Guest Post: M&Ms

My cousin Matt wrote a guest post for Food Thoughtz. Even without having read the entire post, I already know it is the worst because M&Ms are not very good. They're not terrible, but they're not very good.

This is my first Food Thoughtz guest post, and I want to us to get something straight:  M&Ms are the best.

Seriously, M&Ms are the perfect chocolatey candy, and I could eat them by the bucket.  Did you know that Amazon.com sells a 1.6 kilogram (that's 56oz or 3.5lbs if you think base 10 measurement systems are voodoo) bag of M&Ms.  I'd only need to buy 54 bags and I could eat my body weight in M&Ms.  I'm seriously considering it.

It's not just that the M&M is voiced by Billy West.  That's a selling point, sure.  I'll eat any candy that's voiced by Billy West.  If Billy West starts voicing candy corn and licorice, I will start eating candy corn and licorice.

Billy West: Candy Salesman

After 70 years of fine food engineering, the Mars corporation has managed to strike a perfect balance between candy and chocolate.  The thin candy shell of the M&M gives it an initial sweetness when you put it in your mouth that gives way to the savoury deliciousness of its chocolate innards when your resistance gives and you finally bite down.  The chocolate inside an M&M is of unusually high quality for inexpensive, mass-produced sweets.  It tastes like real chocolate, not like the waxy brown substance one sometimes encounters in inferior mass-market chocolate bars.



Compare the perfect balance of the M&M to its closest confectionary relative, the Smartie (sidebar:  M&Ms started as a Smarties clone.  Forrest Mars Sr. Witnessed soldiers in the Spanish Civil War eating Smarties, and after returning to America, began producing his own candy-covered chocolates in 1941).  Smarties are a fine treat, don't get me wrong.  They'll do in a pinch.  But their candy-chocolate ratio is all wrong.  They're too wide, too thin, their chocolate core too insubstantial.  Like Who Wants To Be A  Millionaire, Christopher Hitchens, and democracy, the Americans imported something from Britain and  perfected it.

There are two chocolates in a candy shell,
So always be ready to tell,
M&M from the imposter,
Manufactured in Gloucester, 


Don't be deceived by the Swiss Candy Cartel


I haven't even touched on all the variations:  There's Dark Chocolate M&Ms (sublime), Peanut M&Ms (perfection), Peanut Butter M&Ms (heaven), Pretzel M&Ms (I don't even know, I've never eaten them), and plenty of region-specific variations to boot.  Sometimes, when I'm feeling cheeky, I go to the bulk foods section of my local grocery store, completely disregard the sign warning “DO NOT MIX BULK FOOD ITEMS” and fill a single bag with as many M&Ms variations as I can find.  A bag full of these colourful little gems is as close as I've found in this world to the physical incarnation of joy.

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Food Thoughtz Brain Thoughtz

Okay, now I have read the whole thing, and I can say with even more certainty that it is the worst, principally because it calls out Smarties as being inferior chocolate-candy sweets. Umm, no. They're not. Or at least they weren't. When Smarties were still made with artificial colours, they were untouchable. Matt talks about the ratio and shape being off, but it is (was) so perfectly on point. In fact, I've always had the same complaint about M&Ms: there's too much chocolate, they're too round, and the shell is too thick. And the shell doesn't even taste good. I also always thought it was really stupid that their slogan was "melts in your mouth not in your hand." Excuse me, of course they actually do melt in your hand. They're made of chocolate. If they didn't melt in your hand, why would you want them to melt in your mouth? I guess that the point of the slogan was that they're so delicious that you can't keep them in your hand long enough for them to melt. But you can, and I did. Whatever. I'm tagging this as "Food I Have Tried But Would Not Try Again" (although, truth be told, I do really like Peanut M&Ms). - FT

Food Thoughtz Emergency

I am currently enrolled in a Master of Information program at the University of Toronto. I am studying to become an archivist. A requirement of the programme is to complete two "workshops," which I had initially assumed would be somehow relevant and practical in nature. I thought that we would work in groups to develop and execute an appraisal plan, or something along those lines. But, never failing to disappoint, the iSchool has upset my assumptions once again. These workshops are largely impractical and could focus on any number of topics--few of which have any direct connection to my area of study.

One such workshop, offered this winter, is entitled "Communicating Identities at the Table." Here is the course description:

This interdisciplinary workshop explores a very popular social and cultural practice, the dinner party, in order to engage students with contemporary discourses about cooking, eating and performing identities through food in both domestic and public spaces. In the past few decades, communication and information about food and culinary cultures intensified in everyday contexts, exposing contemporary communities, globally, to the poetics and politics of food production and consumption. For information students, this workshop will provide a new approach to thinking about the diverse ways in which we communicate and share information about food, foodways and food technologies.

This workshop zooms in on the dinner party, a practice with a rich cultural history, in order to highlight the different forms of communication which make up the current foodscapes. The course introduces students to the social and cultural history of the dinner party, highlighting some significant examples, such as Tupperware parties, underground supper clubs, dinner reenactments and Mad Men-inspired evenings. The focus of the workshop is on how such events are communicated through various media, from magazines and television to apps and blogs. Some examples analyzed in the class are popular television shows–“Dinner party wars” and “Come dine with me, Canada”, movies–“Babette’s feast” (1987), “Big Night” (1996) “Julie & Julia” (2009) and “The hundred-foot journey” (2014) and magazines–Food & Drink, Bon Appétit, Food Network Magazine, etc.

Please note that students will require no specialist knowledge of either food studies or media studies in order to take this workshop, although some background in communication/media theory and/or cultural studies will be helpful. Students will be expected to consume food media relevant to the content of the course and should be aware before enrolling that some food tastings will take place during class time.
[my emphasis]

I repeat: this is a real thing. This is a course I could actually take and get credit for in the coming semester.

What I need to know from you, dear readers, is what course of action I should take in response to this ludicrous class. Should I submit a strongly worded letter about how the iSchool is excluding a small subset of society that may or may not suffer from an undiagnosed and unrecognized--but still conceivably possible and real--eating disorder ("selective eating disorder")? Should I challenge myself and enrol in the course? Should I forget that I ever read this course description? Please advise.

The Sandwich - pt. I

Whenever the topic of my peculiar eating habits comes up—typically with a new acquaintance—the conversation zeroes in on sandwiches almost immediately, as if sandwiches were the be all, end all of the human diet.  They’re not.  It is actually inconceivable to almost everyone that I do not eat sandwiches.  Truth be told, I have had two kinds of sandwiches in my entire life: grilled cheese and peanut butter with slices of banana. 

