All posts by Duncan

cooking, food, media, reviews, society

My Kitchen Rules: I can see burnt bits

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When I was a kid there were crackers called Fish Shapes (I think they were among the early Arnott’s Shapes). They were foul. But if you were at a party you just had to have some, finding it hard to stop at the first handful. Despite their revoltingness, they were compulsive eating.

In a similar vein, My Kitchen Rules 2011 is compulsive viewing. I sat on the train home last night wishing I wasn’t going to be home in time for another dose of this distasteful, mediocre circus of the nice, naïve, ‘noying and nasty. Alas, Metro trains were running on time.

A columnist for Crikey.com asked on Monday “Why does this program remind me of Big Brother and all its negativity?” Nicely put.

Of course, it’s not just the producers’ deliberate choice of some distinctly unsympathetic personalities that keeps viewers simultaneously horrified and fascinated, but also the stunningly awful abilities of many of the contestants to (a) organise themselves, (b) work as a team, (c) cook.

I gather that the contestants submitted a number of menus for their dinner parties and were only told on the day which menu they would cook. Wouldn’t you, in their position, have practised most of the menu items? Perhaps have worked out how to tea-smoke duck? Checked whether deep-fried chocolate-risotto-encased ice-cream balls was a tasty idea? Googled “blue fin tuna” to work out whether ecological shame should be on the menu?

I know a few very competent cooking bloggers who wouldn’t have wanted to attempt many of those menus in a mere three hours, but hey, maybe that’s why we didn’t audition for the show!

I can’t see why My Kitchen Rules is such a ratings winner for Channel Seven. Last year’s run was novelty and horror. This year’s is the same, but with extra tiresome bitchiness and incompetence. And hosts Manu Feildel and Pete Evans, as charming as they are, are now so scripted, re-shot and dramatically paused that their presence is just wooden.

So I’m thinking… if one of the contestants could just go beserk with the kitchen implements, the show could end happily (for viewers) and prematurely. What an elimination!

Does anyone even remember who was in it – or won – last year? Didn’t think so.

Postscript: I wrote the above just after the episode finished. Alas that meant the telly was still on when Conviction Kitchen started. I didn’t see the first episode, but my first impressions were of a distasteful, exploitative piece of reality TV. Other shows manage shameless prejudiced overtones (the xenophobic Border Security) or manipulative tempting and shaming (Biggest Loser), but do we need to combine prejudice, tempt-n-shame and a lottery-for-freedom for Conviction Kitchen’s participants? That makes a mockery of the transformative intentions of the learn-to-cook exercise.

Isn’t it morally reprehensible to pour a drink for people subject to a no-alcohol restriction and then see if they’ll drink? Is it mere coincidence that a camera happens to be focused on a participant who suddenly admits to a legal problem to the chef, while another camera just happens to be trained on the chef’s face? Why do the promos and pre-advertisement previews emphasise drama and failures? It wins the voyeurs’ votes. At least chef Ian Curley seems to have had the best intentions with the participants and series.

NOTE: This is not the place for discussion of rehabilitation/crime/etc, so comments along those lines won’t be published.

cooking, degustation, food, hl, reviews

Duncan’s Degustations – Betty Crocker Super Moist Devil’s Food Cake

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ATTN: Ms Betty Crocker, c/- General Mills
SUBJECT: Betty Crocker Super Moist Devil’s Food Cake vs me, Mittens and Mum

Dear Betty,

I’ve long been in awe of your ability to sell buckets of ready-to-use frosting to the masses. I can remember how Australians called it icing, too, before you (or cupcakes) arrived.

The idea of tubs of icing fascinated me. It seemed naughty, perverse, and maybe a bit like dipping into a pot of yumminess. But I never tried it.

I’m writing to you, Ms Crocker, as part of the opening episode of a new occasional article series on Syrup & Tang, called Duncan’s Dégustations. As a public service (or personal torment) I’ll be exposing myself to foods I would normally be sceptical about for one reason or another, just to see if my prejudices are unfounded. I’ve chosen one of your products as my first subject.

I haven’t made a packet cake since, oh, about 1986, and even back then I could tell that my Mum and White Wings had rather different concepts of “cake”. For one thing, there was that signature artificial taste and smell, slightly metallic, and a little reminiscent of some plastics. There’s been seemingly no decline in the popularity of packet cake mixes, and the daredevil in me decided I just had to try one in 2011. Surely, surely, the intervening years would have seen such a rise in food technology skill and knowledge that a packet cake could, in fact, achieve some deliciousness, Betty?

