Michelle. I normally love everything you do. I just wish you would have picked some delicious buttercream-chocolate goodie from a real bakery or confectioner that uses real ingredients instead of that factory produced fake-stuff-laden candy imitation.
Man, Cadbury Eggs are an annual tradition. I don’t care how fake they are!
I kind of even perversely love that they’re spelled “Creme Eggs” instead of “Cream Eggs” because…well…there’s no actual cream in there. I’m betting there’s no egg either!
But…from my cold, dead hands, man. Cold, dead hands.
meerkat
There is totally egg, or some kind of egg byproduct, because I never had one as a lacto-vegetarian.
I should’ve saved the wrapper! There might be powdered egg in there as an emulsifier or something.
MadGastronomer
What’s in them is called fondant, which is one of a number of things which is referred to in confectioner’s terms as a “creme”. Various things called cremes may or may not have cream in them, the term refers to texture. But things called “creme” are not necessarily highly artificial.
Lisa
You know, here’s my thought about that: I’m someone who, over the years, has moved into a whole-foods-slow-foods-local-farmer-small-business-grow-your-own-and-can-it type of eater and consumer. I mean, I make my own crackers and breakfast cereals now, I’m just that crazy!
But you know what? Every once in a while I want a Ring Ding. And the gorgeous little offerings at our local independent patisserie/chocolatier just isn’t going to cut it when what I want is a Ring Ding. And There’s Nothing Wrong With That. It’s normal to get attached to foods, especially ones that we remember from childhood or were enjoyed at holidays, etc… So you eat that Cadbury Creme Egg and you enjoy every minute of it, Michelle!!
I’m like that with Kraft Dinner (aka “Macaroni and Cheese.”) Sometimes…I just want that manufactured, yellow-powder taste. And nothing else will do.
Mac/Lys
Y’know, I can never quite get my husband to understand that. His folks were all hippy-dippy, so he doesn’t understand my sudden overwhelming desire for Cheese Whiz on celery or some store-bought sweet pickles. The very rarely seen Cheese Whiz and mayo on white bread with sweet pickles is even harder to explain.
Yeah, I’m an amazing cook and I’m all into locally grown, delicious food. However, sometimes I just want a crap-filled piece of my childhood, darn it.
Elizabeth G.
*nod* I can understand that. I’m vegan, but I just can’t give up my chocolate chip cookies. I know they have milk and egg products in them,but I just *can’t.* And I doubt pizza is entirely out of my future, either; my mouth waters every time I walk past Zachary’s (a local pizzeria here in Berkeley).
Audrey
Wow, you pretty much just described a fairly common Saturday night with our friends (Zachary’s and chocolate chip cookies). Mmmmm.
Elizabeth G.
You live in Berkeley?!
Elizabeth G.
err *the bay area? (a quick Google search cured me of the misconception that there’s only one Zachary’s.)
Yeah, I am vegan too and it has never even crossed my mind to give up chocolate chip cookies and pizzas. I just have to mind where I get them (mostly health food stores, specialty restaurants, or my own kitchen).
KellyK
Same here. For me the nostalgia item is a bologna & yellow mustard sandwich. And it has to be on Wonder bread or something similar. I usually much prefer homemade or “artisan” breads for nice hearty sandwiches, but this is just not that kind of sandwich. It’s “school lunch packed by my mom” nostalgia. And it tastes awesome.
purpleshoes
Yeah, I love scratch baking, I love my CSA guy, and I’m a food snob (which I’m not sure I should confound with dietary righteousness, meself) but my favorite part of Easter is the annual Beheading of the Peeps. Fall before my righteous chomping, Peep armies! Nom! Nom, I say!
catgirl
What ingredients in a Cadbury Egg aren’t “real”? Is there some imaginary component in them? If someone enjoys the taste of “fake” candy, why shouldn’t they have some? If you can eat it, then it counts as real food.
I love a Fran’s chocolate any day…but some days what I crave is a Three Musketeers bar, or a Butterfinger.
I don’t eat Creme Eggs (too sweet for me) but seeing a food as “forbidden” because it’s made in a factory only makes it glitter more and you know what? A dollar and a half for one giant Butterfinger (that I can eat in 2-3 sittings), is a lot more affordable than a box of 18 Fran’s for $25 (or whatever the cost is these days) when one chocolate only is one (or two) bites at most.
Kate
I used to have one or two creme eggs each year, but this year when I had one, it was way, way too sweet for me. I chalked it up as a sign that my palette is growing.
Rachel
I hear you. I prefer the homemade, specialty, natural baked goodies made with real butter, cream, and then smothered with a good layer of buttercream, for good measure. That being said, I think the point of this post was to show people, even us so-called “food elitists” that it’s okay to eat whatever you want, whether that be a Cadbury Creme Egg or a $9.00 piece of flourless chocolate cake from a frilly bakery. Now, of course, you could get into the corn syrup discussion about commodity agriculture, the loss of topsoil, etc., but eating one or a few Cadbury Eggs a year (or more) isn’t going to kill you. If anything, stressing over what you should and should not eat, might. Eat what you love. (Plus, with the push from consumers in many different directions asking for more natural food, those yummy little eggs might, one day, contain actual cream.)
Elizabeth G.
Yeah, I think about environmental stuff a lot. I think it’s pretty much impossible to completely eliminate one’s negative impact on the environment in our culture (unless you want to turn into a smelly hippy and never have a steady job again), but as long as we all try to live our lives in a way that’s morally responsible overall, I think we’ll be doing pretty well.
If they put cream into them, they’ll give me a stomach ache and truly heinous gas (I’m mildly lactose intolerant). Right now, I could eat one if I felt like it.
Rachel
And if I eat one now, I’ll get stomach aches and gas from all the artificial funkiness. Alas! You can’t please everybody :-\ I guess we’ll all just have to take care of ourselves and our own little corners of the world.
dek
Hello, I came across this blog doing a search on Cadbury creme eggs. I would just like to point out that, the creme eggs made in the states are made with high fructose corn syrup, unlike the ones in Canada (where I’m from), and they don’t taste as good. I used to think it was just me, until, a few days ago, I bought the mini creme eggs. They tasted great! I read the ingredients, and sure enough, NO HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP IN THE MINI EGGS!!! They taste like the ones I grew up with!! I’ve gone through a pack in 2 days, and I bought another one. I hope people will read this and spread the word!
Tori
Yes, sadly there is HFCS in the mini eggs. :( Cadbury eggs (at least the ones we’ve gotten in Texas) have never had corn syrup in them until thus year. Huge bummer for me!
Your vid totally reminds me that I can’t wait for Easter! I’m not religious, but I do love me some candy. I will splurge that day until my face goes tingly and I faint from chocolate-joy.
Also – you could probably get people to pay for watching you do this all day. That’s some sexy Egg-in’ you got going on there! (Wow…that sounded really stalker-y. I totally didn’t mean it like that…)
Very funny video! I indulge in a few Cadbury Creme Eggs every year around Easter, when they’re fresh. (Nothing worse than a stale Cadbury Egg.) But I usually manage to make more of a mess of it than you do. :)
Actually, they probably start making them six months or so before Easter, along with the rest of the Easter stuff. They stagger the production to fit with other things. That’s why you sometimes get Easter eggs with whitish residue on the outside, from oxidation. Still good, but chocolate isn’t like cheese and will degrade over time.
An actual fresh creme egg is a luxury for those on the line at the right time, maybe in September or October.
Fresh enough, I guess. I hate it when the centre gets all dry and tacky. But getting one right off the line would be superb. I’ve heard the same thing about Coca Cola, incidentally — that employees who work right where it’s made get some of the fresh stuff in a big fountain, and that it tastes quite a bit different (better) than what ends up in cans and bottles.
Nothing bad happened? Tell that to the poor bunny who laid that delicious egg. She’s in her nest wailing away right now.
“Bawk bawk! My baby! Bawk bawk!”
You cold-hearted bastard!
Peace,
Shannon
WackyLisa
It is so clear how much you are enjoying this and having fun.
However, I kept being distracted thinking ‘Wait, my lipstick doesn’t stay on that well! Wow, what’s the trick?” I’m weird, I know. :)
I normally only like the caramel and orange flavors but somehow this video makes me think I might want to try an original one again since they can be eaten without making an utter mess.