I want to address grilled cheese first because I’m actually quite fond of them, but I don’t think of them as sandwiches.  I’ve mostly stuck to what I have always referred to as cheese toast: a slice of cheddar cheese toasted on bread or a bun in the broiler.  Every once in a while I’ll have grilled cheese sandwiches, but almost exclusively when I can’t have cheese toast (like in a restaurant).  Grilled cheese sandwiches are good, but honestly I think there’s too high of a bread-to-cheese ratio there.  Also, if you enjoy eating something like cheese melted on toast, it only makes sense to me to divide it up into two separate servings to maximize pleasure.  Once you’re done a grilled cheese sandwich, you’re done.  But eating one piece of grilled cheese takes more or less the same amount of time to consume as one grilled cheese sandwich, and when you finish one piece, you have another to look forward to!  The other benefit of open-face cheese toast in a  broiler is that you can get the cheese to burn a bit, forming those brownish bubbles that are so delicious.

Here's a picture of me eating a grilled cheese sandwich that my sister made.

The peanut butter and banana sandwich will likely come as a shock to anyone who knows me, and so it should.  It was one of those situations where someone you don’t know well and feel obligated to be polite towards asks if you’re hungry, and before you realize that if you say yes they will probably suggest something that you absolutely don’t want to eat, you’ve already said yes.  This kind of situation has happened to me before, and I have successfully managed to back out without committing myself to eating something disgusting and then pretending to be thankful for it, but it can be a pretty difficult manoeuvre.  This is the kind of situation I found myself in when I ate that peanut butter and banana sandwich, and knowing that that’s the kind of sandwich it would be, I decided to cut my losses and just go for it.  After all, I like bread, I like peanut butter, and I like banana, so it really wasn’t as dire a situation as it could have been.  But it was really disgusting.  Banana and bread?  That’s so wrong.  In hindsight, I have no idea why I didn’t just ask for peanut butter and bread.

I have two major issues with sandwiches.  One is that I simply won't eat most of the normal sandwich ingredients: I don’t eat tomato, I don’t eat lettuce, I don’t eat cold cuts, and I certainly don’t eat any of the condiments usually associated with sandwiches, like mustard or mayonnaise.  The second issue is that I have a serious problem with the combination of different textures that I am adamant do not belong together.  A third and more minor issue is that sandwiches are often pre-made, so all of those textures that don’t belong together  in the first place are left to fester, and I can only imagine that a sandwich wrapped in Saran for several hours is probably a lot worse than a freshly made sandwich.

I want to take the same general approach with this post as I did with salads because, like salads, the term “sandwich” applies to an expansive and varied food grouping (although it bears mentioning that the word “sandwich” is much more valuable than “salad,” in that it typically refers to an easily identifiable way of preparing and combining food.  As far as I know, all sandwiches include two pieces of bread with varied ingredients in between, whereas “salad” has virtually no reference point whatsoever).  Having written most of the second part, the post is already over 3,000 words, so bear with me.

The Sandwich - pt. II

Now onto the sandwiches themselves.  As with the salad post, I’m just going to list all of the sandwiches I know of and jot down some of my food thoughtz.  Without further ado, here we go!

BLT

I love bacon.  If I could eat bacon for the rest of my life, I would.  But I would only ever eat bacon plain because that is how it was meant to be eaten.  Once I tried bacon in a hamburger and didn’t like it, so I know what I’m talking about.  Bacon is probably the only saving grace of a BLT, because otherwise there’s just a whole lot of wrong going on there.  We all know how I feel about the tomato, so the BLT is  out right off the bat.

I’ve tried lettuce once and didn’t like it.  I didn’t necessarily hate it either, but only because there’s really not much there to feel strongly about one way or the other.  The thing that bothers me most about lettuce is that it reminds me of the word “gnash,” as in “gnashing one’s teeth,” because I always imagine lettuce being gnashed between the two rows of teeth and then a little piece breaking off and forming a film over the top of a molar.  I kind of like the word gnash, but I always associate it with Frankenstein because Mary Shelley apparently loved that word as much as I do.  So not only do I think of a little lettuce-film on a molar, but I imagine that molar belonging to Frankenstein’s monster, and I didn’t particularly like the book. 

It goes without saying that mayonnaise is the most disgusting thing in the entire world.  I probably could have saved us both a lot of trouble and just mentioned mayonnaise at the beginning.

Nope.

But the problem with a BLT sandwich is so much more than just its ingredients—it’s all of those ingredients together that is the real problem.  First you have either some bread or a bun.  If it ended there, I wouldn’t have a problem (I’m kind of into buns).  But it doesn’t.  Even mayonnaise on a bun, if you’re really into mayonnaise, I could understand.  But it’s when you add the lettuce, tomato, and bacon—kind of the staple ingredients—that things really start to go south.  There will inevitably be little drops of water on the lettuce and the tomato (even if there wasn’t water on the tomato, there’s so much moisture there that it really doesn’t matter), and thinking about these little drops coming into contact with the mayonnaise-coated bun is actually sickening.  At best you could hope that the oil in the mayonnaise would repel the water so that it would sit in little beads on the surface, but the worse case scenario is that the water would permeate the bread, even the tiniest bit.  I cannot abide soggy bread.  Maybe you think this problem would be avoided if the bread was toasted, but you would be wrong.  That would make it even worse!  Because if I have toasted bread, I expect it to be crunchy.  I don’t want to encounter even the smallest dollop of moisture there.  Then add to this the bacon, which is both hot and greasy, and the result  is intolerable.  Hot strips of fatty meat cannot go with moist, cool vegetables.  And then grease + oil + moisture from the vegetables?  No.  Absolutely not.

Peanut Butter & Jelly

Nope.

Of all the sandwich possibilities, this one offends my sensibilities the least.  I could probably eat this if it became absolutely necessary, although I can’t imagine what situation that would be.  If given the choice, I would probably opt for just a piece of toast with peanut butter, because honestly, I don’t really know what jelly is.  There’s no reason to resort to jelly when there’s always a plentiful supply of jam.  The more I think about it, the less I like the idea of peanut butter and jelly going together.  I don’t think their consistencies are a good match.  I also always associate the peanut butter in a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to be like Skippy or Squirrel, and although I was raised on that peanut butter, I can no longer tolerate any peanut butter that isn’t Adam’s peanut butter.

