The irony of the arophobic tweets
And then of course the replies. Always the replies.
Amatonormativity!
Hey, I don’t like peanut butter cookies, do I get a week?
Tip Jar
And then of course the replies. Always the replies.
Amatonormativity!
Hey, I don’t like peanut butter cookies, do I get a week?
I should hope so. As a fellow apeanutbutterist, I definitely feel oppressed by all the people shoving peanut butter cookies in my face, making me eat them, making me smell them, forcing them down my throat…
Holy First World Problem, Batman!!!
Snerk
…
People who don’t like peanut butter in combination with
cookiesbiscuits need conversion therapy. You need to be brought back to the light of god.Yeah, I’m sure that Greys are a category of aliens, and if the reports of abductees are true (I know, but what the Hell) they are far from aromantic little…erm…probers.
And peanut butter cookies can go where the light of God don’t shine.
I’m pretty sure that a peanut butter cookie isn’t actually a biscuit (and a Nutter Butter, which is a peanut butter “sandwich cookie” is actually a biscuit)
At one point on the Great British Bake-Off they actually baked American cookies as a technical challenge.
I read that first as ‘AromaticSpectrumAwarenessWeek’, and wondered… well, I shan’t say.
Now wait just a dang minute here, are you telling me that cookie is not just USian for biscuit and that biscuit is not just UKnian for cookie? In other words that they’re not the same general thing – a small usually baked sweet item that can be held in the hand or even put in a pocket? Because I’ve always thought they were the same general thing, under different names according to country…even though it’s true that a lot of one country’s kinds are not available in the other country. I wish those coffee iced biscuits were available here, I can tell you.
I want a week for people who hate green beans. We are really oppressed, in that every buffet line includes oodles of green beans in every possible weird formulation, and I can’t buy a single recipe book without green beans included in the recipes, and in fact recipes specifically for green beans. Every family dinner I ever attended has green beans, and my mother made me eat my green beans when I was little because there were starving children in Africa who, for some mysterious reason known to my mother but not to me, would be in better shape if I ate my green beans than if I didn’t…
I demand to be heard! I won’t take this sort of invalidation anymore! They are denying my existence by insisting on thrusting green beans at me everywhere I go!
I’ll have gravy with my biscuits please, not tea. :P
Ikn @8 With me it was peas, they made me gag. One of the best things about being an adult is that I never ever, ever have to eat peas again, ever. :D (did I mention ever?) ;)
The green-bean-free cookbook concept reminded me of a cartoon, I think it was Rhymes With Orange, featuring a restaurant for picky eaters. The waiter was explaining the menu to a very pleased small girl: “This is the dinner menu, and this is the dessert menu, and they must never ever touch each other.”
Green beans are a funny veg, for sure – they don’t make me gag or anything but my god they do bore me to death. It’s all but impossible to make them taste like anything. I just don’t see any point to them at all. And as for making children eat them, that’s just absurd – they’re water and fiber. They’re like cucumbers in their lack of significant nutritional value.
I think I understand at last what aromatherapists must do.
Tim:
Until I read further, I honestly thought this whole thing was for people with a special sense of smell. Or the inability to smell anything? There is Siggy’s blog, of course. It is on the Free Thoughts Blog network, so….”
https://freethoughtblogs.com/atrivialknot/
Siggy describes himself as “Asexual” or “Ace”. There is an actual Asexual Agenda, which he runs. Ace sounds cooler. “Aromantic” just sounds like a mental health condition, while Ace sounds cool, somehow.
Brian:
So did I at first! I was wondering what the fuss was about. I started thinking it might have to do with people whose body odour repelled others until I found out I’d misread the word. H.G. Wells, however, who seems to have spent much of his life, when he wasn’t writing novels & short stories & pontificating on eugenics, etc, in bed with various girl-friends, is reputed to have had an irresistible aroma…
twiliter: I am absolutely with you 100% on peas. Hate ’em. It’s glorious to be an adult and be able to choose NO PEAS.
Well, I must say we seem to have quite a few members of the Pythagorean School or cult here! I confess to having a very un-Pythagorean liking for peas & beans, despite Cicero’s comment that Pythagoras’ dislike for pulses stemmed from the fact that they caused flatulence, which may in turn have something to do with the Aromatic Spectrum.
Ophelia:
Which coffee iced biscuits are those? I thought I knew All The Biscuits but I can’t think of the ones you mean.
Wait, what?! The only reason I followed you on twitter is because of your supposedly deep biscuit-knowledge! Well, and Fortran, but the biscuits played a major role.
I know! An American knowing more about biscuits than I do!
And Fortran is likely to get herself skinned today if she doesn’t stop attacking my feet.
I will delete my account immediately.
latsot, I’d guess at McVities Cafe Noir. Bad news for Ophelia, though, because although they’re still available the recipe changed a couple of years ago. The biscuit is smaller and tastes nothing like the original and the coffee icing has been reduced from a nice, thick glaze to an almost-translucent smear.