[…] in a different but tangentially related move, The Fat Nutritionist has posted this great video of her eating a cadbury creme egg. I love it, because she looks like she’s loving it. Her […]
Wow, Michelle. If nothing else, this little moment of yours was a gentle reminder for me to “slow down” and enjoy my Creme Egg when I have one! Seriously – this took you about 15 times longer to eat than it takes me! Mine is more of a “now you see it, now you don’t” deal. Yours looked way more enjoyable.
I need to sit with my Creme Egg a little longer, appreciate it, savor it, enjoy our time together.
I’ve assisted with some product development at Cadbury’s (just as a taste-tester). In Australia at least they make good products (in India their chocolate is not so good). I know food snobs who won’t touch it, but they tend to be the kind of food snobs who think Belgian chocolate comes from Belgium, or that Dutch cocoa comes from Holland. I prefer Cadbury chocolate perhaps because of childhood familiarity (I prefer it to brands like Hersheys, which came to Australia when I was a teenager), but I also think it’s a good formulation.
When people insult factory food, I think there’s a bit of a fallacy involved. The idea is that something made by hand will always be better than something made by a machine. That cooking is an art. But given sophisticated machinery and controlled environments and ingredients that conform to very close specifications…you wouldn’t buy a hand-soldered computer, for example, because robots do a better job. It depends on the food, of course, but industrial methods are sometimes capable of more than the most skilled artisans.
For various reasons the actual workings of factories that produce food are hidden away (trade secrets for one thing). But if you get to go somewhere like a biscuit factory or a chocolate factory, even a bakery, it’s the coolest place on earth. It really is like Willy Wonka’s. To me, anyway. Most industrial cooking stuff is just the same as kitchen equipment but on a huge, comical scale. And there are gadgets for lining stuff up and turning things…if you saw how a creme egg was made you’d be reminded of a ballet.
Now, whether all this gear makes good food or bad food isn’t the point. It’s the cook who is in charge. Sometimes corner bakers aren’t very good. Sometimes factory cooks are. Sadly, cooks are usually made to make the food that customers say they want to eat, and I say that because most commercial cooks spend most of their time trying to cater to whatever food fad is going around, and trying to make low fat things taste good, and other pointless endeavours. When they should be trying to make the best tasting food they can.
These opportunities are rare. The specifications for, say, a TV dinner, treat taste as the last thing to worry about. But a once-a-year dessert premium-price chocolate treat? If they could make it taste any better they would, even if it pushed the price up. Still, you have economies of scale, so you’re getting a lot of bang for your buck there.
And if you happen to get the History Channel, I recommend a show called Food Tech hosted by Bobby Bognar. It’s rare to see a show that shows how food is made in a kid-friendly fashion, without moralising: http://bit.ly/didjJ9
(Didn’t plan to write all that, but once you get started…)
That they found mercury in corn syrup is a testament to the accuracy of modern measuring equipment. It doesn’t mean that it’s in quantities that could possibly hurt you ever,no matter how much you ate. Mercury is in almost everything in minimal quantities. You are most at risk from mercury poisoning, probably, from burning wood in a poorly ventilated room. Wood has mercury in it, as does pretty much everything else. But in small quantities your body deals with it as it does with any toxin, by excreting it or depositing it where it can’t harm you (most flavoursome compounds are toxic, poisons to kill bugs and such). Everything you eat has toxins in it, to some extent, but if they are in quantities your body can process (your body is very, very efficient at this sort of thing) then it just doesn’t matter. There’s cyanide in almonds, for example, but to eat enough to kill you would rupture something and kill you first.
Elizabeth G.
Yeah, I’m not really that worried. just thought I’d mention it.
Alle Ding’ sind Gift, und nichts ohn’ Gift; allein die Dosis macht, daß ein Ding kein Gift ist (“All things are poison and nothing is without poison, only the dose permits something not to be poisonous.”)
I am afraid that I am married to my dogs. And I think they’ve kind of bonded with Kate, my partner. So, you know…
If you really wanted, you could find a copy of my first, out-of-print book on eBay. It was called ‘Twins’, and is mostly stories about chickens. It’s almost as good as owning the real me!
Oh man, I never took this blog for a place where the wimminz would be fighting over the menfolk. But like Michelle says upthread: *From my cold, dead hands, dude.*
To be honest, I don’t know what I would actually do with him if I had him. I am thinking that at night, you have to cover his large gilt cage with a sheet or he’ll just keep rattling off facts and keep you up all night.
That is true for mercury and most “traditional” poisons. There is a nonlinear dose effect for endocrine disruptors such as BPA. http://www.springerlink.com/content/v82w3414522n2q38/
(I know that I read a news article with a more in-depth explanation than this, but I can’t seem to find it.)
/tangent
badhedgehog
I love watching “How It’s Made” on TV, whatever they’re making, and they’ve had some good interesting food factories on there.
When people insult factory food, I think there’s a bit of a fallacy involved. The idea is that something made by hand will always be better than something made by a machine.
Some of it’s probably that, but where did that idea come from? For my money, it’s an opinion that evolved from long experience with factory food because, as you pointed out above, even things like Cadbury eggs and Coke, which are designed to be shelf-stable, just taste better when they’re fresh. You can’t get much factory food fresh. (Remember that at one point it was “modern” and trendy to eat frozen/canned veggies rather than fresh from the garden. I suppose that the change could merely be a change in fashion, but I suspect it’s because frozen/canned stuff does not taste as good.)
Some of it might also be due to the compromises in ingredients required to keep food shelf-stable, or to using cheaper ingredients than a home cook/baker would use.
I cannot get frozen macaroni and cheese that tastes as good as homemade macaroni and cheese–and that’s one of the frozen dinners that holds up the best. I cannot get long-lasting supermarket-type sliced bread that tastes as good as bakery bread, even when the bakery bread is made at the same store that I buy the sliced bread at. People who make stuff by hand don’t have the luxury of letting their stuff sit on a shelf for months, because it would be inedible. I’m not trying to understate the advantages of food that can sit on a shelf for months. But IT DOES NOT TASTE THE SAME.
Well, when I was a kid you could only get mushrooms in cans, or asparagus. Otherwise you ate what was local. So getting cans full of exotic things was very exciting. Something new was better than nothing or more of the same.
But now we have it better. For example, I can buy reasonably fresh cranberries in Australia at any supermarket and they don’t grow here. You can probably buy Australian lamb where you are. It might not be as cheap as it is here, but it’s better than the nasty US lamb you were stuck with once (although US lamb is getting much better too).
Part of the solution has been to move elements of the factory into your home. The refrigerator, the food mixer, the bread machine. That way you can get that bit closer to having freshly-made foods at home. You mention mac and cheese…sure, the packaged version tastes different because it’s made to be shelf-stable. It’s *superior* in that respect to the home-made version, but part of the trade-off is in flavour. If I make mac and cheese, I use nice cheese (which would triple the cost of the Kraft version). There’s a balance between things like taste, cost and convenience.
Ultimately, when people say things like: ‘this food is full of chemicals’ or: ‘this stuff tastes nasty’ the only reasonable answer is: you don’t have to buy it. Just make it your damn self and shut up already.
But while your home-made mac and cheese might taste better, I bet you didn’t make the pasta yourself, even though that would have tasted better still. And why would you? Pasta is cheap and convenient and shelf-stable and still tastes pretty good. See, it’s all a trade-off. I don’t trust a chef who says that they only use the best ingredients. They don’t know what they’re doing. It’s knowing when to use the best ingredients and when you don’t need to that makes a good cook, because chefs have to balance budgets too.
While I advocate these things, I eat almost no processed food at all, because I have the time and the skills to do a better job. Fresh is always better, but experience tells me that things like canned tomatoes are an adequate substitute in many dishes. And when I say I don’t eat processed food, I’m not including things like cream and flour and sugar and so on, which are all highly processed (and have been for centuries), and I use a refrigerator and all sorts of factory equipment. So I need to qualify my statement: I rarely eat factory-produced baked goods. But if I feel like a fish finger sandwich, I’m not going to get the fishing rod out.
Yeah, I’d kind of noticed that from some earlier posts; nothing to take personally. I figure it’s a case of “comment containing words X and Y=I will get on my soapbox!” Unfortunately, that sort of reaction makes one sound mansplainy.
When I said make it your damn self, I wasn’t referring to your comments specifically. But when I think about it, frozen mac and cheese? That’s hella slack…I never heard of that, but then mac and cheese is not a popular dish here in Australia (not enough meat).
With plant material, the only things that significantly affect flavour are heredity and freshness. The taste of corn picked off the stalk and immediately boiled is impossible to reproduce, as are the various volatile compounds released by freshly squeezed oranges. Sure. But some things are better with age, like beef, or many types of cake, or good cheese or wine, or re-heated meat dishes in which the collagen has already been converted to more flavourful gelatin.