More than any other sandwich, these are the ones that I imagine tightly wrapped in cellophane at the bottom of some kid’s backpack for half a day.  Thinking about it getting crushed by whatever else might be in the backpack plus the jelly probably soaking into the bread make this sandwich impossible.

Egg-Salad Sandwich

All of the no's in the entire world combined
to make the most decisive NO! of all time.

I can’t even deal with this one.  This is all of my most-hated things combined into one ungodly terror: boiled eggs masquerading as salad sandwiched between two pieces of bread.  One time my mum admitted to bringing one of these onto a plane with her, and I nearly threw up just imagining myself in that situation.  Either situation: bringing the sandwich on the plane with the intention of eating it, or being a passenger and having to be in the vicinity of that foul-smelling concoction.  Watching someone eat one of these things is like a scene from a low-budget horror movie but worse because you have to smell it at the same time.  If these sandwiches don’t put you off food and humanity, I don’t know what will.  Egg-Salad Sandwiches came straight from the fiery depths of hell just so Lucifer could finally prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Man is a disgusting, foul creature, totally undeserving of God’s love.  ...  Oh my god.  I just made the terrible mistake of googling this and found out that there’s mayonnaise in it—as if things couldn’t get any worse!  No wonder it’s so creamy and vile.  I hate this so much!

Tuna Sandwich

After egg-salad, this is probably the second most offensive sandwich, mostly for the same reasons: it smells foul, looks foul, and it has tuna in it.  Tuna is a kind of fish, in case you didn’t know.  I don’t know if any of you grew up with the same adorable deck of “Go Fish” cards that I did, but up until just now, I always imagined tuna fish were these really small kind-of-cute-for-a-fish fish that were all named “Mac” and smoked a cigar.  They’re not.  They’re enormous monsters of the deep.  I think people keep talking about these things going extinct, but good lord, it couldn’t happen fast enough! 

Nope.

I’m under the impression that tuna sandwiches are typically tuna-salad sandwiches and that for whatever reason, “mayonnaise” is the key ingredient that makes it a salad.  I’m guessing the same goes for egg-salad.  The salad portion is disgusting enough on its own, but I know that once you try to contain something so unruly between two slices of bread, it’s going to inevitably smooth out once you bite down, and then whatever ungodly creature is actually eating this mess is going to get little bits of tuna-salad in the corners of their mouth and probably won’t realize it for a while.

Chicken-Salad Sandwich

Nope.

Enough already!  These are all so disgusting I can’t even deal with it.  The thing that really bothers me about the chicken-salad in particular is that, while I have eaten chicken before, I’ve only ever been able to keep it down as long as it was really, really dry.  Any time I have been presented with a moist chicken I've been on the verge of throwing up.  So to imagine chunks of chicken just marinating in mayonnaise is impossible for me.  I don’t even want to try because I’m afraid that if I do manage to imagine it, I’ll never be able to get it out of my head again and I will keep revisiting it over and over and over because moist chicken—especially when it has been moistened by mayonnaise—is a kind of trauma and that's how we deal with trauma.

Croque-monsieur/Ham & Cheese

I could almost get on board with this sandwich, but I think that at the end of the day, I just want my ham on the side.  Once I was accidentally given a ham and cheese croissant and, thinking it was just a plain croissant, actually bit into it.  It was horrific.  I made my tongue into a point and nudged the food out of my mouth because I wanted it to come into contact with as little surface area as possible.  This is how I know I could never eat a croque-monseiur.  But still, this is a huge improvement on all those salad-varieties just mentioned.

Panini

The only thing I like about a panini is that it seems compact and highly portable, and because it’s grilled, probably doesn’t sacrifice the integrity of any of the ingredients.  That said, what are the ingredients?  Does "panini" just refer to a particular grilling method? Whatever they ingredients may be, you can be certain I wouldn’t eat them.

Club Sandwich

To give a sense of scale of
how big my "no" is.

What in the hell?  Are three slices of bread in these things?  Is that their defining feature?  I will be the first to admit that the only possible good thing about a sandwich is the (plain) bread, but this is a bit too much.  If you really need that extra piece of bread, couldn’t you just order a side of garlic toast?  Better yet, why not forgo the sandwich all together and just get one of those frozen loaves of garlic toast instead?

Roast Beef Sandwich

I guess the only defining feature of a roast beef sandwich is that it’s comprised primarily of roast beef, and I think (although I am not sure) that the roast beef is cold.  I want to take this example as an opportunity to talk about all sandwiches made up of folds of cold meat.  And then not talk about them, because why that's disgusting is pretty self-explanatory.  Folds. Of. Meat.

Cucumber

Nope.

What I learned from “The Importance of Being Earnest” is that it is not at all important to be E(a)rnest if it necessarily involves cucumber sandwiches.  It is my understanding that cucumber sandwiches are made of soft white bread cut into small triangles with no crust, cucumbers, and who knows what else.  Butter?  Maybe butter.  Whatever the other ingredient is, let’s hope it’s not mayonnaise.  The point is, I think they’re too soft and maybe too spongy.  Another problem is that I can’t even imagine anyone thinking that cucumber and bread could possibly go together.  I’ve had a slice of cucumber before, and the only thing that could have made it worse would be to have with with a slice of un-toasted white bread, possibly with mayonnaise.  Texture is really important to me, so it might come as a surprise that I find these sandwiches so troubling.  What could be wrong with softness?  I’m not quite sure.  But I do know that the idea of them is disgusting. 
I also picture people making little muffled sounds of satisfaction while their mouths are full of these things.  Or perhaps trying to speak, but spitting out little food-bits onto whoever might be unfortunate enough to be standing in front of them or having little clusters of moist food lodged in the corners of their mouth.  Whoever eats these sandwiches is also probably so self-involved that they wouldn’t even notice how rude they’re being. 


Sloppy Joes

I have no idea if these are widely considered sandwiches or if they are a food group unto themselves. I am going to include them here because I can't imagine writing a whole separate post for something that is so far off my radar that the only reason I even thought about them in the first place is because for some reason I was thinking of Sixteen and Pregnant.  Although I've never seen the show, I assume it's about white-trash middle-America, which is exactly where I place sloppy joes. I don't mean to comment on your class (I mean that both as in economic status but also social refinement and grace), but I've always thought of Sloppy Joes as the ultimate white-trash food.  That being said, it's hardly the reason why I would never eat one of these. I wouldn't eat this because the only people who would obviously have never heard of a hamburger before.  Look, you can either have a bowl of chili or a hamburger, but you can't have them both in the same dish.

