Anglophilia

Dutch did some grocery shopping today, spontaneously.

Back Story

When Dutch was seducing me, all them months ago, he pretended to like cooking. He came over to my house and would "help" me with whatever I was preparing. Pretty soon, I discovered that he could do the really simple, smelly chores like cutting onions and chopping garlic. After a while decided he had other things to do. Then the gig was totally up when I asked him to "heat up some tortillas" and the next thing I know, there is acrid black smoke pouring forth from the microwave and I realize that he had thrown the whole bag, including the metal twisty, into it. At that point, I was completely in love, and it didn't matter if he didn't cook, the kitchen wasn't that big anyway.

I had mentioned last week that I needed sugar (the C&H kind, nothing fancy). Yesterday he brought home two bags of organic sugar and palm sugar "for bread" (complete with the Armenian labels and an English tag slapped on). Today he brought home treacle (I knew it was something that James Herriot's farmers sometimes fed to their animals), carob molasses, and organic molasses.

Is the Lion Dead?


hear the buzzing?

I am a fan of 19th century package design, so I was already primed to really enjoy the aesthetic of this tin. As I was enjoying the curliques and the nifty fonts, I spied what appeared to be a swarm of flies hovering over a lion that didn't look so spry. When I think of famous SpokesLions, usually they are rampant, or growling and very much "alive." Dead lions aren't very appetizing. What was this stuff? I know that blood can smell sweet, but that isn't a great association for sugar. I pried open the lid. Inside, it appeared to be roof tar (Brer Rabbit's tar-baby and numerous roof-jobs came bounding through my imagination). Also not appetizing. Then I read the teeny tiny print, "out of the strong came forth sweetness." Now it made sense. That lion was most definitely dead, expired, room-temperature, defunct, kaput. And those little swarming insects, they were bees. Samson killed a lion, came back later and found honey in its carcass. Strange and apt at the same time. Sometimes the UK seems oh so far away.

Post Script

The Dead Lion may be a little odd, but he's got a great recipe for Gingerbread Cake. I am gorging on it right now.