Porcini mushrooms are probably better dried than fresh, which is why they were originally popular. Canned ripe tomatoes are usually better than out-of-season tomatoes. It depends on the food, and the kind of processing, all sorts of factors.
Fruit and vegetables are all processed at a factory: cleaned, sprayed, picked over for imperfections, portioned and packed. A twinkie will go stale in about two weeks. Most store bread is baked that very morning, just hours before you buy it, even the big brands. The point being that if it tastes good, it is good, and that’s really all that matters. The rest is good to know for someone like me, who has a professional interest in these things, but for most people, it’s better to trust your own senses and not worry about whatever claims are on the label.
I guess if you’re point *isn’t* about processed food not tasting as good, I’m not sure what your point is. I’m not trying to be rude, and I’m not autistic, but I’m an Australian male, and we’re not known for our diplomacy. On the plus side, I don’t take *anything* personally (I did think about saying something about ‘mansplaining’, but that would definitely end in tears).
You are an unrepetant mansplainer. (Alright, more of a general know-it-all than a mansplainer in its technical sense.) But it’s okay, because you will actually shut up when I ask you to.
Other people are welcome to try it, too. Tell him to shut up and see what happens. He doesn’t explode into a ball of fiery self-righteousness like most internet people. It’s kind of amazing.
I am indeed saying that as a general rule, factory food doesn’t taste as good, because it is pretty much guaranteed not to be as fresh as homemade food, as well as having inferior ingredients in a significant number of cases. (I use “inferior” here to mean “inferior in taste”, usually as a tradeoff for either cheapness or greater shelf-stability.) The exceptions you mention above where particular foods taste better aged do not negate the general rule that food tastes better fresh.
I didn’t interpret the “make your own damn food” as specifically talking to me. I interpreted your general response, and in particular the fact that you were acting like it was some sort of “gotcha” that I don’t hand-make the macaroni noodles myself, as talking to me. I specifically said that there was a tradeoff between shelf-stability and taste; I did not make the argument that one should always choose taste over shelf-stability; yet you seemed to be saying that by choosing shelf-stability over taste in one particular instance I was somehow negating my original argument.
I’m also not sure why you were talking about all the things that you could only get canned as a child, unless you somehow interpreted my comment as an attack on canned food, after I specifically said that I wasn’t trying to minimize the value of shelf-stability, in order to try to avoid such misunderstandings. Of course canned mushrooms taste better than no mushrooms at all, unless you really don’t like mushrooms (or really don’t like canned mushrooms).
So sure, maybe a lot of people now have a sort of magical-thinking idea that simply by virtue of being made by a person, food will taste better. But I think that perception evolved from noticing a very real difference in the taste of factory and homemade food.
You’re all just jealous! Jealous of my huge brain!
It didn’t fill itself up, you know…it took a lot of work.
(I’m still not really sure what you’re arguing about. You’re supposed to disagree with me. What bit are you disagreeing with? It’s not clear. My, this column is rather slimming…)
Well, I thought I was disagreeing with the assertion that the difference in yumminess between factory food and homemade/cooked by 1 person food was solely an artifact, akin to the placebo effect, of people’s ideas of how food should be made. Maybe I misunderstood your original comment.
Kate
Australia and chocolate, now I’m going to have jaffas on my brain for a long time.
I like the caramel eggs, in fact preferring them to the creme egg. There I said it. Someone had to speak for the caramel. *sob*
unscrambled
I’ve never been a creme egg fan (just–something about the goo inside never did it for me), but I do like Cadbury chocolate, generally (in fact, I love the crunchie bar–harder to find in the US, but very delicious).
This video is adorable and funny, and yes, a bit porn-y–but this is because a woman eating anything delicious and enjoying it is inexorably linked to sex in this cultural space we’re living in. A message many of us have been trained to read, which is why the smile and eyebrows make this video a doublewin.
I kind of think of combining sex and food as a waste of food…I guess as long as you eat it all afterwards.
I think the issue is pleasure and self-control. Expressions of pleasure are also evidence of a failure to control yourself – your passions, your desires – which is frowned on by the petite bourgeousie. Basically, it’s because they want you to work in their factories and put the work ethic above all else. Pleasure, uncontrolled or unrestricted, interferes with commerce. Pleasure subverts capitalism.
Pleasure is something you reward yourself with, in sensible and small doses, in the privacy of your own home as a reward for a productive day in the factory of the office or whatever. Certainly not in public. The only acceptable public version, I guess, is the Madonna version of passion, robotic rituals mimicking passion while you can see her counting under her breath, all paid for up front.
Or a ‘healthy’ snack, which is virtuous, will extend the period in which you can hope to accrue capital, and is only marginally enjoyable, saving you from the potential embarrassment of making pleasured sounds or expressions in public.
badhedgehog
I can hear Bourdieu and Foucault cheering and shouting “GET IN THERE, MY SON! GET IN!”
this reminds me of a mindful eating exercise we did. Looks like you are tuning in and enjoying it! Do you eat with your clients when you work with them on mindful eating? Do you play that music? :)
Julia
I think the music would be an amazing addition to the mindful eating of, say, Cheetos.
This sounds like a great idea. I’ll have to try that sometime.
Julia
Oh! I must share this: http://cadburycremeegg.ca/
It’s a totally addictive game. The object is to prevent the creme egg from turning itself to goo, like on the commercials.
rexybird
That was fabulous. After the first 5 seconds I started to feel a bit pervy AND I wanted a creme egg. Now I don’t feel so bad about the pervy thing (thanks!) and luckily I’ve got tiny Reese’s chocolate eggs in my candy dish to tide me over until I can find a fresh bit of creamy eggy goodness!
OK, you’ve totally inspired me to check pimpthatsnack.com to see if there’s a way to get gluten-free, corn-free cadbury creme eggs in my life. Even if there isn’t, I take joy in the fact that people are celebrating the creme egg! (curiosity won – instructions on making your own (jumbo-sized) CCE: http://www.pimpthatsnack.com/project/302/1)
As for pervy, I have a long tongue, and in my less-food-allergen-ed days, would get very familiar with my creme egg. You were downright restrained.
Lastly, thank you again for making my world a saner, happier place. I get happy everytime something from FN pops up in my google reader.
Dammit, now I’m craving a Cadbury creme egg. Good thing my sweetie is on his way home and can stop at the store for me so I don’t have to leave the house!
Emily
I love Cadbury Creme Eggs SO MUCH! I seriously look forward to Easter all year because then they are finally available. I wonder if it’s possible to get them online at other times.
Great video. Unfortunately, I really don’t like the creme eggs. Give me the Laura Secord peanut butter ones any time, though. I must say, I liked how you cut the extreme sweetness with coffee (that was coffee, right?).
Oh, and you made a really cute wink in the middle.
You know, that was my first thought when watching this: ‘I must go pluck my eyebrows.’
Rose
Me three! I actually have been scanning the comments to see if anyone got her to tell us how she does it. :-) I have these bushy things that I can pluck and before you know it, they’ve gotten all bushy again; I mean, like overnight, like a garden. If I thought about it too hard it might be kinda creepy. ;-)
LOL Loving it! Cadbury eggs are my favorite candy treats ever! (a close second are Reese peanut butter eggs) I always make sure I have time to sit and savor them slowly (without an audience, as I’m a quite self aware that eating one the way I do looks kind of pervy lol), especially since they’re not available year round.
There’s much I want to say, but I’ll keep it short.
I was just receiving a “homework assignment” from my therapist to locate visual “affirmations” that my view of beauty is shared — I was thinking of photos like this one: http://www.alexandrabellerdances.org/
But this is so exactly right. It’s sexy (not pervy, or porny), sensual, silly, fun, delicious. It is aware without being mocking. It’s profoundly bold. I think it’s really an illustration of the “eat food. stuff you like. as much as you like.” rule. It’s a celebration and a comic strip and it’s wonderful. It oughtn’t be, it ought to be just a woman eating food, but what you look like (in my subjective view, beautiful) combined with who you are (in my subjective view, beautiful) and eating a frivilous, seasonal treat makes it performance art.
What’s your point? Are you commenting on my comment about her being a role model, or on the part where I said that I don’t care for Cadbury eggs? Please be more specific.
deeleigh
Oh. I think I see. It’s my understanding that people who think of foods as good and evil see Cadbury eggs as evil and fresh vegetables as good.
So, are you saying that because Cadbury eggs are evil, eating one once in a while makes for a poor role model, and that you are superior because you don’t like them? Is the fact that your avatar is a large bicep also a sign of your superiority?
If this is true, does liking vegetables make me a superior person, or would that only be the case if I were thin or had a very low body fat percentage? Come to think of it, perhaps your food morality is different. Maybe enjoying blended banana and soy powder drinks is your way to salvation.
But, I apologize. Maybe I’m reading too much into your two short posts.
Maybe his two sentences weren’t supposed to be related? That (plus the “in a good way or a bad way?” ambiguity of his first sentence) might explain the confusion.
Kelle
I hope you’re drinking coffee with that creme egg :)
It was water, sadly. But you know what I’ve found? That Earl Grey tea (with milk in it) is actually really nice with a Cadbury Creme Egg!
clairedammit
Half my family is British, and they used to send those to us in Florida before you could buy them here. People were so grossed out by the “egg” inside. The same people can’t get enough of them now.
I used to like them best frozen. I think you would enjoy a frozen one someday.
You look so pretty in your pearls! I dropped by to say a quick thanks for the links you have posted on your site, because I was able to access a couple of them in the midst of an online ‘obesity kills’ slapdown. It was gratifying to be able to whip them out at will. So thanks!
I am totally up with the Creme Egg tradition. This is awesome.
Also: Cadbury Mini Eggs are my absolute favorite chocolate candy. I have a bag in my desk drawer right now.
Lampdevil
Cadbury Creme Eggs are waaaaay too sweet for me. You people can have ’em! It’s cool, it’s fine! Just save me the Cadbury Mini-Eggs, ‘kay? The little crunchy pastel candy shells are soooo nice… I like to just let them melt down in my mouth…
..what’s this about orange eggs now? I know I’ve had chocolate eggs filled with orange-flavored filling, but I don’t recall them being specifically from Cadbury. Hrm? I may have to prowl the local candy marts to see what I can dig up.
I’ve heard this complaint from lots of people, so you’re not the only one. It seems to take a pretty well-developed sweet tooth to fully appreciate the Creme Egg.
I come from a long line of people with sweet teeth. And I faaar prefer milk chocolate over dark (no surprise, right?)
KellyK
I have a major sweet tooth–I like my sugar with coffee and cream. But, weirdly, I prefer dark chocolate to milk chocolate. They do have a slightly different texture, though, so maybe that’s it. Milk chocolate seems meltier to me, and dark chocolate has a little more firmness to it.
(Having given up sweets for Lent, I’m thinking there’s a massive dark chocolate bunny in my future.)
Yes, I believe the milk in milk chocolate means that the chocolate crystals don’t form in quite the same way, and thus the chocolate has a lower melting point.
so i’ve eaten like 10 cadbury creme eggs since i saw that video a few weeks ago. worth it! so worth it! i usually just scarf them, and feel guilty. but i noticed you take it nice and slow, enjoying the heck out of it, drinking some liquid while you do it. i noticed it lasts longer when you do that.
Cadbury Creme Eggs probably wouldn’t be my weapon of choice, but I enjoyed the hell out of this post. I bet those Canadian eggs taste better than the ones down here in NY, too… I miss Cadbury chocolate from Canada. I don’t know why, but it doesn’t taste the same here.
How the hell do you eat those things so DELICATELY? Every time I’ve ever tried, the goopy shit inside comes volcanoing out and dives straight down my cleavage, leaving chocolate smeared down my chin looking decidedly… well… poo-like.
You barely even mar your lipstick then delicately taste the bits of your fingers that it came into contact with as though you’re touching off breadcrumbs with your tongue.
It’s just not fair.
Actually I’m not a fan of the Cadbury creme egg, the goo makes my teeth hurt. But the Mars Bar ones are bloody fabulous.
I usually go for sweets when it’s nearing my period or when I have it. My cravings for sweets are kind of hard to deal with especially during these times.
Elizabeth G.
heh, it’s okay, you’re not alone. I am that way too. I read somewhere recently that your metabolism speeds up slightly when you menstruate; don’t know if it’s true or if it really makes that much difference, but I like to think this occurs as a way to deal with the monthly ingestion of copious amounts of chocolate. I don’t really care to be disabused of the notion, either. :P
octopod
Happens to me too. Not chocolate in particular, but I definitely eat more around then — in particular, things with iron, but generally just more calories.
KellyK
Same here, especially things with iron and sweets.
Sara
Michelle, you are so awesome!
Taylor
This is the best :)
And now I want a Creme Egg to go with my coffee :P
She actually brought some Easter candy to our nutrition group (where those of us who are there and our nutritionist eat together) this week in case anyone wanted to try a challenge food in a supportive environment. She definitely had a reese’s egg herself!
Haha. You DO know me from Twitter! Though, I’ve been a bit absent lately b/c school has been CRIZAZY. I also sent you an email once upon a time that you posted in a blog post . . . ;-)
Before working with my current RD, I’ve never had a nutritionist who would eat with me before. It’s SO, SO incredibly helpful, especially with challenge foods, but certainly at other times as well. I’m really glad to hear that you eat with clients!
P.S. – I just had a couple of mini Cadbury Creme Eggs in honor of Easter. I ate them mindfully, and they were DELICIOUS! Baby steps. :-)
P.P.S. – In the store today, I saw orange creme Cadbury egss! Did you know these existed??
DessertFirst
Happy Easter, Michelle. Re your fondness for Cadbury eggs (which I share), the following article appeared in today’s (Sunday, April 4/10) Toronto Star, in the Insight section:
I had no idea these were made so close to home (I live in Markham, ON) — nor did I realize all the steps, and countries, involved in creating these Easter treats!
Hmmm . . . I wonder if that factory gives tours . . . with free samples, LOL. I’ve always wanted to visit a candy/chocolate factory, like the huge one (a whole chocolate-themed village, apparently!) in Hershey, PA.
Sean
Hahahahaha! This is great! :) :) Happy Factory-Produced-Creme-Filled Chocolate Egg Day! Love ya sis!
Comments
147 responses to “Watch me eat a Cadbury Creme Egg.”
Michelle. I normally love everything you do. I just wish you would have picked some delicious buttercream-chocolate goodie from a real bakery or confectioner that uses real ingredients instead of that factory produced fake-stuff-laden candy imitation.
Man, Cadbury Eggs are an annual tradition. I don’t care how fake they are!
I kind of even perversely love that they’re spelled “Creme Eggs” instead of “Cream Eggs” because…well…there’s no actual cream in there. I’m betting there’s no egg either!
But…from my cold, dead hands, man. Cold, dead hands.
There is totally egg, or some kind of egg byproduct, because I never had one as a lacto-vegetarian.
Oh, except the caramel ones.
I should’ve saved the wrapper! There might be powdered egg in there as an emulsifier or something.
What’s in them is called fondant, which is one of a number of things which is referred to in confectioner’s terms as a “creme”. Various things called cremes may or may not have cream in them, the term refers to texture. But things called “creme” are not necessarily highly artificial.
You know, here’s my thought about that: I’m someone who, over the years, has moved into a whole-foods-slow-foods-local-farmer-small-business-grow-your-own-and-can-it type of eater and consumer. I mean, I make my own crackers and breakfast cereals now, I’m just that crazy!
But you know what? Every once in a while I want a Ring Ding. And the gorgeous little offerings at our local independent patisserie/chocolatier just isn’t going to cut it when what I want is a Ring Ding. And There’s Nothing Wrong With That. It’s normal to get attached to foods, especially ones that we remember from childhood or were enjoyed at holidays, etc… So you eat that Cadbury Creme Egg and you enjoy every minute of it, Michelle!!
And now I find myself in need of a Ring Ding.
I’m like that with Kraft Dinner (aka “Macaroni and Cheese.”) Sometimes…I just want that manufactured, yellow-powder taste. And nothing else will do.
Y’know, I can never quite get my husband to understand that. His folks were all hippy-dippy, so he doesn’t understand my sudden overwhelming desire for Cheese Whiz on celery or some store-bought sweet pickles. The very rarely seen Cheese Whiz and mayo on white bread with sweet pickles is even harder to explain.
Yeah, I’m an amazing cook and I’m all into locally grown, delicious food. However, sometimes I just want a crap-filled piece of my childhood, darn it.
*nod* I can understand that. I’m vegan, but I just can’t give up my chocolate chip cookies. I know they have milk and egg products in them,but I just *can’t.* And I doubt pizza is entirely out of my future, either; my mouth waters every time I walk past Zachary’s (a local pizzeria here in Berkeley).
