{"id":73,"date":"2007-05-08T06:20:11","date_gmt":"2007-05-08T12:20:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/?p=73"},"modified":"2010-09-19T10:20:39","modified_gmt":"2010-09-19T16:20:39","slug":"raising-the-chocolate-bar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/raising-the-chocolate-bar\/","title":{"rendered":"Raising the (Chocolate) Bar"},"content":{"rendered":"

For some reason I’ve got this real craving for Toffos.\u00c2\u00a0 Unfortunately, being some 10,000 miles from the nearest packet, it’s likely to remain unsatiated.\u00c2\u00a0 Despite globalization and the flattening of the world, some things just don’t seem to travel intercontinentally – and\u00c2\u00a0sweets (candy, snoep<\/em>, what you will) seems to be one of them.\u00c2\u00a0 Although there’s not much I miss about England, sweets are something I certainly do.\u00c2\u00a0 Not enough to move back there, you understand, but enough to give me pangs of nostalgia.\u00c2\u00a0 Or of hunger.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s difficult to tell, this late in the afternoon.<\/p>\n

I spent several years in Belgium, where they claim to make the best chocolate in the world.\u00c2\u00a0 Twaddle.\u00c2\u00a0 The best chocolate in the world is Galaxy made in England (it’s also made in some other countries, but they apparently licensed the name and not the recipe, as it doesn’t taste the same).\u00c2\u00a0 In Belgium we’d make weekly pilgrimages to the British store just to stock up on massively-overpriced Galaxy bars and bags of Minstrels (which the girls in my Flemish class went mad for), even though we had to pass several Belgian chocolate shops en route.\u00c2\u00a0 So much for Belgian (chocolate) supremacy.<\/p>\n

I also miss Curly Wurlys.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t know why, as I never particularly liked them when I was a kid.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s just something very British<\/em> about them.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe it’s the thought of Terry Scott in his school shorts and cap, and his leather satchel stuffed with the things.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Anyway, I’d\u00c2\u00a0wank off a tramp for one, now.\u00c2\u00a0 Ewww.\u00c2\u00a0 No<\/em>, not on your life.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m\u00c2\u00a0joking.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0It’s just something Kaiser Chief Ricky Wilson was rumoured to say<\/a> about fame.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s just such an appalling\u00c2\u00a0expression it makes me laugh every time I think\u00c2\u00a0about it, so I had<\/span> to use it.\u00c2\u00a0 Anyway, I’d kill for a Curly Wurly\u00c2\u00a0right about now.\u00c2\u00a0 (Oh, so saying you’d kill<\/em> for something is<\/span> acceptable??)<\/p>\n

Double-Deckers are something else I could eat by the bucketful now.\u00c2\u00a0 But you just don’t get them here.\u00c2\u00a0 Probably because the Americans have little concept of a ‘double-decker’ anything, let alone a chocolate bar.\u00c2\u00a0 I guess they could re-name it (probably to an ‘Uppy-Downy’ or something equally literal) like they do a lot of stuff they steal from us.\u00c2\u00a0 Ask for a Mars Bar here and you’ll be met with a blank stare.\u00c2\u00a0 Ask for a Milky Way<\/em> and you’ll get your Mars Bar.\u00c2\u00a0 So what if you want a Milky Way?\u00c2\u00a0 You have to ask for a Three Musketeers (in the plural – ask for a Three Musketeer and you’ll probably also get\u00c2\u00a0the blank stare).\u00c2\u00a0 Don’t ask me why they do this.\u00c2\u00a0 Probably so they can claim they invented them.\u00c2\u00a0 Like Snickers bars (make a stand – ask for a Marathon) or Starburst (Opal Fruits by another name), or even Whoppers (inferior Maltersers).<\/p>\n

But you’re probably better off not asking for chocolate over here at all.\u00c2\u00a0 Even when they have stuff that looks<\/em> like the British equivalent, it isn’t.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s usually made under license by Hershey’s, which means that it’s all powdery and overly-dark with very low milk content (certainly not the “Glass and a half of full cream milk” Cadbury’s promise).\u00c2\u00a0 Which I guess is OK if you like that kind of thing.\u00c2\u00a0 Which the Americans seem to.\u00c2\u00a0 Mainly because they’ve never tasted real<\/span> chocolate,\u00c2\u00a0the poor, deluded fools.<\/p>\n

Also, despite being in Texas, I cannot get a Texan Bar for love nor money.\u00c2\u00a0 Nor a Wagon Wheel (although a Moon Pie [pronounced ‘Moon Paaah’] comes quite close).\u00c2\u00a0 Now if I wanted jalapeno-flavo(u)red Jelly Beans, I’d be laughing.\u00c2\u00a0 Much like Ricky Wilson’s tramp friend…<\/p>\n

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For some reason I’ve got this real craving for Toffos.\u00c2\u00a0 Unfortunately, being some 10,000 miles from the nearest packet, it’s likely to remain […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[80,77,75,81],"class_list":["post-73","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-belgium","tag-chocolate","tag-nostalgia","tag-texas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":241,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73\/revisions\/241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}