Now, I noticed you have three types of chocolate cake: Super Moist Chocolate Fudge Cake, Super Moist Devil’s Food Cake, and Decadent Chocolate Mud. I can’t say that your boxes were at all informative about the difference between these, and the ingredients lists were so similar (apart from chocolate chips in the mud cake, if I recall correctly) that any product differentiation seemed to lie largely in the names. I chose the Devil’s Food Cake.

The ingredients list: Sugar, wheat flour, cocoa (8%), vegetable oil, raising agents (500, 341 [a sodium carbonate and a calcium phosphate]), dextrose, thickeners (1422, 466 [acetylated distarch adipate and carboxymethyl cellulose]), emulsifier (471 [glyceryl mono-/di-stearate]), wheat starch, whey powder, salt, flavour, antioxidants (306, 320 [tocopherols and butylated hydroxyanisole]). And the consumer must add water, oil and eggs. None of the additives are problematic, to my knowledge.

Now, Betty, I know you’re a figment of someone’s imagination, and your real-life minions at General Mills aren’t likely to be letter-readers, so permit me to cut to the chase. My co-eater Mittens and I made your cake. It was, indeed, very pleasantly “moist” in the mouth (though to be technical, moist relates to moisture, not the soft, oily nature of your cake).

I tried it out on my Mum, without telling her that it was cake mix cake. She was very polite about the texture. That’s all. Then she asked me if it was a packet cake.

Ms Crocker, we found your cake bitter, undersweet, not particularly chocolatey, and a touch metallic. In fact, in most regards it was very much the same as the packet cake I made in 1986. What’s more, the stingy portion of frosting you included (that sachet doesn’t stretch very far now, does it!) did nothing to make things better. It’s disappointing enough that the frosting only stretched to the thinnest of coatings, but why did it have to taste salty and (again) a touch metallic? Is this the foul substance people buy in those tubs, for reasons that now entirely escape me?

Mittens wonders what differentiates your cakes from the likes of, say, this:

I would be ashamed to serve this sorry excuse for cake. Your website says its “Made in Australia from the best quality ingredients we can find in Australia and around the world to deliver a superior product”. Try harder, Betty.

cooking, food, hl, reviews

Where are the good kitchen scales?

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How hard is it to make a set of consumer digital kitchen scales that are reliable? Too hard, it seems.

Exhibit A, below, is the most reliable, moderately priced (A$40) set I’ve found in recent years. The IKEA Ordning kitchen scale is simple, reasonably robust, and fairly reliable. I’ve had two in the last six years. The first broke because I have a habit of knocking things onto the floor. My parents inherited it because my father is nifty with drills and glue and stuff;) The second Ordning scale isn’t quite as good. No design changes, but the displayed weight seems to creep up or down a little sometimes. A pity, because the first one was really, really reliable.

Exhibit B, below, was a piece of junk I bought at BigW. I liked the idea of a solid flat glass surface, and bright display. Junk. It wasn’t enough that weighing something at different spots on the surface yielded different outcomes, but watching the display settle on a weight, then slowly tick upwards gram by gram over a period of about 30 seconds, then (if lucky) slowly tick downwards to (approximately) the original weight, was excruciatingly frustrating.

The design was clean and the display was bright, but that couldn’t compensate for the flaws. This device is sold under many brands both here in Australia and overseas. I don’t know if the one I bought was a one-off faulty unit. There are other scales that are of the same basic design but have a slightly different base or display, and these might behave differently.

Exhibit C (which I’m not exhibiting) was another type of scale (raised glass disc over a plastic housing) at a similar price point. It refused to register the addition of any amount under about three grams, so if you had 100gm of something already on the scales and slowly sprinkled on small amounts of extra ingredient, it wouldn’t notice. Dumb.

What’s a gram or two between friends?

If baking is your thing, and especially if you spend quite some time developing recipes, every gram can matter. For general use, it’s not so big a drama unless you’re adding small quantities of very potent ingredients (e.g. certain flavours, chemicals in avantgarde cooking, leavening agents, etc), or making a very small batch of something where the balance of ingredients is crucial (e.g. a ganache).

