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Kevin Fischer is an award-winning veteran broadcaster who has been seen and heard on Milwaukee TV and radio stations for nearly three decades.
Kevin, who is a legislative aide to state Sen. Mary Lazich (R-New Berlin), can be seen offering his views on the news on the public affairs program, “INTERchange,” on Milwaukee Public Television Channel 10. He lives with his wife, Jennifer, in Franklin.
Culinary no-no #55
By Kevin Fischer
Sunday, May 18 2008, 08:30 AM
Name that food, as described with the following phrases by individuals who tasted it for the very first time:
It’s very dark
It's almost black.
It's the color of wet mud
Looks like toothpaste rather than cream
It’s too sweet
Since their inception 96 years ago, Oreo cookies have been a phenomenal success in America, with over 419 billion sold. But they’ve never been sold in Britain, until just recently.
In the land where cookies are referred to as “biscuits,” there, of course, is a long-standing tradition of taking one’s biscuit and dunking it.
In tea.
What about milk?
Have you lost your crumpets?
That would be a British culinary no-no.
The Brits dearly love their biscuits, dating back to the time laborers had to manage a cup of tea and two, at best, biscuits to dunk during short ten-minute breaks.
Now Kraft has launched an all-out advertising blitz, promoting America’s favorite “biscuit” in Britain.
What’s been the response?
The Brits don’t like it.
With noses scraping the ceiling, Brits doubt this new (to them) Oreo can measure up, be worthy to be incorporated into the rich tradition of dunking a sturdy “biscuit” at tea time.
The British tabloid, the Mirror writes, "It comes as no surprise that the Yanks would try to snatch the biscuits from our mouths and replace them with a tackier piece of inferior confectionery. Let's face it, they've colonised every other aspect of our lives so successfully that we no longer go to shops but malls. Those gaudy, neon-flashing cathedrals to Satan, filled with Gaps, Wal-Marts, Hollywood Bowls, Starbucks and a thousand junk-food 'drive-thrus'. We have to take a stand. We can't allow Kraft to do what they've already done in China and monopolise the market with their best-selling cookie."
Now this takes a lot of chutzpah coming from a people that have no business acting like culinary snobs.
They don’t like Oreos?
Keep in mind the Brits have given us such gastronomical delights as:
Steak pie
Meat pie
Weetabix
Shepherd's pie
Minced beef and dumplings
Sausage roll and mash
Sticky toffee pudding
Sticky toffee pudding WITH custard
And they have the nerve to diss Oreos?
Read more from a British correspondent with the Christian Science Monitor.
To read previous Culinary no-no’s, please click CULINARY NO-NO under my TAGS section.
