Millionaire Lifestyle

I have since been informed that a thing is not technically enrobed in chocolate if it is not entirely covered.  I'm glad I didn't know that when I wrote this. Because 'enrobed' is a funny word.

Who would have thought a biscuit could be punchable?

Hello, sorry it's been so long.

Now, I am a staunch biscuit supporter. Biscuits and me go way back. Biscuits can rely upon me as one of their staunchest supporters / devourers. Which makes it all the more painful when a biscuit betrays this trust by having something this nauseating written on it: 

Oh, god. That's so hateful I very nearly didn't eat the biscuit.

Very nearly.

...And if Lt Colebourn had been posted to Saskatchewan, Piglet's friend would be Reggie the Pooh.

I’ve invented a good work-avoidance game, of researching what something was named after, and then what that was named after, and so on, until you reach the original source. Though it’s surprisingly hard to get more than three links. Here’s some examples:

Apple Macintosh computers are named after their inventor’s favourite type of apple, the McIntosh Red. The McIntosh Red is named after the Canadian farmer who first grew it, John McIntosh,  1777-1846. I suppose we could go back further by claiming that John was in a sense named after Shaw MacDuff, who founded the clan Mac an Toisich (son of the chieftan), but that feels like cheating.

They Might Be Giants, the band, are named after ‘They Might Be Giants’, the 1971 film starring George C Scott, which in turn is named after Don Quixote’s reason for tilting at windmills.

Winnie the Pooh  was named after a black bear at London zoo named Winnie (and a swan named Pooh, but we’ll concentrate on Winnie). Winnie the bear was donated to the zoo by Lt Harry Colebourn, who bought it from a hunter in Canada, and named it after the city of Winnipeg. Winnipeg takes its name from the Cree words meaning ‘Muddy Waters’.

The Kit Kat biscuit was first made by Rowntree’s in 1935, and named after the Kit Cat Club, an 18^th century artists’ club. The club was (probably) named after the ‘Kit Cat’, a mutton pie served at the chop house where the club originally met. And the Kit Cat pie was named after its baker, the pastrycook Christopher (or ‘Kit’) Catling.

Incidentally, Kit Kats (the biscuits, not the mutton pies) have recently become very popular in Japan, particularly at exam season, because the name sounds similar to the Japanese phrase ‘Kitto Katso’, meaning ‘ You will surely win’, and a tradition has arisen of giving them as good luck charms.

So, if a seventeenth century pastrycook had preferred the abbreviation ‘Chris’ to ‘Kit’, it’s fair to assume the Nestle corporation would have lost a significant sum of money in the twenty first century. Bet you didn’t know that this morning.  

Conversation that presumably took place between the planner and the caterer of a thing I was at recently.

- So, you want six trays of sandwiches, four of hors d'oeuvre, and four of fruit.
- Yes. Oh, and let's have one of cheese and biscuits as well.
- ...Ok. Some cheese, and some biscuits.
- ....Some cheese and biscuits, yes.
- ...How do you mean?
- Well, you know. A tray of cheese and biscuits.
- ...What, all on one tray?
- ...Yes.
- Together?
- Yes!
- Ok! You're the boss!

Pieces of advertising material that have recently annoyed me. Part two of at least three.

On a biscuit packet: 'Have you tried... The Dunk?', with a picture of the biscuit being dunked in a cup of coffee.

Well, no, since you ask, I haven't. I haven't 'tried' 'The Dunk', as if The Dunk is the cool new craze that's sweeping the nation's hippest and sexiest young biscuit eaters. What I have done, in my time, is dunk a biscuit in a hot drink. And in fact, though modesty should prevent me from saying so, so precocious was I that I did it without even the aid of a diagram.

(PS. For extra irritation points, in the diagram the hot drink is clearly labelled as being the brand of coffee made by the makers of the biscuit. Because obviously if hot drink and biscuit are incompatible, The Dunk can go horribly wrong. People have lost an eye.)