Wow, you pretty much just described a fairly common Saturday night with our friends (Zachary’s and chocolate chip cookies). Mmmmm.
You live in Berkeley?!
err *the bay area? (a quick Google search cured me of the misconception that there’s only one Zachary’s.)
There are some places that sell vegan cookies with loads of fat and sugar, and if you are into homemade:
http://vegweb.com/index.php?topic=6391.0
Just an FYI :)
Yeah, I am vegan too and it has never even crossed my mind to give up chocolate chip cookies and pizzas. I just have to mind where I get them (mostly health food stores, specialty restaurants, or my own kitchen).
Same here. For me the nostalgia item is a bologna & yellow mustard sandwich. And it has to be on Wonder bread or something similar. I usually much prefer homemade or “artisan” breads for nice hearty sandwiches, but this is just not that kind of sandwich. It’s “school lunch packed by my mom” nostalgia. And it tastes awesome.
Yeah, I love scratch baking, I love my CSA guy, and I’m a food snob (which I’m not sure I should confound with dietary righteousness, meself) but my favorite part of Easter is the annual Beheading of the Peeps. Fall before my righteous chomping, Peep armies! Nom! Nom, I say!
What ingredients in a Cadbury Egg aren’t “real”? Is there some imaginary component in them? If someone enjoys the taste of “fake” candy, why shouldn’t they have some? If you can eat it, then it counts as real food.
I love a Fran’s chocolate any day…but some days what I crave is a Three Musketeers bar, or a Butterfinger.
I don’t eat Creme Eggs (too sweet for me) but seeing a food as “forbidden” because it’s made in a factory only makes it glitter more and you know what? A dollar and a half for one giant Butterfinger (that I can eat in 2-3 sittings), is a lot more affordable than a box of 18 Fran’s for $25 (or whatever the cost is these days) when one chocolate only is one (or two) bites at most.
I used to have one or two creme eggs each year, but this year when I had one, it was way, way too sweet for me. I chalked it up as a sign that my palette is growing.
I hear you. I prefer the homemade, specialty, natural baked goodies made with real butter, cream, and then smothered with a good layer of buttercream, for good measure. That being said, I think the point of this post was to show people, even us so-called “food elitists” that it’s okay to eat whatever you want, whether that be a Cadbury Creme Egg or a $9.00 piece of flourless chocolate cake from a frilly bakery. Now, of course, you could get into the corn syrup discussion about commodity agriculture, the loss of topsoil, etc., but eating one or a few Cadbury Eggs a year (or more) isn’t going to kill you. If anything, stressing over what you should and should not eat, might. Eat what you love. (Plus, with the push from consumers in many different directions asking for more natural food, those yummy little eggs might, one day, contain actual cream.)
Yeah, I think about environmental stuff a lot. I think it’s pretty much impossible to completely eliminate one’s negative impact on the environment in our culture (unless you want to turn into a smelly hippy and never have a steady job again), but as long as we all try to live our lives in a way that’s morally responsible overall, I think we’ll be doing pretty well.
If they put cream into them, they’ll give me a stomach ache and truly heinous gas (I’m mildly lactose intolerant). Right now, I could eat one if I felt like it.
And if I eat one now, I’ll get stomach aches and gas from all the artificial funkiness. Alas! You can’t please everybody :-\ I guess we’ll all just have to take care of ourselves and our own little corners of the world.
Hello, I came across this blog doing a search on Cadbury creme eggs. I would just like to point out that, the creme eggs made in the states are made with high fructose corn syrup, unlike the ones in Canada (where I’m from), and they don’t taste as good. I used to think it was just me, until, a few days ago, I bought the mini creme eggs. They tasted great! I read the ingredients, and sure enough, NO HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP IN THE MINI EGGS!!! They taste like the ones I grew up with!! I’ve gone through a pack in 2 days, and I bought another one. I hope people will read this and spread the word!
Yes, sadly there is HFCS in the mini eggs. :( Cadbury eggs (at least the ones we’ve gotten in Texas) have never had corn syrup in them until thus year. Huge bummer for me!
(I like the subtitle of the film. :3 )
Your vid totally reminds me that I can’t wait for Easter! I’m not religious, but I do love me some candy. I will splurge that day until my face goes tingly and I faint from chocolate-joy.
Also – you could probably get people to pay for watching you do this all day. That’s some sexy Egg-in’ you got going on there! (Wow…that sounded really stalker-y. I totally didn’t mean it like that…)
I realized that I was being inadvertently porny within the first 5-10 seconds and that’s what the stupid, goofy grin was about.
Oh golly…I’m glad you chose that music and resisted the urge to use anything with a more bow-chicka-wow-wow beat! :P
I had no idea my readers were so pervy!
I kind of like it though.
Truly awesome! You have very expressive eyebrows.
Oh I needed this today. And you reminded me that there’s one in my room, waiting to be devoured.
When I was in NYC last month, I went to the Hershey store (OH YES) and found a pack of ORANGE creme eggs. ORANGE! I bought them immediately. OMG. :)
I also eat them in an inadvertently porny way. Depending on who’s watching, it could become advertent. :)
Is that Mokie exiting over your right shoulder around the 2 minute mark?
Wow, good eyes! Yes, I think that was Mokie’s tail.
Very funny video! I indulge in a few Cadbury Creme Eggs every year around Easter, when they’re fresh. (Nothing worse than a stale Cadbury Egg.) But I usually manage to make more of a mess of it than you do. :)
Oh yeah, they gotta be fresh or they’re not quite as good.
Same with PEP! (Which is Canadian, so I don’t know if anyone knows what I’m talking about, but, basically, a giant York Peppermint Pattie.)
Actually, they probably start making them six months or so before Easter, along with the rest of the Easter stuff. They stagger the production to fit with other things. That’s why you sometimes get Easter eggs with whitish residue on the outside, from oxidation. Still good, but chocolate isn’t like cheese and will degrade over time.
An actual fresh creme egg is a luxury for those on the line at the right time, maybe in September or October.
Fresh enough, I guess. I hate it when the centre gets all dry and tacky. But getting one right off the line would be superb. I’ve heard the same thing about Coca Cola, incidentally — that employees who work right where it’s made get some of the fresh stuff in a big fountain, and that it tastes quite a bit different (better) than what ends up in cans and bottles.
Nothing bad happened? Tell that to the poor bunny who laid that delicious egg. She’s in her nest wailing away right now.
“Bawk bawk! My baby! Bawk bawk!”
You cold-hearted bastard!
Peace,
Shannon
It is so clear how much you are enjoying this and having fun.
However, I kept being distracted thinking ‘Wait, my lipstick doesn’t stay on that well! Wow, what’s the trick?” I’m weird, I know. :)
I normally only like the caramel and orange flavors but somehow this video makes me think I might want to try an original one again since they can be eaten without making an utter mess.
I think the lipstick wore off shortly thereafter. But, otherwise, my advice is lipliner.
And I have never tried caramel or orange Cadbury Eggs. How strange!
[…] in a different but tangentially related move, The Fat Nutritionist has posted this great video of her eating a cadbury creme egg. I love it, because she looks like she’s loving it. Her […]
Wow, Michelle. If nothing else, this little moment of yours was a gentle reminder for me to “slow down” and enjoy my Creme Egg when I have one! Seriously – this took you about 15 times longer to eat than it takes me! Mine is more of a “now you see it, now you don’t” deal. Yours looked way more enjoyable.
I need to sit with my Creme Egg a little longer, appreciate it, savor it, enjoy our time together.
Thanks for that.
I’ve assisted with some product development at Cadbury’s (just as a taste-tester). In Australia at least they make good products (in India their chocolate is not so good). I know food snobs who won’t touch it, but they tend to be the kind of food snobs who think Belgian chocolate comes from Belgium, or that Dutch cocoa comes from Holland. I prefer Cadbury chocolate perhaps because of childhood familiarity (I prefer it to brands like Hersheys, which came to Australia when I was a teenager), but I also think it’s a good formulation.
When people insult factory food, I think there’s a bit of a fallacy involved. The idea is that something made by hand will always be better than something made by a machine. That cooking is an art. But given sophisticated machinery and controlled environments and ingredients that conform to very close specifications…you wouldn’t buy a hand-soldered computer, for example, because robots do a better job. It depends on the food, of course, but industrial methods are sometimes capable of more than the most skilled artisans.