Corned Beef


Nope.

These smell pretty good, but I know they would be really gross.  A good rule of thumb is that if something is supposed to be eaten with mustard, you can be guaranteed that it’s disgusting.  I have no idea what “corned beef” is, but if you’re using “corn” as a verb, whatever it is you’re corning is not going to turn out well.  
"Corn" as a verb is harmful both to language and to foodstuffs, and the adjective is not much better.*  I had ample opportunity to try these sandwiches when I lived in Montreal, but I always opted for a side of fries instead.

Pulled Pork

Although I would never try one, I believe people when they say these sandwiches are good.  Aside from all of the preliminary problems with any sandwich, what really bothers me about these is that the pork is shredded, and I’ve always had a problem with shredded food (also carrots, beets, whatever) because I always imagine someone’s face being forcibly grated on the grater.  It’s always a man saying “Arrrgh!” but struggling to do so because their face is pressed against a grater.  The image flicks off before the eye meets the metal, thank god.

Reuben

The only thing that could have been more disturbing than that one time my grandfather suggested I marry my cousin Reuben is if he was referring not to the cousin but to the sandwich.  These sandwiches truly are revolting.  It’s sad, because if it just didn’t have the sauerkraut, it would probably be an improvement on the regular corned beef sandwich. 



Submarine

Shortly after the Subway opened in Grand Forks, I went there with my mum and my sister. I got a bun with a slice of cheese in it and I was not impressed.

***

In summation, this post was a failure before it even begun.  There was no conceivable way for me to write a truly all-encompassing post capable of explaining all of the different aspects of sandwiches that I think are wrong.  Sandwiches are constantly in the process of being made: they are always being constructed and reconstructed.  There is no singular “sandwich” to which I could refer (they’re very post-modern), so for that reason, this post has been difficult for me, and not just emotionally (see: salad-sandwiches).  I get the impression that a lot of sandwiches people eat are just some random ingredients thrown together between two pieces of bread.  So before I close off this post, I just want to go over some of the major issues I have with sandwiches.

Obviously sandwiches are a problem for me because I don’t like the majority of the ingredients and I generally don’t like my food mixed/touching.  But more than that, sandwiches openly flout the social conventions of decency.  I admit that sometimes I am too strict about mixing foods, but there’s no way some of these ingredients go together.  It’s not even a question of texture, but, like, their very being.  A sandwich is, by definition, layers of ingredients bookended by a bread product, but these strata so rarely go together, and this is not just me being weird about food.  It seems like a lot of sandwiches have un-melted/un-grilled cheese as an ingredient, but that has no place in a sandwich!  It must be jarring and unpleasant to bite into something like that.  Adding a slab of cold meat to it could only make it worse.  If you have soft bread, un-melted cheese, and then a layer of cold meat, what you’re getting is really soft, almost spongy/springy bread, then met by the slight resistance of the cheese, and then the chewiness of the meat.  It just doesn’t make sense.  It’s not that the ingredients are too different to be held together in one element; it’s that they’re almost too similar.  Maybe it’s like orange and pink together—they’re too similar to actually stand side-by-side.  What makes it even worse is that you’re getting this clash from the top and the bottom.  But toasting the bread wouldn’t even improve anything because it’s like setting yourself up for disappointment.  As soon as your teeth touch the bread, you’re setting yourself up for some potentially interesting contrast, but then you get into the centre and it’s just one big mess.  Obviously the salad-sandwiches are the worst culprits.

Things just get worse if you have the audacity to add tomato, lettuce, or other vegetables to this.  There’s a lot of moisture in there, and while I thought I could never possibly defend salad, at least a salad can account for added moisture.  Sandwiches can’t.  The layers of a sandwich are either too similar to one another or else so moist that any boundaries that might have existed between the ingredients are blurred in a really disturbing way.  Not blurred in a potentially beautiful way, but just like, ugh, why did you have to do that?  You know?  I’m not a fan of typical sandwich ingredients at the best of times, but why did you have to do that?  Some people--and I have to give credit where credit is due--will bring their sandwich ingredients with them to work or school in separate compartments do that it doesn't get too soggy and so that the cheese doesn't have time to sweat.  An admirable solution, but here's an even better one: just don't eat sandwiches.

The sandwich is essentially a food of convenience
And in this central quality lies my crucial grievance:
Layers upon layers, it devolves into one sloppy mess—
What’s the point of many if you can’t parse one from the rest?

*A Hungarian had to explain the difference between a verb and an adjective to me because I do not know English.

Issues of Consent in Dr. Seuss's "Green Eggs and Ham"

This summer, while reading bedtime stories to my two-and-half year-old niece, I revisited one of my favourite books from my childhood: Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham.  I was pretty fond of Dr. Seuss in general.  At some point I managed to memorize The Grinch Who Stole Christmas and I remember really loving some of the illustrations and colours in Oh, The Places You’ll Go!  But Green Eggs and Ham is probably the story that I enjoyed most, and it was not until this summer that I realized just how troubling it actually is.

The central meaning behind Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham is pretty easy to tease out: you don’t know if you like something until you try it.  (I don’t know if you know this, but I studied English in university).  It’s not the worst message to instil in the minds of young children, but the method by which Dr. Seuss approaches this topic raises several serious concerns about the issue of consent and personal agency.

For any of you who are not familiar with the text, here is a brief summary: Sam-I-Am asks an unnamed character whether he likes green eggs and ham.  The unnamed character politely responds that no, he does not: “I do not like them, Sam-I-Am. / I do not like green eggs and ham.”  Sam-I-Am proceeds to ask the same questions in multiple different ways (“Would you like them here or there?”, “Would you eat them in a box? / Would you eat them with a fox?” etc.) that becoming increasingly threatening, coercive, and violent as the narrative progresses.  When presenting the scenario of eating green eggs and ham in a car, Sam-I-Am shifts from asking to demanding: “Eat them! Eat them! Here they are.”  The unnamed character refuses the green eggs and ham nearly one hundred times.

Not only is Sam-I-Am endangering the lives of those in the car
and the train, but also whoever might be driving that boat.