I began to wonder if the expensive digital scales sold in most cookware shops and department stores were, in fact, justifiably pricey. A quick look at the reviews on various Amazons left me sceptical, and the fact that the typical consumer probably trusts their scales without testing them for accuracy/reliablity certainly distorts the reviews.

So I wonder what my readers use and have found to be truly reliable?

A decent set of scales should, in my opinion, manage at least to:

  • measure up to at least 3 kg, preferably more
  • measure as little as 2 gm
  • measure in increments of no larger than 1 gm (there are cheap scales out there that only measure in 2 gm or 5 gm increments)
  • be zeroed/tared
  • measure reliably, without the figure creeping up or down, or the baseline changing
  • (added later:) perhaps measure lb/oz as well.

Reliability of scales is difficult to assess if you don’t have access to more than one set of scales. However, smallish weights can be checked by using multiple coins, as the weights of coins are meant to be reliable (e.g. an Australian 50c coin should weigh 15.55 gm; Wikipedia has useful reference lists for many different currencies).

blogging, food, hl, local, media

Can the honest reputation of foodblogs survive the PR-foodblogger relationship?

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Let me start with a series of questions…

  • Did you hear about the Singaporean blogger who got entangled in a mess of accusation and counter-accusation about a free meal? At first it seemed like ego, but later facts indicate it was other people’s egos, plus some PR/restaurant dirty dealing.
  • Do you sigh with disillusionment when you discover yet another foodblog that now features effusive sponsored product or restaurant reviews?
  • Did you know that there is now a chocolatier (Melb.) and a patisserie (Syd.) banned from all mention on Syrup & Tang because of deliberate pseudo-genuine comments promoting (“shilling”) their products? (And a third (Melb.) will be if they try once more.)
  • Were you invited by PR company Media Moguls to an unspecified “blogger event”, but first had to provide your visitor stats? (In correspondence I described this as “rudely presumptuous”.)
  • Have you seen comments on other blogs protesting their “genuine punter” nature and recommending an establishment? Some of those come from the restaurant’s own internet connection… funny, that.
  • Have you received PR-spam because a Melbourne blogger working for a PR company appears to have added her private address book to the company’s database? (I’ll name her if I get one more piece of unsolicited garbage in my inbox.)
  • Have you heard about (at least one) Melbourne blogger who visits cafés, asks probing questions during busy service, and conspicuously takes flash photos without asking? (It’s about the lack of courtesy, not the photos.)
  • Have you noticed that bloggers are increasingly being invited to PR events for which there is an entry/attendance fee? (They wouldn’t try to pull that one on mainstream media!)

It seems foodblogging has matured far enough to be entwined in a pretty tiresome game of cat and mouse with restaurateurs and public relations (PR) companies, egos, money and more.

This article has been brewing for a few months, as I tried to reconcile my opinions about freedoms, community, advertising and blogging. Luckily for me, Brian at Fitzroyalty was perhaps the first to loudly object in detail to some recent developments while I was still vacillating, then Claire published an encouraging post reminding readers of how diverse and interesting the blogosphere can be. Ed also wrote a simple to-the-point post back in June.

I’ve rejigged what I first intended to write, but there will be some natural overlap with other people’s articles (some of which I may have overlooked or forgotten) or comments. As each of our readerships differ a bit, I hope some readers don’t mind the overlap.

When I started blogging, I knew there were different types of bloggers, variously wanting to share, inform, diarise, explore, think, make friends, review, cook, boast, show off, promote a business, etc. Sydney blogs were already known for a bit of a commercial tinge here and there. More numerous Melbourne blogs were generally a bit less “blingy” and there seemed to be more interaction across a broad range of people.

Our first three gatherings were open-invitation, sponsor-free, competition-free, prize-free, warm affairs, with a bit of trepidation but not much showing off. They were enjoyable. Reading reports of the recent commercially-coloured get-together, I was interested to see how few of Melbourne’s long-standing bloggers attended, and I’m guessing more than a few were put off by the change in tone (though I’m not claiming that the people who did attend were at fault, or didn’t enjoy themselves).

Blogs meet commerce

Just like magazines or TV shows, the publisher/producer of a blog chooses what to present and the readers can choose what content they consume. It could therefore be argued that any blogger can do anything they choose (a point made by a number of irritated commenters on Phil Lees’s post earlier in the year that (rather inconsistently) flagged supposedly commercialised bloggers).

