Arnold Zwicky's Blog

On a recent grocery shopping trip, Kim Darnell encountered this remarkable holiday offering:

(#1)

A wedge of brie representing a tree, with gummi bears as ornaments, plus dill sprigs as greens, quince spread and fig spread to go with the brie, and a sticker assuring us that the whole thing is handcrafted (no mechanical production lines for this company!).

Brie and gummi bears: how could such a travesty come about?

I imagine an anxious store managers’ conversation during a coffee break the day after Thanksgiving. Cheese Department says they got shipped 50 goddamn cases of brie wedges to unload for the season, Candy Department admits they’ve got a whole warehouse of fuckin’ gummi bears to sell, light bulbs go on when they realize they could pool their albatrosses and make those birds into a hot holiday item: yes! Christmas trees!, the hell with the taste.

(Note on gummi bears and the like: see my 3/19/15 posting “Back to edible penises”, with a section on gummi candies.)

Three bearless trees. A brief digression with three more Boar’s Head Xmas trees with no gummi bears — instead, dried or candied fruits (apricots, kiwis, prunes, raisins) and pine nuts (pignolias). Plus rosemary and dill sprigs as greenery. (Dill goes well with brie, rosemary not so much, and you certainly don’t want to chew on rosemary stems, but rosemary sprigs do a great job of imitating miniature fir branches. It’s all in the looks.)

(#2)

(#3)

(#4)

Return of the gummi bears. In a simple Xmas tree, with a bit of rosemary too:

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Brieland, Brieland, gummi bear and tree land!

A commercial note. On the Boar’s Head brand, from Wikipedia:

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Boar’s Head … is a supplier of delicatessen meats, cheeses and condiments. The company was founded in 1905 in Brooklyn, New York, and now distributes its products throughout the United States. It has been based in Sarasota, Florida, since 2001.

… Boar’s Head sells cheeses and many common meats, such as black forest ham, roast beef, and salami.

Plus a line of condiments. And the occasional gummi bear.

Gummi bears in a tree? How can that be?

This entry was posted on December 17, 2017 at 12:49 pm and is filed under Holidays, Language and food, Signs and symbols. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.