Those don’t look like northern biscuits.
No, not at all like an honest Hob Nob, choccy Digestive or Custard Cream. Not even dunkable unless you want a coffee-flavoured sludge at the bottom of your mug.
Tim Harris, I am not actually against pulses in general. I like dried beans (especially black beans), but not string beans.
Maddog, I think you should give peas a chance.
When I knew them, which was decades ago, they weren’t exclusive to McVities, because some or perhaps all the big shops had their own versions. I hope they haven’t all been ruined.
I’ll ask my niece, who owns a bakery/cake/tea shop. Which everyone should go to if they ever find themselves in a post-lockdown North Yorkshire. Good scones. Rhymes with gone.
I see via Google that they’re popular in the Netherlands…maybe that’s where McVitie’s got the idea.
I doubt they’ve all been ruined, Ophelia. It looks as though McVities have gone the way of other large manufacturers of food items in adopting the practice (which has a name but I can’t recall what) of reducing the size of products and/or using cheaper ingredients instead of raising prices, although they tend not to announce the changes until people notice.
So, all of you who are convinced that a favourite childhood treat is smaller than it used to be, or tastes different from how you remember, it isn’t necessarily because you’re just bigger than you were in relation to that bar of chocolate or that your taste buds have changed over the years.
I’ve read that American Hershey’s bars are only somewhat “chocolate”. There is a fake choco-substitute they use.
I will also say the Cadbury’s chocolate bars available in the United States are just AWFUL. Gritty and dry and waxy.
Re peas:
I love peas, they are probably my favorite vegetable. My wife hates them. We joke about it a lot, and sometimes we actually make a dish containing peas, so long as they aren’t a main ingredient or can be easily separated. I try to make a point of ordering peas at restaurants when possible.
What a fascinating thread. Aromantics, beans, biscuits. Food for thought, thought for food.
Hershey bars are disgusting. That fake chocolate stuff gives them a horrible cardboardish taste. Funny thing: I have a friend who’s a Hershey, and she agrees about the horrible. (She’s a judge, not a chocolatier.) (Which by the way is not pronounced chocolateer. It’s a French word.)
re: chocolate
Local to me “brands”:
1. Gail Ambrosius – She specializes in bittersweet dark chocolate. Guessing by taste and mouth feel, I think she uses more cocao butter in her white chocolate than others do. Her cinnamon cayenne truffle is a favorite of mine. (And yes, that really is her name. :-))
2. Infusion Chocolates – one of their seasonal flavors is a bacon ganache? (I think it’s that type of filling). It has bacon bits in it. yum
3. Madison Chocolate Co.
4. James J Chocolates – my favorite of theirs is the chocolate covered Door County cherries.
5. Roots Chocolates – another dark chocolate. I like their single origin bars. Nice complex flavors, and I can taste the difference between them. (Can’t describe the differences, though.)
For 1, 2, 3, and 4, I can get them at their shops. 1, 2, and 3 are also at my grocery store. For 5, grocery store or Farmers’ Market.
twiliter @10
Rutabagas made me gag. My guess is, some volatile compound in them triggerd my gag reflex. They were bland, with not much taste. So, go figure. And my parents wouldn’t allow substitutions on vegetables, not even with another vegetable. And I was the kid who would voluntarily eat brussel sprouts.
Speaking of issues with eating vegetables:
One of my brothers was what he and I dubbed “onion intollerant”. He would have gastrointestinal issues after eating onions. My parents would make him eat them anyway (“they’re vegetables”, “they’re good for you”). And then they would complain when he stunk up the bathroom afterward. He and I tried to explain it to our parents, but they gave us the old “what do you know, you’re just kids” attitude. *roll eyes*
I like Hershey chocolate. It’s not as good as the “good” chocolate, but it’s tasty. Of the easily-available mass-market brands of chocolate, I’d prefer Lindt, but Hershey’s is fine. There are some fancy brands available in some stores, but I have tried very few of them; maybe they are better.
I do, however, resent that Hershey has wielded its corporate power to prevent certain chocolates of European manufacture from entering the US. (Well, looks like it’s just British-made Cadbury products, but still.)
https://www.businessinsider.com/why-british-and-american-chocolate-taste-different-2015-1
@Latsot #26 – I seem to end up in North Yorkshire every few years (spouse has relatives in that neck of the woods, several of whom have already been shot – or should I say “jabbed”). So I would be interested to know the name and location of your niece’s bakery in case I find myself there and in need of tea and/or scones (and who isn’t?)
Re Hershey – There was at one time Canadian Hershey plant not far from Ottawa – they had tours, complete with free samples, and had bags of broken chocolate bars available for bulk purchase…but alas it closed >10 years ago. Hershey moved the manufacturing to Mexico, and at the same time changed the composition of its chocolate (significantly for the worse).