The story begins with the unnamed character peacefully reading.  Sam-I-Am invades his personal space and begins to ask whether or not he will eat green eggs and ham, and when the unnamed character declines, Sam-I-Am presents increasingly extreme scenarios to pose the same question over and over again.  But Sam-I-Am does more than merely ask whether or not this unnamed character would or could eat green eggs and ham in thirteen different scenarios; he actually puts him in those situations.  These are not hypothetical questions.  When Sam-I-Am asks, “Say! In the dark? Here in the dark! / Would you, could you, in the dark?” he has literally brought the unnamed character into a dark tunnel with him.  Many of these situations actually threaten the safety of the unnamed character and draw attention to the violence and coercion that underscore each one of Sam-I-Am’s questions and demands.  A particularly vivid example is the penultimate scene in which a Sam-I-Am, the unnamed character, a fox, a mouse, and a goat are together in a car—that Sam-I-Am has presumably illegally commandeered—on top of a train that careens off of a cliff and into the sea.

In the end, the unnamed character ultimately does try the green eggs and ham, and he likes them.  He even thanks Sam-I-Am for being so insistent.  But it’s important to point out that he does not try them because he wants to, but out of sheer exasperation: “Sam! If you let me be / I will try them. You will see.”

Here we see the evolution from resigned acceptance of defeat to mistrust and sadness at the reality of having to eat
green eggs and ham, and finally to the relief and jubilation of actually enjoying them.  Even if green eggs and ham
truly were delicious, it seems really unlikely that they still would be after all that Sam-I-Am put that open platter of
food through.  There's no way that that food didn't get wet when they crashed into the ocean, not to mention that
they're obviously cold by now. 

What troubling precedent does this narrative present to young readers?  What are the ramifications of such a story?  Why is it Sam-I-Am who is praised in the end for being so insistent?  Are we left with the impression that the unnamed character was too uptight, that he should have tried green eggs and ham sooner, and that this is all his fault?  And why does he have no name throughout the entire narrative?  Why is Sam-I-Am given an identity through naming that is denied to the other character?  How does this technique influence our sympathies?

Sam-I-Am, from the very beginning, is given a name, and implicit in his name is his own power to name himself.  At times the unnamed character refers to him as Sam, but the “I-Am” portion is also built into his name.  Sam is the first character we are introduced to in the story, and we are introduced to him by Sam speaking his own name.  This signals to Sam’s assertion of his subjectivity.  It is also worth noting that the name “Sam” is a very generic one, which serves to reinforce a sense of normalcy in Sam’s character.


These elements, taken together, contribute to some of the issues surrounding consent in the narrative.  Sam-I-Am is given a level of authority and power that is denied to the unnamed character.  This is demonstrated not only by his name and ability to name himself, but also the way by which he does so: he rides in to the scene on some cat-like beast, which highlights an ongoing trend in Sam's character to assert his dominance over others.

Issues of consent are often talked about in the context of medical ethics.  The general idea is that patients should have at least some control over their own care.  A patient's preference should be consistent over time and across multiple scenarios.  In "The Green Eggs and Ham Phenomena," Lachlan Forrow uses the Dr. Seuss text to question what he perceives to be an oversimplification of patient preference:

"There are three important lessons in this story.  First, although the Patient [the unnamed character] unequivocally states his preference seventy times in thirteen different scenarios, it becomes clear at the end of the story that the Patient has never known what green eggs and ham are like.  The fact that a patient can express a preference with utter consistency does not tell us anything about whether or not she or he understands what is at stake in the choice.

Second, the story makes it clear that the very process of being asked to provide a response, then reaffirm it over and over and over, leads the Patient to express a stronger and stronger sense of certainty about his preference.  Even if the Patient had started off somewhat uncertain about his preference, by late in the story he is absolutely clear and convinced in his own mind.

[...]

Why is the Patient in this story so ready to reject the offer of green eggs and ham from Dr. Sam-I-Am?  Why is he refusing something he seems to know nothing about?

The answer to that is clear in the opening pages of the book.  There, Dr. Sam-I-Am is seen racing back and forth around the Patient, clearly very busy, but paying no attention to the Patient himself.  In fact, unlike almost any other important character in Dr. Seuss' many books, the Patient is never given a name.  And Dr. Sam-I-Am certainly never gives any indication that he even cares to know this patient's name.  The opening words in the story, spoken by the Patient, are quite direct: 'That Sam-I-Am! That Sam-I-Am! I do not like that Sam-I-Am!'  In fact, the entire story as seen from the Patient's perspective has nothing whatsoever to do with his opinion of green eggs and ham (remember, he has never tasted them), but has everything to do with his relationship--or lack thereof--with the person who is offering them to him." (30-1).

Okay, Lachlan Farrow.  First of all, it's not necessary to have tried something in order to know whether or not you like it; having not tried something does not preclude the possibility of making informed decisions about it.  There are any number of ways to gather information on a given subject without having it in your mouth first.  For example, I haven't "tried" AIDS, but I know that I don't like it.  Secondly, it's not necessarily explicit in the text that the unnamed character has never tried green eggs and ham.  It's possible to infer that he hasn't, but he does not once state explicitly that he has never eaten them before.  His first refusal is simply, "I do not like them, Sam-I-Am. / I do not like green eggs and ham."  Thirdly, Farrow might be correct in stating that the unnamed character's refusal to eat green eggs and ham is influenced by his dislike of Sam-I-Am, but that's a totally valid reason to not try something.  Sam-I-Am is a self-centred asshole, and there's no reason to believe that he has the unnamed character's best interests at heart.  After all, we're talking about green eggs and ham, not medicine, and Sam-I-Am isn't held to an ethical code in the same way doctors are.  And just as a final note: it's likely that the ham and eggs are green partly to appeal to the market audience (children), but also for poetic reasons.  That said, I am probably one of the few people who really enjoys artificial colouring, but even I wouldn't eat that (obviously not the eggs, but not the ham either).


Green Eggs and Ham is, in the end, a story for children.  But what message does it provide them?  That you can't possibly know your own likes and dislikes, or that someone other than you has a better sense of your own needs and desires?  That you should give up your power of consent to anyone who asks you to do so?  Or more troubling yet, if someone says "no" to you, all you have to do is pester them and threaten them until they give in?  At the end of the day, it really doesn't matter why the unnamed character doesn't want to eat green eggs and ham and it doesn't matter that he ends up liking green eggs and ham.  What matters is that he doesn't want to eat green eggs and ham.  In order to build a healthy society--one that doesn't privilege the desires of some over those of others--we need to begin by empowering children to say "no."

