TANNERTIME

fuckyeahappo:

dislegomena:

fuckyeahappo:

drtanner:

deadsoviets:

There’s some weird cultural disconnect going on here.

We don’t have smores in the UK either. I spent years wondering what they are.

Also Hersheys chocolate is fucking terrible. It literally tastes like vomit. That’s because it contains quite a lot of butyric acid, which is, oddly enough, also found in vomit.

I’ve never understood the appeal of smores, even once they were explained to me.

Also the one time I had Hershey’s “chocolate” all I could think was that it tasted like brown chalk. I’ve had cheap crap from market stands that tasted better. Hell, the off-brand stuff from Lidl is better.

The American love of s’mores is mostly about the American love of nostalgia. Because the ingredients are cheap and the preparation is simple, they’re just about a foolproof camping trip dessert. For a lot of us, camping is something we only did as kids, whether it be through Scouting or with family. So people like s’mores more as a sense memory or as a reminder of childhood than they do for the actual taste.

Also, the taste appeal of a s’more, to me, lies more in the marshmallow than in the chocolate. The graham crackers are irrelevant; they’re just there to give the s’more some structure. The chocolate adds some sugar and a contrasting taste, but a great s’more features beautifully toasted marshmallows, crispy and caramelized on the outside, melting and gooey on the inside.

And yes, Hershey’s is terrible chocolate. As drtanner pointed out, it’s heavily processed to make it more shelf-stable and contains a high quantity of fillers and emulsifiers. It was developed to be cheap and long-lasting rather than good and it shows. Frankly, all American chocolate is terrible compared to European/UK chocolate. The problem is that Hershey is the Wal-Mart of chocolate: they’re everywhere, they’re super-cheap, and they’re dragging competitors to their level.

We need to be saved from our own awful chocolate. The UK should start an airlift operation — I’m thinking it should be called “Operation Chocolate Drop.” They could send us the cheap off-brand Lidl stuff and probably improve the standard of chocolate in both countries.

Oh okay that makes a lot of sense. And yeah toasted marshmallows are pretty darn tasty, I’ve just never understood the veneration of ~smores~

And yeah yall need good chocolate. I have this feeling Lidl is actually a German chain, and honestly their chocolate is nice - not quite Lindt, but then for less than £1 for a large bar I’m not going to complain, especially since it’s actually more chocolatey (their milk chocolate has just the right amount of bite - I’d say it’s at about the 40% cocoa mark) than (say) Cadburys or Galaxy, which is just sweet.

If I ever visit your side of the pond I’m going to have to bring over a selection of nice chocolate.

Man, maybe we should do that thing they used to get us doing for charity in school where you fill a shoebox with things like soap and toothpaste and then it gets sent to a kid in a third world country, except we fill the shoebox with actually good chocolate and send it to America.

Because America is fucking impoverished, man. Seriously.