interpret the final frame as her being clever and adapting the other person’s method of carrying the fruit by repurposing her hat.
Edit: I saw it posted elsewhere and they interpret it as her hands being full with the cans but she still needs to get the fruit home, so this is her clever solution.
That would track with what we’ve seen about how she works. She’s always portrayed as determined and resourceful, to the point of breaking social norms by either subverting expectations about her age, class, and gender, or else leaning so hard into them that it circles back around into being unexpected.