I feel a bit weird posting something like this, because I really don't care about empowering anyone, ever.  But I do feel strongly about this, and not as an analogy for rape culture or medical ethics or the unnamed "Other" or whatever.  As someone who has spent a great deal of time over the course of her life refusing to try certain foods in the face of incessant harassment, I find it troubling that a book like this exists.  And what I also find troubling is that people's notion of consent only goes so far.  There are a few posts on the internet condemning Dr. Seuss's treatment of consent in Green Eggs and Ham (here and here), but both talk about the text in light of rape culture.  I feel like most people don't take the right of consent seriously when it comes to something as seemingly frivolous or harmless as trying new foods.  But for me, feeling the pressure to eat something that I really do not want to eat is actually traumatic, and right after I finish posting this, I'm going to start a petition on Change.org to demand that a big shiny "Trigger Warning!" sticker be included on all future copies of this book.


Forrow, Lachlan.  "The green eggs and ham phenomena."  The Hastings Center Report 24.6 (1994): 29-32.  Print.

Lucky Charms

I have always loved Lucky Charms cereal — presumably just like every other child always has because it’s not even cereal, just marshmallows and sugar-coated crunchy-pieces that pay lip-service to the idea of “cereal.” When I would have a bowl of Lucky Charms, I would spend twenty minutes painstakingly picking out and eating the cereal bits until I was left with a bowl of marshmallows. The appeal of eating the marshmallows on their own has always been that the marshmallows are firm in their structure, but offer no resistance when you bite into them. There has always been a bit of a thrill in biting a marshmallow and half, and then examining its cross-section. Sometimes I would put a marshmallow—usually a red balloon, because they were my favourite—in my mouth and suck on it until it disintegrated. It’s a different experience than letting chocolate or a popsicle melt in your mouth because you can actually feel individual bits of sugar coming loose from the balloon until nothing is left. These two approaches to eating the marshmallows is contingent on their dryness.

Here's a screenshot of a picture I uploaded to Instagram of the first bowl of Lucky Charms that I ate after buying the
box, including a caption lambasting all of the fools who have eaten Lucky Charms with milk.

Here's a picture of what's left after
picking out the cereal bits.

One time, I think in the summer of 2006, I spent an entire day eating all of the cereal bits so that I could make a ball of all of the marshmallows in a single box of Lucky Charms and bite into it like an apple. It once occurred to me that I should just pick out the marshmallows and throw out the rest, but I realized that one of the best parts is the delayed satisfaction of eating all of those marshmallows all at once. This method of eating Lucky Charms taught me that if you work hard for something, the payoff will be that much sweeter than if you just go straight for the reward. For the record, I have not carried this life philosophy over to any other aspect of my life.

I typically always ate cold cereal dry. Rice Krispies is probably the only cold cereal that I consistently ate with milk (always with sliced up banana and a bit of sugar), and to this day, I have never had Cheerios, Golden Grahams, or Honeycomb cereal in milk. The thought of cereal and milk never disgusted me, but I was always certain that it would take away some crucial element from the cereal. I thought of it as a practice that was widely accepted, but never closely examined. I have always thought that cereal is best when it’s crunchy and that its crunchiness was central to its very identity. While I had often entertained the idea of eating my cereal in milk, I never did because I have always been a firm believer in sticking with what you know and what you know you like. Even if something turns out to be not bad, why waste that one experience when you know for sure that it could be as good as it has always been? For the record, this is a life philosophy that I have carried over to every other aspect of my life.

You can tell this is a store brand cereal
because the flakes are a much lower
quality than I have come to expect
from the branded cereals.

Things began to change when I went to Europe—the land of self-discovery—in 2005. I bought an 8€ box of Special K Red Berries and I had it with milk. Although I had had Special K Red Berries without milk in the past and really enjoyed eating those dried strawberries, after having a bite of my friend’s cereal, I realized that the strawberries only improved when they were soaked in milk and had the opportunity to soften up a bit. It was also around this time that I made the crucial switch from skim milk to homo, and while I still prefer skim milk for drinking, homo really is the best when it comes to cereal or milk in your coffee. The next cereal I tried in milk was something like NesQuik. It went over really well because on one hand, it turns the milk into chocolate milk, and on the other hand, those chocolate balls were always too dense and too hard to really enjoy. The milk softened them up an appropriate amount.

Ever since, I have been on a bit of a cereal-with-milk tear. As I mentioned, I still eat cereals like Golden Grahams and Cheerios without milk, but I’ve introduced a lot of new and exciting cereals into my repertoire as well—all of which I eat with milk. Over the past few years, I’ve really gotten into Kashi, Vector, Raisin Bran and any cereal that has dried berries in it (Jordans Morning Crisp, Honey Bunches of Oats with Strawberries, or the store-brand take on Special K Red Berries).

Lucky Charms is something that I’ve eaten less and less of over the years. Every once in a while it will go on sale so I’ll pick up a box, but in general, it’s just not a part of my diet anymore. There are probably a few reasons for this. Part of it has to do with how expensive it is, but more importantly, having a bowl of dry cereal has always been a mindless snacking activity for me. I eat it when I am watching tv or doing school work. I don’t want to have to focus on what it is I’m eating, and Lucky Charms is a cereal that, if you’re eating it dry, you have to give it your full attention. So it came as a bit of surprise to me when I picked up a box at Metro the other day (it was on sale for $2.99, down from the usual $5.50), but I was really excited to tuck into it.

At first I ate it as I always have. I poured a bowl, painstakingly picked out and ate the cereal bits, spent some time appreciating the beauty of all the colourful marshmallows alone in the bowl, and then gobbled them up. R was in the kitchen with me at the time and mentioned that his parents would never buy him Lucky Charms, but that sometimes his grandmother would. When I said that I never eat them with milk, he said that he had always enjoyed them with milk and that he would try to eat the cereal bits first because they were best when crunchy, but that the marshmallows really improved when saturated in milk.

On the cusp of trying something new. I regret getting rid of that box
because I could really use a new toque right now.