For various reasons the actual workings of factories that produce food are hidden away (trade secrets for one thing). But if you get to go somewhere like a biscuit factory or a chocolate factory, even a bakery, it’s the coolest place on earth. It really is like Willy Wonka’s. To me, anyway. Most industrial cooking stuff is just the same as kitchen equipment but on a huge, comical scale. And there are gadgets for lining stuff up and turning things…if you saw how a creme egg was made you’d be reminded of a ballet.
Now, whether all this gear makes good food or bad food isn’t the point. It’s the cook who is in charge. Sometimes corner bakers aren’t very good. Sometimes factory cooks are. Sadly, cooks are usually made to make the food that customers say they want to eat, and I say that because most commercial cooks spend most of their time trying to cater to whatever food fad is going around, and trying to make low fat things taste good, and other pointless endeavours. When they should be trying to make the best tasting food they can.
These opportunities are rare. The specifications for, say, a TV dinner, treat taste as the last thing to worry about. But a once-a-year dessert premium-price chocolate treat? If they could make it taste any better they would, even if it pushed the price up. Still, you have economies of scale, so you’re getting a lot of bang for your buck there.
And if you happen to get the History Channel, I recommend a show called Food Tech hosted by Bobby Bognar. It’s rare to see a show that shows how food is made in a kid-friendly fashion, without moralising: http://bit.ly/didjJ9
(Didn’t plan to write all that, but once you get started…)
You are such an incredible geek.
But I rock! I collect combo organs! I’m a treasure!
I think the concern with the factory-made stuff has more to do with high-fructose corn syrup, which apparently can contain mercury.
That they found mercury in corn syrup is a testament to the accuracy of modern measuring equipment. It doesn’t mean that it’s in quantities that could possibly hurt you ever,no matter how much you ate. Mercury is in almost everything in minimal quantities. You are most at risk from mercury poisoning, probably, from burning wood in a poorly ventilated room. Wood has mercury in it, as does pretty much everything else. But in small quantities your body deals with it as it does with any toxin, by excreting it or depositing it where it can’t harm you (most flavoursome compounds are toxic, poisons to kill bugs and such). Everything you eat has toxins in it, to some extent, but if they are in quantities your body can process (your body is very, very efficient at this sort of thing) then it just doesn’t matter. There’s cyanide in almonds, for example, but to eat enough to kill you would rupture something and kill you first.
Yeah, I’m not really that worried. just thought I’d mention it.
“We have a principle in toxicology, which is the dose makes the poison,” says Winter. “It’s the amount of a chemical, not its presence or absence, that determines the potential for harm, and frankly, I don’t see based on their findings that they’ve made much of a case that this is something that consumers need to worry about.”
methylmercury /= elemental mercury
She’s paraphrased Paracelsus, who said:
Alle Ding’ sind Gift, und nichts ohn’ Gift; allein die Dosis macht, daß ein Ding kein Gift ist (“All things are poison and nothing is without poison, only the dose permits something not to be poisonous.”)
My favorite comic about methylmercury is this one.
Also, Chris Gregory, I have a sense you are already attached, but if not, will you marry me?
Haha, nice comic. It’s amazing what a difference one little carbon atom can make.
I am afraid that I am married to my dogs. And I think they’ve kind of bonded with Kate, my partner. So, you know…
If you really wanted, you could find a copy of my first, out-of-print book on eBay. It was called ‘Twins’, and is mostly stories about chickens. It’s almost as good as owning the real me!
Oh man, I never took this blog for a place where the wimminz would be fighting over the menfolk. But like Michelle says upthread: *From my cold, dead hands, dude.*
STAND BY YOUR MAN, Kate.
(Give him two arms to cling to, and something warm to come to when nights are cold and lonely…)
no fighting. there are plenty of men geeks to go around. I apologize for the dust up.
I keed, I keed. You can have him, but he is slightly shopsoiled.
To be honest, I don’t know what I would actually do with him if I had him. I am thinking that at night, you have to cover his large gilt cage with a sheet or he’ll just keep rattling off facts and keep you up all night.
That is true for mercury and most “traditional” poisons. There is a nonlinear dose effect for endocrine disruptors such as BPA.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/v82w3414522n2q38/
(I know that I read a news article with a more in-depth explanation than this, but I can’t seem to find it.)
/tangent
I love watching “How It’s Made” on TV, whatever they’re making, and they’ve had some good interesting food factories on there.
(the European broadcast of “How It’s Made” is revoiced by a British actor with a really nice voice and a Merseyside accent – he gives a warm, down to earth, slightly wry reading which makes the show extra, extra good – e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-XVXdKKSmI and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkZXwyr3Mvo)
When people insult factory food, I think there’s a bit of a fallacy involved. The idea is that something made by hand will always be better than something made by a machine.
Some of it’s probably that, but where did that idea come from? For my money, it’s an opinion that evolved from long experience with factory food because, as you pointed out above, even things like Cadbury eggs and Coke, which are designed to be shelf-stable, just taste better when they’re fresh. You can’t get much factory food fresh. (Remember that at one point it was “modern” and trendy to eat frozen/canned veggies rather than fresh from the garden. I suppose that the change could merely be a change in fashion, but I suspect it’s because frozen/canned stuff does not taste as good.)
Some of it might also be due to the compromises in ingredients required to keep food shelf-stable, or to using cheaper ingredients than a home cook/baker would use.
I cannot get frozen macaroni and cheese that tastes as good as homemade macaroni and cheese–and that’s one of the frozen dinners that holds up the best. I cannot get long-lasting supermarket-type sliced bread that tastes as good as bakery bread, even when the bakery bread is made at the same store that I buy the sliced bread at. People who make stuff by hand don’t have the luxury of letting their stuff sit on a shelf for months, because it would be inedible. I’m not trying to understate the advantages of food that can sit on a shelf for months. But IT DOES NOT TASTE THE SAME.
Well, when I was a kid you could only get mushrooms in cans, or asparagus. Otherwise you ate what was local. So getting cans full of exotic things was very exciting. Something new was better than nothing or more of the same.
But now we have it better. For example, I can buy reasonably fresh cranberries in Australia at any supermarket and they don’t grow here. You can probably buy Australian lamb where you are. It might not be as cheap as it is here, but it’s better than the nasty US lamb you were stuck with once (although US lamb is getting much better too).
Part of the solution has been to move elements of the factory into your home. The refrigerator, the food mixer, the bread machine. That way you can get that bit closer to having freshly-made foods at home. You mention mac and cheese…sure, the packaged version tastes different because it’s made to be shelf-stable. It’s *superior* in that respect to the home-made version, but part of the trade-off is in flavour. If I make mac and cheese, I use nice cheese (which would triple the cost of the Kraft version). There’s a balance between things like taste, cost and convenience.
Ultimately, when people say things like: ‘this food is full of chemicals’ or: ‘this stuff tastes nasty’ the only reasonable answer is: you don’t have to buy it. Just make it your damn self and shut up already.
But while your home-made mac and cheese might taste better, I bet you didn’t make the pasta yourself, even though that would have tasted better still. And why would you? Pasta is cheap and convenient and shelf-stable and still tastes pretty good. See, it’s all a trade-off. I don’t trust a chef who says that they only use the best ingredients. They don’t know what they’re doing. It’s knowing when to use the best ingredients and when you don’t need to that makes a good cook, because chefs have to balance budgets too.
While I advocate these things, I eat almost no processed food at all, because I have the time and the skills to do a better job. Fresh is always better, but experience tells me that things like canned tomatoes are an adequate substitute in many dishes. And when I say I don’t eat processed food, I’m not including things like cream and flour and sugar and so on, which are all highly processed (and have been for centuries), and I use a refrigerator and all sorts of factory equipment. So I need to qualify my statement: I rarely eat factory-produced baked goods. But if I feel like a fish finger sandwich, I’m not going to get the fishing rod out.
You responded almost as though I didn’t say that there was a tradeoff and that I wasn’t trying to minimize the importance of shelf-stability.
He does that to everyone. Give him what-for.
Ha!
Yeah, I’d kind of noticed that from some earlier posts; nothing to take personally. I figure it’s a case of “comment containing words X and Y=I will get on my soapbox!” Unfortunately, that sort of reaction makes one sound mansplainy.
When I said make it your damn self, I wasn’t referring to your comments specifically. But when I think about it, frozen mac and cheese? That’s hella slack…I never heard of that, but then mac and cheese is not a popular dish here in Australia (not enough meat).