Bloggers develop specialisations, styles, or find themselves growing business ideas out of their blogs. Many have successfully achieved a respectful (to the readers) balance between their new business and the original goals of the blog. For many bloggers, there are also external commercial temptations along the way and each blogger has to work out how or to what degree they embrace that.

Some people believe that all commercial interactions are in some way “compromising”, but I think that’s both rigid and rather unrealistic. It’s possible to run obvious ads, for instance, without that affecting your own content (though I think it can degrade the perceived quality of a blog — see some US blogs, for instance, plastered head to toe in banners and commercial bling). It’s also clear that foodlovers can benefit from access to events and information that they might not usually get, even if this is in the context of marketing activity of some sort. Mild bias might be inevitable, but it’s unavoidable under any circumstance as a consumer anyway. Managing the bias is a more critical issue as a blog owner.

As the years have passed, some people have joined blog networks, such as Foodbuzz, only to discover that these were intended in no small part as revenue generators seducing bloggers into a sort of interdependence with niche advertisers. And others have joined ad networks like the much mentioned Nuffnang, which is perhaps little different from Google as an display-ad provider, but has successfully persuaded many bloggers to compromise the integrity of their content by variously providing freebies for review, sometimes with editorial guidance, and arranging events or access to events where most bloggers feel obliged to write at least moderately positive things.

Meanwhile, PR companies have embraced blogs as genuine media participants and therefore fair game for a myriad of marketing approaches (Another Outspoken Female’s rants about this (1, 2) are excellent), but pay-for-attendance event invitations reveal that the respect is fairly limited.

At the same time, individual businesses and talentless PR people seek increasingly to manipulate blog readers by posting false or anonymous comments on blogs, willingly lying about their “genuine” nature, and too many bloggers let this happen (a fair proportion of such comments are quite obviously false, either through the wording or the technical info accompanying the comment).

Clean reputation matters, for everyone

Is all this a problem if bloggers and blog-readers get to choose what they write or read? Yes. There is an obvious risk that the hard-fought-for recognition of food bloggers as genuine and honest reviewers, writers or cooks is being directly undermined. Some bloggers who started to ride the PR gravy train have already reassessed their enthusiasm, becoming more careful in choosing the invitations or freebies they accept, and approaching reviewing opportunities with a far more critical eye. That’s a natural development, and I hope that trend continues.

Running advertorial content, sponsored reviews, or similar material can endanger the respect people have for your own blog, or for the whole spectrum of foodbloggers. Unfortunately, some comments on both Brian’s and Phil’s posts, show there are people who feel an entitlement to some sort of commercial reward for blogging or who will uncritically promote a product as long as it is a basic “fit” with their blog content, and I doubt they care if the scepticism they cause spreads to the large numbers of other bloggers. As the flattering PR attention increases, will we see a wave of blogging egos demanding privilege and special treatment? I’ve heard rumours that it’s happening here already.

Many bloggers have been trying for years to educate PR people about blogs, respectful engagement, and not filling inboxes with irrelevant rubbish. It would be a pity to see the public and mainstream media regarding foodblogs as untrustworthy PR mouthpieces, where previously the biggest battles were with restaurateurs who hated bloggers for telling the genuine everyday experience of a customer, and journalists who loathed the unedited and sometimes faster-to-the-news nature of blogs.

Will the good intentions and often noble goals of many foodbloggers be suffocated by tempations, egos, and the taint of careless commercialism? Many longstanding bloggers have been quieter than usual in the last six months, perhaps in part due to disquiet at the change in tone.

 

A note about my own sites:

I like reviewing stuff, and originally intended to do much more than I have over the last three and a half years. Only on very rare occasions have I received free samples or attended events, and usually they were too rubbish to write about. Nonetheless, I don’t oppose writing about things I discover as the result of recommendation or press release and genuinely find worth commenting on, but whatever the case, I review without fear or favour (which might also be why I’m rarely offered freebies;) ).

I deliberately separate most of my regular macaron-making announcements from the main Syrup & Tang site and RSS feed because I don’t expect my readers will want to wade through frequent commercial announcements. I think it’s a sensible, respectful approach which many other bloggers have also taken.