And then something happened. I don’t know what. I wanted to try it. I poured myself another bowl, added milk, and prepared for the worst. My main concern was that I would have less control over the cereal once it was sloshing around in a bowl of milk. I wouldn’t be able to pick out the cereal bits very easily, and I knew that I would inevitably miss some. I knew, going into it, that there would be times when I would have to eat spoonfuls that contained both cereal and marshmallow, and although I wasn’t thrilled by the idea, something—some force outside myself—urged me on. It will probably come as no surprise that I liked it. I really liked it. I’m still not sure if I like it more than having it dry, but I do like it. I liked it enough to rush out and buy another box to do the whole thing over again.

Something changed in me that day. It wasn’t life altering, but more like a little sliver of doubt entering my consciousness. I was so sure about Lucky Charms. So sure. I knew how I liked it; I was so certain that it could never be better. I’m not sure that it is better, but I think it’s probably just as good. My approach to food has always been premised on a strict hierarchical system. There is a very small group of food that I like, and within that group, I have always been adamant that there is a singular best way to enjoy that food. Potatoes are best fried; pasta is best with bolognese; broccoli and cauliflower are best with cheese. There are, of course, other ways I will eat these foods. I like potatoes baked in an oven or mashed, and I like pasta with either just cheese or sometimes just butter, and I like broccoli and cauliflower steamed plain or with butter, or sometimes even raw. But there is always, always, a “best” way to enjoy these foods. What’s different about Lucky Charms is that I’m worried that I like them with milk as much as I like them plain.

What does that mean for me and my diet? What if postmodernist theory was right? What if there is no such thing as a singular truth? That it’s all a construction? That there’s more than one approach to something, and that one is not necessarily more valuable than another? It’s an exciting time in my life right now, but also frightening. Does my experience with Lucky Charms gesture towards a flattening out of my diet, a horizontal expansion that knows no bounds? And where will I go from here? How will I ever approach a box of Lucky Charms ever again? How will I know how to eat it? How can I ever be certain of what I want ever again? The future is marred by uncertainty, and I have never been more afraid in my entire life.

Ever since it happened, news has spread like wildfire throughout Toronto.

I've approached my diet with unflinching certainty:

Confidence in my taste is central to my identity.

To experiment with food was an impossibility,

And Lucky Charms with milk was an incomprehensibility.

That I liked it suggests potential dietary malleability,

And more frighteningly yet, that singular truth is a fragility. 

What if trying new things is within my capability?

Does this signal towards a new versatility?

Brain Thoughtz: Eating Selectively is not a Disorder

According to the archives (btw, I am on my way to becoming an archivist now), I haven’t blogged about food since March 13, 2013, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been having a lot of food thoughtz in the meantime.  I spend a lot of time thoughtzing about food, whether it be a mere question of what and when to eat, or grappling with more complex issues surrounding why I won’t eat this or why I will eat that.  Lately, I have been focusing my entire mental capacity on trying to figure out what in the heck is “Selective Eating Disorder” and what it might mean for me.

From what I can tease out, “Selective Eating Disorder” (SED) is presumed to be a more mature way of saying “picky eating.”  Apparently there is a growing community of adults who, for any variety of reasons, have an extremely limited diet, which runs the gamut from eating only potato products (living the dream) to a diet more like mine, which does offer variety but is extremely restrictive in several ways.  It is perhaps incorrect to describe this community as “growing”  rather than one that is increasingly asserting itself.  As of now, SED has yet to be recognized as a legitimate mental illness/eating disorder (there is some confusion in the literature regarding how this should be classified, or else there is some confusion in my own brain about how disorders are classified), but attempts are being made to have it officially recognized as such.  Before we go any further, let me just state for the record that I take issue with the “disorder” classification.  Being selective about what food items gain access to the inside of your body is hardly a disorder; if anyone suffers from a disorder it’s those vile people who eat egg salad sandwiches.  And, since we’re on the topic of egg salad sandwiches, let me just say that once I’ve written a post on sandwiches, I plan to start work on a post dealing with egg salad sandwiches, in which all of my fear, hatred, and anxiety will culminate.

I've already posted this picture on Food Thoughtz, but I
think it's a really great illustration of my eating habits.
It's usually not too difficult to find one or two things that
I'll eat at a dinner party, but the amount of that food that
I can take is often a bit of a problem. (This is not a good
example because we had two enormous ham nugs, and
for some reason I just didn't take advantage of them.) Of
course it also illustrates how I like to keep my food
separate, but, I mean... duh.

I have gleaned from the internets that people who consider themselves to be sufferers of SED love to begin their internet posts with an anecdote about some woman named Jennifer.  For some reason it’s often “not her real name.”  I don’t know why, because even if Jennifer’s real name is Katey, it’s not as if Candace in Omaha is going to start worrying about the diet and health of some Katey she might have some fleeting acquaintance with who lives down the street.  Anyway:

“Jennifer (not her real name) is a happily married mother of two. By all accounts her life seemed perfect, but one thing plagues Jennifer’s health, happiness, and even marriage: Jennifer is one of the many adults who suffer from Selective Eating Disorder, which is currently being reviewed for official recognition as an eating disorder.”

Then the article will go on to talk about how Jennifer is not alone, and there are hundreds — if not thousands — more like her:

“Most people think that ‘picky eating’ is just a phase that kids will eventually grow out of, but for x-amount of adults, this is a very real disorder disrupting the lives of many.”

Then the article will go on to list how SED can disrupt lives: health concerns, extreme anxiety, additional stress on careers and relationships, etc.  There is always a disproportionate amount of interest given to how some people don’t even feel comfortable going out for dinner with friends (although it is never made explicit if this is because there isn’t anything on the menu or because the person inflicted with the “disorder” feels uncomfortable in social situations involving food).  But what a terrible point to stress!  I can just imagine Jennifer and her cronies knocking on the door of the American Psychiatric Association saying, “You guys! This is a real thing! I missed four dinners last month!” Please.  Stop thinking of it as a loss, and start considering it as a gain: "Jennifer" just saved herself over $150.

Here's a great example of one of my favourite dinners: mashed potatoes, ham, and a glass of Quebec cider in a wine
glass that I stole from a hotel that my mum was staying at. Although it looks like the mashed potato is touching the
ham, I can assure you it's not. It's just hovering above it.