With plant material, the only things that significantly affect flavour are heredity and freshness. The taste of corn picked off the stalk and immediately boiled is impossible to reproduce, as are the various volatile compounds released by freshly squeezed oranges. Sure. But some things are better with age, like beef, or many types of cake, or good cheese or wine, or re-heated meat dishes in which the collagen has already been converted to more flavourful gelatin.
Porcini mushrooms are probably better dried than fresh, which is why they were originally popular. Canned ripe tomatoes are usually better than out-of-season tomatoes. It depends on the food, and the kind of processing, all sorts of factors.
Fruit and vegetables are all processed at a factory: cleaned, sprayed, picked over for imperfections, portioned and packed. A twinkie will go stale in about two weeks. Most store bread is baked that very morning, just hours before you buy it, even the big brands. The point being that if it tastes good, it is good, and that’s really all that matters. The rest is good to know for someone like me, who has a professional interest in these things, but for most people, it’s better to trust your own senses and not worry about whatever claims are on the label.
I guess if you’re point *isn’t* about processed food not tasting as good, I’m not sure what your point is. I’m not trying to be rude, and I’m not autistic, but I’m an Australian male, and we’re not known for our diplomacy. On the plus side, I don’t take *anything* personally (I did think about saying something about ‘mansplaining’, but that would definitely end in tears).
You are an unrepetant mansplainer. (Alright, more of a general know-it-all than a mansplainer in its technical sense.) But it’s okay, because you will actually shut up when I ask you to.
Other people are welcome to try it, too. Tell him to shut up and see what happens. He doesn’t explode into a ball of fiery self-righteousness like most internet people. It’s kind of amazing.
I am indeed saying that as a general rule, factory food doesn’t taste as good, because it is pretty much guaranteed not to be as fresh as homemade food, as well as having inferior ingredients in a significant number of cases. (I use “inferior” here to mean “inferior in taste”, usually as a tradeoff for either cheapness or greater shelf-stability.) The exceptions you mention above where particular foods taste better aged do not negate the general rule that food tastes better fresh.
I didn’t interpret the “make your own damn food” as specifically talking to me. I interpreted your general response, and in particular the fact that you were acting like it was some sort of “gotcha” that I don’t hand-make the macaroni noodles myself, as talking to me. I specifically said that there was a tradeoff between shelf-stability and taste; I did not make the argument that one should always choose taste over shelf-stability; yet you seemed to be saying that by choosing shelf-stability over taste in one particular instance I was somehow negating my original argument.
I’m also not sure why you were talking about all the things that you could only get canned as a child, unless you somehow interpreted my comment as an attack on canned food, after I specifically said that I wasn’t trying to minimize the value of shelf-stability, in order to try to avoid such misunderstandings. Of course canned mushrooms taste better than no mushrooms at all, unless you really don’t like mushrooms (or really don’t like canned mushrooms).
So sure, maybe a lot of people now have a sort of magical-thinking idea that simply by virtue of being made by a person, food will taste better. But I think that perception evolved from noticing a very real difference in the taste of factory and homemade food.
You’re all just jealous! Jealous of my huge brain!
It didn’t fill itself up, you know…it took a lot of work.
(I’m still not really sure what you’re arguing about. You’re supposed to disagree with me. What bit are you disagreeing with? It’s not clear. My, this column is rather slimming…)
Well, I thought I was disagreeing with the assertion that the difference in yumminess between factory food and homemade/cooked by 1 person food was solely an artifact, akin to the placebo effect, of people’s ideas of how food should be made. Maybe I misunderstood your original comment.
Australia and chocolate, now I’m going to have jaffas on my brain for a long time.
And Tim Tams! I miss Tim Tams :(
Oh, God, I adore Cadbury Creme Eggs, particularly those orange ones I come across periodically. They are delicious and an anticipated annual treat.
here you go: http://www.buzzfeed.com/scott/cadbury-egg-porn
Also, he’s right, don’t bother with the caramel. It’s a trap!
I like the caramel eggs, in fact preferring them to the creme egg. There I said it. Someone had to speak for the caramel. *sob*
I’ve never been a creme egg fan (just–something about the goo inside never did it for me), but I do like Cadbury chocolate, generally (in fact, I love the crunchie bar–harder to find in the US, but very delicious).
This video is adorable and funny, and yes, a bit porn-y–but this is because a woman eating anything delicious and enjoying it is inexorably linked to sex in this cultural space we’re living in. A message many of us have been trained to read, which is why the smile and eyebrows make this video a doublewin.
I kind of think of combining sex and food as a waste of food…I guess as long as you eat it all afterwards.
I think the issue is pleasure and self-control. Expressions of pleasure are also evidence of a failure to control yourself – your passions, your desires – which is frowned on by the petite bourgeousie. Basically, it’s because they want you to work in their factories and put the work ethic above all else. Pleasure, uncontrolled or unrestricted, interferes with commerce. Pleasure subverts capitalism.
Pleasure is something you reward yourself with, in sensible and small doses, in the privacy of your own home as a reward for a productive day in the factory of the office or whatever. Certainly not in public. The only acceptable public version, I guess, is the Madonna version of passion, robotic rituals mimicking passion while you can see her counting under her breath, all paid for up front.
Or a ‘healthy’ snack, which is virtuous, will extend the period in which you can hope to accrue capital, and is only marginally enjoyable, saving you from the potential embarrassment of making pleasured sounds or expressions in public.
I can hear Bourdieu and Foucault cheering and shouting “GET IN THERE, MY SON! GET IN!”
I really hated Foucault back when he was fashionable. But, you know, nostalgia imbues everything with a rosy glow.
this reminds me of a mindful eating exercise we did. Looks like you are tuning in and enjoying it! Do you eat with your clients when you work with them on mindful eating? Do you play that music? :)
I think the music would be an amazing addition to the mindful eating of, say, Cheetos.
This sounds like a great idea. I’ll have to try that sometime.
Oh! I must share this: http://cadburycremeegg.ca/
It’s a totally addictive game. The object is to prevent the creme egg from turning itself to goo, like on the commercials.
That was fabulous. After the first 5 seconds I started to feel a bit pervy AND I wanted a creme egg. Now I don’t feel so bad about the pervy thing (thanks!) and luckily I’ve got tiny Reese’s chocolate eggs in my candy dish to tide me over until I can find a fresh bit of creamy eggy goodness!
Why…why…I’m shocked! And you call yourself a nutritionist! *flounce*
;)
I love it. I just love it.
OK, you’ve totally inspired me to check pimpthatsnack.com to see if there’s a way to get gluten-free, corn-free cadbury creme eggs in my life. Even if there isn’t, I take joy in the fact that people are celebrating the creme egg! (curiosity won – instructions on making your own (jumbo-sized) CCE: http://www.pimpthatsnack.com/project/302/1)
As for pervy, I have a long tongue, and in my less-food-allergen-ed days, would get very familiar with my creme egg. You were downright restrained.
Lastly, thank you again for making my world a saner, happier place. I get happy everytime something from FN pops up in my google reader.
Dammit, now I’m craving a Cadbury creme egg. Good thing my sweetie is on his way home and can stop at the store for me so I don’t have to leave the house!
I love Cadbury Creme Eggs SO MUCH! I seriously look forward to Easter all year because then they are finally available. I wonder if it’s possible to get them online at other times.
Great video. Unfortunately, I really don’t like the creme eggs. Give me the Laura Secord peanut butter ones any time, though. I must say, I liked how you cut the extreme sweetness with coffee (that was coffee, right?).
Oh, and you made a really cute wink in the middle.
It was water, but coffee would have been better.
you have superlative eyebrows. this is all.
You know, that was my first thought when watching this: ‘I must go pluck my eyebrows.’
Me three! I actually have been scanning the comments to see if anyone got her to tell us how she does it. :-) I have these bushy things that I can pluck and before you know it, they’ve gotten all bushy again; I mean, like overnight, like a garden. If I thought about it too hard it might be kinda creepy. ;-)
Rose
My God! Is it that time of year again? What am I doing sitting here reading blogs? There are Cadbury Creme Eggs in the world!!
LOL Loving it! Cadbury eggs are my favorite candy treats ever! (a close second are Reese peanut butter eggs) I always make sure I have time to sit and savor them slowly (without an audience, as I’m a quite self aware that eating one the way I do looks kind of pervy lol), especially since they’re not available year round.
Haha I love it. I like it with the music, it makes it all dramatic.
“Deep Blue Day” from the Trainspotting soundtrack – perfect choice for Creme Eggery.
