Thursday, July 19, 2007

Cosseted

Back at Yorckschlößchen, gestresst. I walk up to the bar and ask about crisps. 'Sie haben nur Prawn Cocktail? Oh, und Marmite, schrecklich.' A man at the bar tells me that in the basement is a big box of crisps with many other flavours. 'Jerry will bring them up for you.'
I go outside. There's a slight breeze. Jerry comes out and lays out Smoky Bacon! Cheese and Onion! Ready Salted! 'Smoky Bacon!' I say. 'Wow!' Jerry goes back inside. Katrin comes out and says they have Cheese and Onion.

I've been trying to get my website transferred from Flash to Dreamweaver. Bad news.

For the 79% of readers who use Windows, here's a link to MicroCharts, which has some great add-ins for producing Tuftean data displays using Excel.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Believe it or not I have only recently discovered Ready Salted crisps. I always figured them as 'emergency' crisps, should there be a sudden and mysterious shortage of all other flavours. But like straight sex without the awkward dressing up and pretending to be Little Bo Peep, Ready Salted crisps are strangely attractive in their own right.

*note to self. Never say any of this out loud.

Leitmotifish said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Mithridates said...

leitmotifish: love & am pleasantly terrified by & would like to read more of yr blog. makes me wish i understood the first bleeding thing about hebrew or shooting things.

helen: out of what brick-kiln in hell did the deranged demons pull the misshapen soul of the person who invented lamb & mint crisps? i love lamb & mint--but in chip form? let's invent some more flavors. burnt grass. coal. halitosis. cool menthol cigarettes. cough syrup. human sweat. grape & mayonnaise. monkey brains. what else? bum's underwear. i could go on . . .

Helen DeWitt said...

Gary, Yes, I think there IS an strangely neglected homology between flavours of crisp and sexual practices -- I say strangely, but the nation best placed to throw light on the subject is also the nation least likely to bring the insights of structural anthropology to bear, and so we blunder along in the dark.

leitmofish, why did you delete your comment? a crisp is Br. for Am. potato chip, but in Britain they come in flavours unknown to the American chip-eating public. Prawn Cocktail. Marmite. Roast Beef and Honey Mustard. Sweet Thai Chilli Pepper.

mithridates, i don't know who is responsible for the proliferation of flavours. Seems to me your examples don't really capture the spirit of the enterprise, though: the idea is to have a flavour-enhanced crisp with the taste of real food you might actually want to eat. Chicken Tikka Masala. Mango Chutney.

To the best of my knowledge (I think this issue was raised by leitmofish) there is no bacon in a smoky bacon crisp, it's all done with monosodium glutamate and flavourings.