more to do

[mrissa]

matociquala is being sensible over here. Go read.

Slightly related, one of the things that keeps me going in a novel submission process that seems interminable is the conviction that editors really do want to find good books. That editors are not the enemies of authors. Yes, they need to pick and choose; yes, they will reject lots of books; yes, they will probably reject books that don't begin well even if those books become awesome in Chapter 6. But if I didn't believe that editors are fundamentally eager for good books, it would be a good deal harder to keep on with all this. That they're actually looking for the good stuff, not just on a fault-finding mission.

My appetite has wandered off again. If you've spotted my appetite wandering around somewhere, do let me know where it is, and if possible, get it confined in a box or your backyard or something so I can come pick it up. I have fresh cherry tomatoes right off the vine, still warm from the sun. I have a box of Dan's with some of the fruit ones* still left. I have schmancy cheese. I have chili. I have those funky root vegetable chips I like. Do I care? Meh. I do not. I even went and got sandwiches for me and the timprov, and I only hope that he can move himself to care, because the tomato basil bread is not calling my name in the slightest, not even after I smelled it.

Must do today:
Clean strawberries, raspberries, cherry tomatoes, corn
Cook scallops, pasta, corn
Bake peaches
Fetch doglet back from groomer
Clean bathrooms
Take five damn minutes to just breathe
Walk missista
Wash dishes
***I will note that I was not supposed to add to this category!

Really should try to do today:
Wash darks, lights, towels
Finish edits to "Carter Hall Recovers the Puck"
Post new novel_gazing
Bake bread
Implement at least two items from the Thermionic Night list
Read another chapter of Sampo with screamy pink pen in hand (err, two and a half, actually, so I guess that explains why there are so many things on the "must do" list still)

Would like to do today:
Read yhlee's story
Call grands (sort of done: left a message)
Write to Crazy Aunt
Post Sunday pictures from trip to London
Post about missista to make ellameena happy
Work on SF shorts for mechaieh and gaaldine


*Why are Americans so sucky at fruit chocolates, compared to the rest of the world? WHY? The English can do them. The French, the Germans, the Belgies, the Swedes and the Norsk, the Russians. I hear the Hungarians like mad. Heaven knows who else, but my assumption is everybody but us. WHY? A good orange chocolate is a thing of such beauty!

Comments

[everyonesakitty.livejournal.com]

*drools* I still remember the orange chocolate I had in Paris. *le sighs* Maybe American candy makers are in too much of a hurry. Mass production and all.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

In Bath, we got a strawberry paste chocolate. Ohhhhhh the fabulous.

[(Anonymous)]

Maybe it's because of people like me, whose basic reaction to fruit chocolates is "Yuck", no matter how good either part is separately.

On the other hand, I did recently have a Mosse Munch bar from Harry and David's involving caramel corn and chocolate, that was surprisingly good.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Are you someone who forgot to sign, or deliberately anonymous?

And have you actually had fruit chocolates to dislike them, or is it conceptually repugnant?

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

I've had a variety of fruit chocolates. A piece of good fruit can sometimes be dipped in good chocolate without doing either fruit or chocolate much harm. And there are chocolate bars flavored with orange zest the way most chocolate uses vanilla beans, and that's pleasantly interesting. But chocolates with soft fruit centers disgust me in flavor, texture, and concept. I thought they were disgusting before I even knew how they were made. (I won't tell you about the cherry things unless you really, REALLY, want to know.)

I didn't make the earlier comment. I just agree.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

You mean fruit creams/nougats? Or fruit gels? Or fruit pastes? Or all of the above?

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Sorry, that was me. Didn't realize I wasn't signed in at the time, and of course since I wasn't LJ didn't alert me to your reply.

I've had them, several different varieties - they do sound like a good idea, but in practice, for me, they just didn't turn out to be one. In my case, it's purely a matter of taste, not texture. Incidentally, pretzels are one of my most favorite foods, but I don't like chocolate-covered pretzels either. Yet I like nuts and nougat and caramel chocolates, so it's not an antipathy to chocolate covered things in general. I don't hate them enough to not eat one if I mistakenly pick it out of a box of chocolates, but it wouldn't be my first choice.

One exception: chocolate dipped strawberries. Mm. Don't know if it's because it's fresh fruit, not preserved, or because the fruit-to-chocolate ratio is much lower, or both.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Have you had chocolate-dipped dried apricots? Because they have a higher fruit-to-chocolate ratio than most fruit chocolate, but the fruit is preserved, so you could maybe sort out a variable there.

You can take the girl out of the lab....

[(Anonymous)]

Or, I could assemble several different varieties of fruit chocolates, then I could run a DoE so that I wouldn't have to do quite so many tests to figure out which effects were due to which variables. (On the theory that if I did it OFAT - on factor at a time - had to do more trials, and got sick and thereby developed a further distaste, I as the experiementer would be biasing my experiment.

Then I could do an MSE (measurement systems evaluation) to check how consistent my scoring was.

This is what happens when you train a girl in engineering AND statistics...

[ellameena.livejournal.com]

Hehehehe. Good to know I'm contributing positively to your overload of work...

(Doesn't she know how to type yet?)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Heaven help me, she's trying.

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

I don't *want* a chocolate orange as my only source of orange chocolate. I want to go to the store--even, for example, the store in Harvard Square that sells every other sort of bizarre european chocolate such as Cadbury Turkish Delight--and buy a nice solid bar of Orange chocolate just like I can buy nice solid bars of milk chocolate (or fruit and nut, if I allowed either raisins or nuts in my chocolate, which I don't, but it's the thought that counts). Evil stupid American chocolate makers.

(Also, there are such people in the world as think that orange chocolate is evil. Poor, misguided people. I feel for them.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes, just so. In London we could go into WHSmith's and buy a little box of Those Things What katallen Brought To Boston, and they had lovely orange chocolates in them, and then we were happy.

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

oh. The candy bar which was like an orange toblerone. That may be my new favorite ever.

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

Also, there are such people in the world as think that orange chocolate is evil. Poor, misguided people. I feel for them.

Oh, you do not.

I'm one of them, and so I know.

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

I didn't say what I felt for them. but it's not my journal, so I was aiming for politeness over detail.

[greykev.livejournal.com]

A partial answer might be found in the emperors of chocolate by Joel Brenner. Apparently the business of making candy is intensely cut-throat, and both recipes and processes are closely guarded from industrial espionage. In such a climate, and given the poor sales record of fruit-based candies in the US, I'm not surprised Hershey & Mars haven't wasted ventured research in that area.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

That doesn't answer why there have been poor sales of fruit-based candies in the US. Especially as it may be a cart/horse issue: if they make sucky fruit chocolates, I'm not buying them!