DO WANT. I love this time of year because it means Cadbury eggs and Reese’s peanut butter cup eggs. My two favorite sweets. OM NOM NOM
I was able to find Creme Eggs year-round when I lived in England. It was amazing. And did the appeal wear off from over-familiarity? Heck no.
You are so my hero.
There’s much I want to say, but I’ll keep it short.
I was just receiving a “homework assignment” from my therapist to locate visual “affirmations” that my view of beauty is shared — I was thinking of photos like this one:
http://www.alexandrabellerdances.org/
But this is so exactly right. It’s sexy (not pervy, or porny), sensual, silly, fun, delicious. It is aware without being mocking. It’s profoundly bold. I think it’s really an illustration of the “eat food. stuff you like. as much as you like.” rule. It’s a celebration and a comic strip and it’s wonderful. It oughtn’t be, it ought to be just a woman eating food, but what you look like (in my subjective view, beautiful) combined with who you are (in my subjective view, beautiful) and eating a frivilous, seasonal treat makes it performance art.
Here’s what my therapist wrote in response to the link:
“Nice to watch:)”
Michelle, you’re such an example. The only thing about cadbury eggs that I like are the commercials.
So what’s your point? People have different tastes.
What’s your point? Are you commenting on my comment about her being a role model, or on the part where I said that I don’t care for Cadbury eggs? Please be more specific.
Oh. I think I see. It’s my understanding that people who think of foods as good and evil see Cadbury eggs as evil and fresh vegetables as good.
So, are you saying that because Cadbury eggs are evil, eating one once in a while makes for a poor role model, and that you are superior because you don’t like them? Is the fact that your avatar is a large bicep also a sign of your superiority?
If this is true, does liking vegetables make me a superior person, or would that only be the case if I were thin or had a very low body fat percentage? Come to think of it, perhaps your food morality is different. Maybe enjoying blended banana and soy powder drinks is your way to salvation.
But, I apologize. Maybe I’m reading too much into your two short posts.
WOW.
Are you offended by large biceps, Dee? :)
Nope. Love ’em on men, amused by them on avatars.
I think you should put one on your avatar.
But my face much better at looking amused and slightly ironic than my upper arm.
I bet you could draw a face on it.
Maybe his two sentences weren’t supposed to be related? That (plus the “in a good way or a bad way?” ambiguity of his first sentence) might explain the confusion.
I hope you’re drinking coffee with that creme egg :)
It was water, sadly. But you know what I’ve found? That Earl Grey tea (with milk in it) is actually really nice with a Cadbury Creme Egg!
Half my family is British, and they used to send those to us in Florida before you could buy them here. People were so grossed out by the “egg” inside. The same people can’t get enough of them now.
I used to like them best frozen. I think you would enjoy a frozen one someday.
[…] Sexy nutritionists eating Cadbury’s Creme Eggs […]
You look so pretty in your pearls! I dropped by to say a quick thanks for the links you have posted on your site, because I was able to access a couple of them in the midst of an online ‘obesity kills’ slapdown. It was gratifying to be able to whip them out at will. So thanks!
Awesome! Glad to hear they’re good for something. I need to get back on digging up more literature. There’s a lot of interesting stuff out there.
I am totally up with the Creme Egg tradition. This is awesome.
Also: Cadbury Mini Eggs are my absolute favorite chocolate candy. I have a bag in my desk drawer right now.
Cadbury Creme Eggs are waaaaay too sweet for me. You people can have ’em! It’s cool, it’s fine! Just save me the Cadbury Mini-Eggs, ‘kay? The little crunchy pastel candy shells are soooo nice… I like to just let them melt down in my mouth…
..what’s this about orange eggs now? I know I’ve had chocolate eggs filled with orange-flavored filling, but I don’t recall them being specifically from Cadbury. Hrm? I may have to prowl the local candy marts to see what I can dig up.
I’ve heard this complaint from lots of people, so you’re not the only one. It seems to take a pretty well-developed sweet tooth to fully appreciate the Creme Egg.
I come from a long line of people with sweet teeth. And I faaar prefer milk chocolate over dark (no surprise, right?)
I have a major sweet tooth–I like my sugar with coffee and cream. But, weirdly, I prefer dark chocolate to milk chocolate. They do have a slightly different texture, though, so maybe that’s it. Milk chocolate seems meltier to me, and dark chocolate has a little more firmness to it.
(Having given up sweets for Lent, I’m thinking there’s a massive dark chocolate bunny in my future.)
Yes, I believe the milk in milk chocolate means that the chocolate crystals don’t form in quite the same way, and thus the chocolate has a lower melting point.
I did that too. Easter morning was glorious.
so i’ve eaten like 10 cadbury creme eggs since i saw that video a few weeks ago. worth it! so worth it! i usually just scarf them, and feel guilty. but i noticed you take it nice and slow, enjoying the heck out of it, drinking some liquid while you do it. i noticed it lasts longer when you do that.
Cadbury Creme Eggs probably wouldn’t be my weapon of choice, but I enjoyed the hell out of this post. I bet those Canadian eggs taste better than the ones down here in NY, too… I miss Cadbury chocolate from Canada. I don’t know why, but it doesn’t taste the same here.
I think I just became a lesbian.
How the hell do you eat those things so DELICATELY? Every time I’ve ever tried, the goopy shit inside comes volcanoing out and dives straight down my cleavage, leaving chocolate smeared down my chin looking decidedly… well… poo-like.
You barely even mar your lipstick then delicately taste the bits of your fingers that it came into contact with as though you’re touching off breadcrumbs with your tongue.
It’s just not fair.
Actually I’m not a fan of the Cadbury creme egg, the goo makes my teeth hurt. But the Mars Bar ones are bloody fabulous.
I usually go for sweets when it’s nearing my period or when I have it. My cravings for sweets are kind of hard to deal with especially during these times.
heh, it’s okay, you’re not alone. I am that way too. I read somewhere recently that your metabolism speeds up slightly when you menstruate; don’t know if it’s true or if it really makes that much difference, but I like to think this occurs as a way to deal with the monthly ingestion of copious amounts of chocolate. I don’t really care to be disabused of the notion, either. :P
Happens to me too. Not chocolate in particular, but I definitely eat more around then — in particular, things with iron, but generally just more calories.
Same here, especially things with iron and sweets.
Michelle, you are so awesome!
This is the best :)
And now I want a Creme Egg to go with my coffee :P
I’m not sure why this video has gotten so many comments, or what’s supposed to be so bloody interesting about this.
Thanks!
Wow. This was awesome! My RD would like you. lol
She actually brought some Easter candy to our nutrition group (where those of us who are there and our nutritionist eat together) this week in case anyone wanted to try a challenge food in a supportive environment. She definitely had a reese’s egg herself!
Awesome. I also do a little bit of “challenge food” work with my clients, and I love eating with them.
Also: I know you from Twitter! :)
Haha. You DO know me from Twitter! Though, I’ve been a bit absent lately b/c school has been CRIZAZY. I also sent you an email once upon a time that you posted in a blog post . . . ;-)
Before working with my current RD, I’ve never had a nutritionist who would eat with me before. It’s SO, SO incredibly helpful, especially with challenge foods, but certainly at other times as well. I’m really glad to hear that you eat with clients!
P.S. – I just had a couple of mini Cadbury Creme Eggs in honor of Easter. I ate them mindfully, and they were DELICIOUS! Baby steps. :-)
P.P.S. – In the store today, I saw orange creme Cadbury egss! Did you know these existed??
Happy Easter, Michelle. Re your fondness for Cadbury eggs (which I share), the following article appeared in today’s (Sunday, April 4/10) Toronto Star, in the Insight section:
http://www.thestar.com/living/easter/article/789854–toronto-capital-of-the-easter-egg?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
I had no idea these were made so close to home (I live in Markham, ON) — nor did I realize all the steps, and countries, involved in creating these Easter treats!
Awesome, thank you!
You are most welcome!
Hmmm . . . I wonder if that factory gives tours . . . with free samples, LOL. I’ve always wanted to visit a candy/chocolate factory, like the huge one (a whole chocolate-themed village, apparently!) in Hershey, PA.
Hahahahaha! This is great! :) :) Happy Factory-Produced-Creme-Filled Chocolate Egg Day! Love ya sis!
Hahaha thanks! I hope you had a good one. Me, I had Reese’s Pieces and Peanut M&Ms for breakfast. It’s a tradition now.
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This is great! I think we could all learn a little from you about self indulgence and moderation.