First: some great entries on the rewrite this! contest. Keep ’em coming. I’ll close the comments tomorrow afternoon, and then I may ask the Mathematician to pick the winner. Or maybe the Girlchild. Certainly my mind is not in proper working order for such an important decision.
Okay so, when I’m sick I tend to be more obsessive than normal. Maybe that’s true of everybody, I don’t know, but it seems unlikely that there are many people in the world who, when they have a fever, find themselves utterly wrapped up in the idea of, say, Cherry Garcia ice cream. So wrapped up that it’s the primary thing on the mind, in the dreams, everywhere.
I know that doesn’t sound very odd. Lots of people adore Cherry Garcia. What could be more natural? Those huge chunks of cherry, the way the the dark chocolate sets the sweetness of the fruit off… a perfect ice cream.
Where was I.
Okay, so here’s the really weird thing. Yesterday I ran across a food weblog (and yes, there are tons of those) and a post on that weblog from last year discussing a European sweet swap. I read that entry about six times. It seems these clever Europeans got together and set this up. You put together a box of delicacies. The one the blogger got was from somebody in Sweden, and had two kinds of homemade cookies (each described lovingly, with photos), and lots of local chocolate and candy.
Can you see this? Homemade cookies from Sweden. In the mail. With chocolate on the side.
Immediately I started looking. Someplace there must be somebody arranging this kind of swap on a larger scale. An International Sweet Swap. Once a month, as I imagined it, you send out a box of stuff, and you get one back. From Japan, from Scotland, from Hungary, France, Portugal, India. This sounds to me like an excellent idea. The reason the internet was invented was to introduce me to more ways to ingest interesting combinations of carbohydrates and fats, after all.
And then the reality: no such website, weblog, notice board. No place on the planet (as far as various search engines could tell me) were such things being planned.
You’d think it would end there, but no. In my fevered mind, an idea: I could start the thing going. The Internationsl Sweet Swap. All I would need is another weblog installation, easy peasy. Yes! Yes! Soon all your cookies are belong to me.
Luckily the Mathematician is familiar with my fevered preoccupation mode. His first question: so, these are all strangers, right? Sending you food through the mail? Um, have you thought about… food poisoning? A box of cookies in transit for a week, butter and sugar and nuts, excess heat… you do remember that last time you had food poisoning.
To which I said: you merciless pooper on parties. Fine. No International Sweet Swap, but let’s have a talk about Cherry Garcia.
There is (sometimes) a method in my madness.
You've stumbled across my official website and landed on the front page of my weblog.
Rosina, you had me going there, I was already planning on baking something and the possibilities seemed endless. I already thought of my Forum sisters around the world and what we could send one another. Then you take it away just like that. I mean I would trust you to send me cookies, or Kathy J, Misty, gosh there are so many that I know would wrap it well and make sure it got to me, c’mon we can do this.
Fine! I understand, it’s a no, but a bloody good idea you had! Should you ever change my mind you know where to reach me ;)!
Um I meant should you ever change your mind, hmm wonder if that is a Freudian Slip of some kind?
I’m part of an online mom’s group, consisting of about thirty of us from all over the world, which started out as a due-date-based pregnancy list but has gone on to become much, much more. We do exchanges like this from time to time, informally. This was how I became acquainted with Tim Tams, which served to reinforce my thought that if I were wealthy enough I would purchase a vacation home in Australia so that I would never have to experience the heat of summer unless I wanted to. Eating Tim Tams by the fire in July… what an idea.
I remember that I once sent a woman in Iceland a box of American stuff, including some homemade cookies, and the package was supposed to take a week to arrive but it took a month or thereabouts. I told her not to eat the cookies, as they’d be awfully stale, but she did, and she loved them. (!)
Rosina, thank God you have the Mathematician!
The stomach really wants the food – the head is afraid stomach is not thinking of possible food poisoning!!! Nice idea – and if you want to try Tim Tams – I could send some to you!!! :)
Ps. Dare I say it??? What is Cherry Garcia???