The article will go on to say that although no one is quite sure what causes SED, many believe it to be an early childhood food-related trauma, like choking or (seriously) seeing a food tube.  Some articles claim that picky eating might be a kind of evolutionary safety precaution, because as modern science has taught us, species that have been evolutionarily successful have been those who limit themselves to a diet of baked potatoes.  Although, the self-preservation article isn’t completely outrageous.  Some argue that picky eating is a developed trait to ward off unknown foods and, therefore, potential threats.  (I would just like to add, for the record, that if this were true, it’s a pretty faulty self-preservation system.  Even rice, the dish you thought you knew so well, can poison you. Et tu, Oriza?)  If, for example, I was presented with baba ghanoush, some primal, instinctual thing would trigger in my brain telling me that I should not eat this because I cannot discern each individual ingredient, and because I cannot be certain what’s in it, I can’t be certain that it’s safe.  Frankly, I think the reason I don’t want to eat that baba ghanoush has to do with the fact that it looks like I already tried it once and it didn’t go over so well (because I threw it up. Because I think baba ghanoush looks like vomit).  But the first argument isn’t too bad either.  Because while there are a lot of foods that I have tried and don’t like — brusselsprouts, turnips & corn, that one cucumber slice I tried, vegetarian lasagna — so what, right? Everyone has foods that they’ve tried and don’t like.  What’s weird is the inability to try new foods, and the resulting anxiety attacks and burst of adrenaline when confronted with the possibility of having to try something.

This is another example of a pretty typical dinner for me, this time plain basmati rice with butter and a separate bowl of vegetables and cheddar cheese. The only thing that could improve it is perhaps some sausages or ham, of course
on a separate plate. (It's especially important to keep meats separate because they're always leaking)

This is something I noticed more and more as I filled out a Duke University Survey about picky eating (the preliminary findings are here and Duke's health page on selective eating is here), because obviously I had to fill out this survey.  Like any survey, it was pretty flawed and I don’t think the answers I gave are reflective of my deepest heart thoughtz, but nevertheless some of my answers indicated a deep desire for consistency — a character trait I’ve always known myself to possess, for for some reason have never connected to my eating habits.  I grew increasingly frustrated with a series of questions (which I’ve screen-captured below, along with my answers) that seemed too general to really speak to my specific food concerns. Luckily they provided a text box below so that you could clarify your answers.

And my clarification:

What foods are safer for you to try? Is there any pattern that you notice?

Unmixed foods are generally easier for me to try (but I just want to say right now that I don’t consider plain cheese pizza a “mixed food.” I consider cheese pizza to be one solid food that only becomes mixed when you start adding peppers or mushrooms).  I have certain requirements for certain kinds of food. It would be really difficult for me to try a food that I would associate as a "hot" food if it was served cold (e.g. a casserole; pasta).

A lot of my answers for the above questions would depend on specific situations. For example, I feel comfortable eating buns or bagels, but only if they are a specific kind, and only if they are served plain (e.g. I would not eat a ham & cheese croissant). I also feel comfortable eating pasta, but again, only under certain conditions  (that it is hot, that it is either plain, or, if it is not plain, that it is served only with an accompaniment that I have pre-approved and have already tried).

It also depends if I am expected to eat these foods in a social setting or not, and if it is a social setting, what kind is it? Is it a casual dinner with a sort of buffet table? Or is it a sit down dinner where dishes are passed around?  If it’s the former, it would be easy to avoid foods that I don’t want to eat, but if it’s the latter, then I would feel a lot of pressure to eat something.  Typically there is something at a dinner party that I don’t mind, so it’s never too much of a concern. But if it was a question of trying something really extreme that I have never had before, I think I would be more likely to try that new food if I am alone. Then again, there’s really no impetus for me to try a food on my own, unless I really wanted to for personal reasons. (e.g. once I tried a salad in this way).

Of the above listed options, I definitely feel most comfortable trying fruit, fruit juice, or beer. I think it is because with these foods or beverages, it is less likely that a third party has interacted with them or has projected their own personal food preferences onto the provided food. Of course all food is processed or handled in some way, but I guess what I am trying to say is that I imagine all foods exist in a kind of “natural state,” although this, for me, very rarely has anything to do with nature at all. Beer, for example, is in its natural state if it is in a bottle, can, or keg. I think what I am getting at is that even something like 100% fruit juice has to be processed in someway before it is bottled, but I don’t have to see that process. But if someone makes a casserole, then it is glaringly obvious that the food has been tampered with by the host. I mean, they MADE the casserole. Back to the fruit for a second: if there is a fruit platter, I will definitely have some of it if I feel like I have to (if I can get away with not eating it, then I won’t). But I don’t like the idea of fruit sitting out on a platter. For some reason, this doesn’t bother me in the same way with a vegetable platter. I would even eat a piece of cauliflower if it had been leaning up against a pepper or a radish (although I would rub it with my thumb where it touched before I put it in my mouth).

I cannot eat anything off of a bone.

Through the course of the survey I began to lose interest in what I imagine I am inflicted with and, as a result, should care about.  But I don't.  Because while the Duke health page claims that some people who suffer from SED will refrain from applying for a promotion in fear of increased company dinners, I am never going to be in a position to apply for a promotion anyway, so... This might sound especially callous even for me, but if you can't just say to people, "Look, I'm a really picky eater so I'm probably not going to eat anything off this menu. Don't worry, I ate before I came," then maybe you're not the best person for this promotion anyway.  And also, not eating 95% of the food out there doesn't really impact my life in a negative way.  Sometimes it has been a bit awkward and when I've travelled I've definitely wished for a broader culinary scope (not so I can really experience "the people," but because sometimes I want to eat something more than just salted peanuts).

Maybe I don't know what it's like because my diet is not as extreme as that British woman who only eats baked potatoes, and there probably are a few more out there who really do struggle with extremely limited diets.  But for the most part I think this is just a case of someone being a picky eater and needing some sort of substantial, medical explanation for why they don't like broccoli.  My eating habits are restrictive and they weigh on me.  But I guess they don't weigh heavily enough for me to become "a person with an eating disorder" (at least partly because eating disorders are real things, not like, just being grossed out by eggplants).  Not to sound like I try to have a positive outlook on life or anything--everyone knows I don't--but I really don't consider my selective eating a disorder.  I do, however, consider it disorderly, which I guess is the main reason that this blog exists.

And so, on that note, welcome to a new year of Food Thoughtz everyone.  Upcoming posts are likely to include chocolatey mushroom-shaped biscuits, plums, and maybe even an in-depth post on sandwiches or ham if school continues to be as boring as it has been thus far.