Re peas, it seems this quote from Ogden Nash is in order:
Like Ophelia, I find Hershey’s chocolate absolutely disgusting. British chocolate is far too sweet. Belgian chocolate – wonderful but too expensive for ordinary occasions. The best popular and inexpensive chocolate I know is Ritter, which is German. I recommend their hazelnut bars, if you can get them (they’re readily available here in Japan).
Most chocolate is not truly chocolate because to qualify as chocolate officially, it must have a high enough percentage of the components: cocoa mass/solids and cocoa butter. Cheaper ones use lower amounts, or cheaper fats, like palm oil, and use weaselly naming like “chocolatey”, “chocolate flavoured” and similar not actually chocolate words.
Also, cannot believe we are having a discussion about both chocolate AND biscuits and no one has brought up Tim Tams. Shocked that America doesn’t have them.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Tam
1. Tim Harris is the only one who is right about chocolate brands (although I can’t dispute what Karen said).
2. Seanna Watson: her cafe is in Thirsk and is called Tea Time Yorkshire (https://www.teatimeyorkshire.co.uk/) She makes all the cakes and scones and – yes – biscuits herself and, her having been trained by a Michelin stared chef (Raymond Blanc), it’s all very good. She’s delightful, too. I think she’ll make a great success of the place if she’s ever allowed to open.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention local favorite Josh Early. I even eat the ones with coconut (I’ve learned how to detect them and eat them all first because nothing ruins a fine day worse than shredded coconut. If I had a time machine I would make every inventor of a shredded coconut “dessert” disappear from history).
https://joshearlycandies.com/
Mike, you’d be erasing my existence if you did that! I once created a dessert based on the traditional Bread Pudding that used grated coconut and South African Stroh Rum, among other things, that was absolutely delicious.
Tim Harris @37
Ritter chocolate is good. (My grocery store has it.) In addition to the hazelnut bars, I particularly like the biscuit, marzipan, and coconut bars.
With apologies to anyone for whom this was obvious.. The idea seems to be that romanticism and sexuality are independent(ish) traits. So asexuals don’t want sex (but may want romantic relationships), whereas aromantics aren’t interested in romance (but are often keen on sex). Comparisons to serial womanizers are unlikely to be appreciated.
Anyway, on to more important matters..
Peas, peas, they’re good for your heart.. no, that’s not right.
I eat my beans with honey? Hmm. Oh I see that one’s been done.
Green beans are one of the few vegetables my wife will tolerate. I find that about 20% of the time (number pulled from thin air) the combination of the ripeness, specific variety, time in the steamer, etc. results in something with just the right level of crunchiness/floppiness and a hint of sweetness or juiciness that they’re at least palatable.
I think the term “thinflation” was suggested at some point.
A Hershey’s.. anecdote: back when my wife was my girlfriend and we had a trans-ocean relationship she sent me some Hershey’s Kisses in the mail. I tasted a couple and concluded they had gone off, which was puzzling. I’ve always thought I could detect a note of bile. The (apocryphal?) story I’ve heard and subsequently enjoy repeating is that M. Hershey went to Switzerland to learn the secret of making Milk Chocolate. The Swiss chocolatiers refused to share so he returned home and invented his own process that had only a minor flaw: it curdles the milk.
My experience while living in Florida was that most “Cadbury’s” chocolate bars were manufactured under license by Hershey’s, and were terrible. Publix for a while however had a “British” section in their international food aisle which contained actually imported food products, including Cadbury’s. It might be something unusual about central Florida in particular – I met an unexpected number of British immigrants there.
All this talk about chocolate and vegetables reminded me of a song I’ve heard>
Chocolate is a Vegetable
Copyright ©2005 Graham Leathers – All rights reserved
Now all of your life you know you’ve got to eat your veggies before you get any dessert.
No sweets no cakes no candies or creams or pies or jello you can slurp.
But here’s some kind advice to make your dinner nice if your mom won’t give you what you prefer.
Just grab a piece of pie and you look her in the eye and this is what you say to her.
CHORUS
Chocolate is a vegetable it comes from a bean that grows on a plant called a tree.
It lives in the forest with its other tree brothers, yes, chocolate is a vegetable you see.
In the tropical forest there lives a little tree with pods growing out of its trunk.
And in these are the makings of fudge and chocolate cake and the chocolate you can buy in big chunks.
For all your parents’ rants these trees are just plants with roots in the soil where they grew.
Radishes and peas are plants like trees so chocolate is a vegetable, too.
CHORUS
If you don’t want to meet your dinner with your meat and your milk and your veggies and your cereal grains
Just grab some chocolate cake and you eat for heavens’ sake and your mom’ll say, “Are you insane?
You’ll get rickets you’ll be ill you’ll be on all kinds of pills your body will be one big ruin. You’ve got to eat your beans and you’ve got to eat your greens.” You tell her, “What do you think I’m doin’?”
CHORUS, Repeat & out.