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  "path": "/blog/archives/2026/03/friday-squid-blogging-squid-in-byzantine-monk-cooking.html",
  "publishedAt": "2026-03-06T22:03:17.000Z",
  "site": "https://www.schneier.com",
  "tags": [
    "Uncategorized",
    "squid",
    "story"
  ],
  "textContent": "This is a very weird story about how squid stayed on the menu of Byzantine monks by falling between the cracks of dietary rules.\n\n> At Constantinople’s Monastery of Stoudios, the kitchen didn’t answer to appetite.\n>\n> It answered to the “typikon”: a manual for ensuring that nothing unexpected happened at mealtimes. Meat: forbidden. Dairy: forbidden. Eggs: forbidden. Fish: feast-day only. Oil: regulated. But squid?\n>\n> Squid had eight arms, no bones, and a gift for changing color. Nobody had bothered writing a regulation for that. This wasn’t a loophole born of legal creativity but an oversight rooted in taxonomic confusion. Medieval monks, confronted with a creature that was neither fish nor fowl, gave up and let it pass...",
  "title": "Friday Squid Blogging: Squid in Byzantine Monk Cooking"
}