A very good friend of mine has a blog in which he reports on a new thing he does each day. It’s a fantastic idea, seeing as we get stuck in our ruts and routines so quickly and, before we know it, wake up ten years later realising we haven’t changed much at all or moved in the direction we once dreamed of. Gotta keep things fresh.
I have a ‘New’ to report today. I try to do new things every day, but this one is especially meaningful, because it’s laid a long-term low-intensity wondering to rest.
Books have always been a huge chunk of who I am. Before I could read my parents were reading to me, and it’s these books that played such a significant role in my formation as a mental human being (haha – gotta love the cultural connotative gap), for better or for worse, though I’d venture that all the good aspects came from reading and most of the bad from not reading enough.
Anyway one such book, or series of books rather, was C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia. Oh, here, let me give you some BGM for this post.
I’m not so into the films, they played perfectly fine on the big-screen of my imagination. I should go back and re-read those Chronicles, actually. Along with the Harry Potter books, though those weigh in far below.
Despite books like these being so relatable there are the inevitable bits of different culture. I never knew, and always wondered, what Turkish Delight was. Edmund, when being naughty and self-indulgent, asks for it of the White Witch, and she grants it – for a time. In this context I always thought of it as some guiltily rich chocolate concoction, like a thick pudding or brownie kind of thing.
Because I read a lot of British books growing up (which indubitably has something to do with me being here now, despite one of my lecturers denying that Britain still holds any cultural power in the world – I take issue with that; if I’m the only sailor in that boat, so be it) this year has been a series of discoveries of long-heard-of but unconceived-of treats, like crumpets and Christmas pudding. Tonight, Turkish Delight was added to that list.
A crumpet, but watch my YouTube video for the full explication.
Turkish Delight and Christmas Pudding.
I saw it in a store a few days ago and the people I was with explained that it actually wasn’t chocolatey; rather, it was more like fruity gummy things, only HC (High Class, remember that one, I’ll be using it frequently, especially in London I hope). So today when I saw it on a shopping trip I couldn’t resist. I don’t know if it comes in a wide variety of flavours, but this box happens to be lemon and rose – I think you can guess which is which.
The lemon is very nice, though standard with an imaginable taste. The rose is…different. It’s the kind of taste that you might instinctively (I almost said extinctively, which isn’t a word but could be) dislike but persuade your brain to like because it’s ever so HC. Or is it just me that thinks that way about certain things? C’mon, you can’t tell me that all girls naturally enjoy wearing heels. They lose them halfway through the night, after all.
The rose taste reminds me of Thailand, for some reason. Can’t put my finger on it. Might be that dried fruit we bought and consumed, and had diarrhea, repeat cycle. Two words to describe that dried fruit: worth it.
And my smart Mac has just taught me that the British spelling is ‘diarrhoea’. Man. Makes it seem even painful. Which it wasn’t. It was just…quick.
Okay, okay, enough about that. Thailand was great, I’ll not turn down any opportunity to be reminded of it, whatever the correlation, and the dried fruit was good as well, good enough to unintentionally smuggle back to Japan and bring in all sorts of virulent bacteria that are no doubt wiping out millions as you read this.
And Turkish Delight is great, both its lemon and rose varieties. Oh, Christmas pudding? It is most soi-tenly scwumptious and up in dat dere HC realm. And apparently matured over six months? Kudos.
In closing, to those who told me English food is unspectacular: what the heck, man.
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