Like so many little semi-juicy rodent turds, raisins have ruined many an appetite o' mine over the years. Even at the mention of the word "raisin" I gag, because the sound of the word makes me visualize the face of an ancient, wrinkly, frowning woman with a cigarette drooped over her lower lip sitting in a rocking chair and shitting her pants.
Seriously, who likes raisins? I know I'm far from being alone, because there are several contingents of anti-raisin lobbyists out there, blogging about the same thing (which was the reason I couldn't stick with the original name for this blog, "Raisins Ruin Everything." Thanks very much, blue_cheezbox and Mayor of Kimopolis).
Why in God's name would you ever, ever take something like a grape that is so refreshing and bursting with sweet juices and castrate it in such a way? It's tortuous. Think of all the fruitful possibilities that your average grape-turned-raisin has had to forfeit just to be crammed into a small cardboard box bearing a picture of Winona Rider wearing a stupid red hat, then distributed to Kindrgarteners at "snack-time." First, and simplest of all, those grapes could have been plucked--freshly washed and beaded with tiny droplets of water--from a snack bowl of your choosing and popped into your mouth for instant gratification. Even if they're not the seeded kind. I'll tongue wrestle with a grape-seed. Sometimes you have to work for your food, go through heaven to get to hell, that kinda thing. Don't even get me started on the laborious joys that sunflower seeds can bring.
But why stop there? These brilliant little guys are multi-faceted. You can make jelly from them. Ferment wine from them. Peel away their skins and include them in that Halloween game where you grope blindly at cold food and pretend that they're all different dead body parts. You can even take from them the inspiration to make grape soda or grape-flavored hard candies. You'll never see a raisin flavored treat, because there's absolutely no room for influence in a raisin (except for that one brew from dogfish head that I wish had never occured to their brewmaster, because now I also have to their beer among the corrupt).
And how about all those delightful treats that raisins have rendered inedible, like Oatmeal cookies? I can't tell you how many times I've been offered cookies on the pretense that they were just regular cookies only to find out they're all mottled with these little bastards. What's worse is when they're mixed in with a batch of chocolate chip cookies and you take all that time trying to separate the two.
The most ill-named and repulsive of all day-care snacks--the "ants on a log" celery treat--combines three totally incompatible foods into one fucking disgusting rod of gooey, chewy, and crunchy shit, and that's pretty bad. But the worst crime that raisins have ever commited has been in their invasion of trail mix.
Trail mix is perfectly fine with peanuts, sunflower kernels, granola bits, and a small handful of M&Ms. Why throw raisins in to ruin the whole goddamn thing? If you want raisins on your hike, bring them separately. They're compact as hell, and they cost what, a quarter a box? Keep em out of my trail mix.
Yeah, I know there are usually other dried fruits in trail mix, and I know I haven't picked on any them, and I have good reason not to. They're all much, much more appealing than raisins. Sun-dried tomatoes, for instance, are delicious. They tang up a good bowl of pasta with pine nuts and olive oil. Dried apples are also delicious; they're the potato chip of the fruit world. Dates are only serviceable but they're excused from criticism because they're an appetizing color. And prunes are pretty gross, but at least they have a sense of humor, having long been the source of many a constipation joke.
In short: fuck raisins. I wish I would develop an allergy to them, just so I would be more careful about accidentally eating them. I think my personal hell would be somebody always walking into my house saying "Dump out all the liquor bottles and turn the hockey game off...we're gonna eat a big bowl of raisins and listen to Weezer's The Green Album."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment