Hard Time Comfort Food and the Enshittification of Chocolate 🍫
Welcome to Secret Breakfast / The best place to start building furniture with marshmallow while quite a few places in Europe are on fire.
Hi there!
If revenge is a dish best served cold, what is revolution? A buffet. Everyone shows up hungry, no one agrees on the menu.
Piero
✹Jean-Jacques Rousseau, quoted in Histoire de la Revolution Française. Centuries later quoted on Wikipedia, and by the Aerosmith.
The Marching Pantry, with Style
Every protest has its manual. Where to stand, what to wear, who to call if things go wrong. Nobody writes the chapter on lunch. Yet hunger is the oldest reason to march. In Rome, a grain shortage left Emperor Claudius cornered in the Forum, pelted with insults and pieces of bread. In France in 1775, soaring grain prices set off the Flour War: about 300 riots in two months. In Japan in 1918, fishermen's wives met at a village well to protest the price of rice. The unrest spread across the country. Now, a report where I'm right now: Italy. What cost 100 euros in January 2021 costs about 124 today. After some weekends of fire, devastation, and tear gas in France, or Italy, the headlines are all smoke. Let's look at the pockets instead.
The ideal marching snack is simple. It survives a backpack. It needs no knife, no plate, no second hand. Think dates, almonds, a wedge of hard cheese, a heel of bread, dark chocolate, a banana in its own natural armor. Add something salty, because crowds sweat.
History agrees. One of the most famous marches ever was about salt. In 1930, Gandhi walked about 240 miles in 24 days to pick up a lump of natural salt from the mud and defy the British salt law.
Bring more water than seems reasonable. Skip anything messy. Mayonnaise has no place in a crowd.
Now the famous lemon. The legend says to squeeze it into your eyes when tear gas arrives. Don't. Citrus juice stings and can hurt the eye even more. What helps is plain: rinse with clean water or saline, don't rub, take out contact lenses. Some marchers soak a bandana in lemon juice or vinegar to breathe through. The evidence is thin, but the smell may calm you down. Keep the lemon for the mayo you'll make when you get home. Romans threw their bread. You can eat yours.
🍂Fall in a bite: Whipped Brie, Pumpkin Butter with Fried Sage & Hazelnuts (★recipe) 🥞About 2,200 breakfast recipes on a single site 😢Chicken Enchiladas and 20 Comfort Dishes to Make for Someone Going Through a Hard Time (★recipes, partially paywalled) 🧑🏻🍳Chef Daniel Humm Dreams of a Restaurant Where No One Wants to Leave 🍊Warm Mandarin and Olive Oil Labneh (★recipe) 🍋🟩Nori Lemon Butter (★recipe)💡I wasn't familiar with the concept of sensory siege, something I'm gonna write about again, but for now let's start with gambling glow
The Chocolate Conspiracy
Rachel Handler / Grub Street
Is chocolate still chocolate? A routine Sno-Caps purchase tastes like soap, sending Rachel Hanler down a chocolate rabbit hole to investigate whether favorite candies have quietly gotten worse. When Brad Reese, grandson of the Reese's inventor, goes viral accusing Hershey of swapping real chocolate and peanut butter for cheaper substitutes, experts confirm the classic cups really have changed (sweeter, waxier, with a chemical aftertaste) even as Hershey denies it. The story becomes a parable of American "enshittification," where beloved products lose their essence to cost-cutting. And the future looks worse: AI-generated "faux-coa" made from dates and tomato skins.