I own a book review website, The Gastronomer’s Bookshelf, and occasionally make announcements on Syrup & Tang about the reviews. The site was set up because there were so many crap, PR-driven book reviews out there. Blogs are particularly problematic, because most bloggers feel obliged to write positively about free books they receive (especially a problem in the US and UK). On The Gastronomer’s Bookshelf we tell all publishers that if they supply a book, they do so at their own risk, because we definitely publish critical reviews.

A note about comments:

Comments must be respectful and constructive, whether agreeing or disagreeing. There is no right to comment (this is my website), but most comments are usually published after checking. Anonymous comments for publication can be emailed directly to me (you have to identify yourself to me, but request public anonymity, with a good reason). Private emails which are rude to me might be published.

food, local, macarons, media

The flexible macaron Top 20 and why I’m off it

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Many people have asked me why I’m not participating in the Melbourne Macaron competition, I’ve decided I have to write this article explaining my perspective. Despite my criticisms, please note that I do hope that event turns out to be fun and successful.

Mystery

Was it poor execution or a cynical PR-thing? First, Twitterers noticed they were being followed by @eatmacarons, a new account that announced the impending revelation of the “top 20” Melbourne macaron establishments and a competition event in October. The account profile pointed to a website “coming soon”. No identification of who was behind the list or the event. Nix. Tantalising tweets went out, tweet-incentives too (free tickets). Still no uncloaking of the organisers.

To me, it smelled like yet another public relations game among the many now playing in the food-internet/blog-world. Managing to follow over 1000 people on Twitter in less than a month is seriously impressive. After some technical research, I discovered that this “Food Designer” was behind it.

On the Sunday before the public announcement of her list, I got a call. (I don’t think out-of-the-blue non-crisis business calls on a weekend are polite, but clearly, telling me I was on her Top 20 list was so urgent that calling was absolutely necessary.) At the same time an invitation letter and entry form for the October competition arrived by email.

The Top 20 list was interesting (and still is). As someone giggled to me, “are there that many good macaron makers in Melbourne?” How did the list come about? As far as I can divine, personal recommendations to the organisers. (And I know who nominated me – thank you.)

Less than 24 hours later another organiser called asking me to verify my participation in the competition (the closing date was still four days away).

The invitation letter described the event as a “student-run initiative”, but the signatory to the invitation was the “Food Designer” Linda Monique Kowalski. She didn’t identify her business or that she (presumably) isn’t a student in this initiative.

Eventually, the website revealed that “A team of 15 volunteers directed by creative consultant & fooddesigner, Linda Monique, aim to promote this petit four as the next cosmopolitan cupcake.” Oh yay. It was still oddly unclear why the students/volunteers were involved (revealed only after I enquired directly to be a Melbourne University student entrepreneurship initiative).

Pay-to-play, and don’t read the rules

The letter informed me that a participation fee for the competition was due by Friday. $220 thank you. This sort of thing might be common in PR/industry competitions, but no thanks.

Reading on, the short set of competition rules finished with clause 6:

“Additional rules to the competition my [sic] be implemented by the Melbourne Macaron team”.

I see. So one agrees to compete and they can do whatever they want with the competition? Amateur or dodgy?

The flexible Top 20

I declined. So did Café Vue, it would seem. Both our names vanished from the “top 20” list tout de suite. We were promptly replaced with backups. I’ve just noticed that Baker D. Chirico is now also gone, replaced by Brunetti. And OMG ROFL the organisers even went so far as to purge their earlier tweets naming us on their list.


The website Top 20 list at the start, and today.


The Twitter feed for @eatmacaron seems to have suffered a deletion. Where’s no. 4? It used to be Café Vue.

There’s something inherently dishonest (or amateurish) in creating and publishing a Top 20 and then editing it post hoc to suit your needs. And it’s just a tad optimistic to assume every nominee would leap at the opportunity to compete (with or without a fee). There was no explicit linkage of Top 20 status and any requirement for participation in the competition (usually you’d name your flexible Top 20 after all the entry forms are in, if that’s how you want to play it).

I continue to hope that the lack of transparency and other issues are more due to inexperience than part of some ill-conceived marketing game, and that it can be a fun event for the participants in the end. I can see the attraction for others who might want a boost in business and I wish them success if they compete.

Finally, so that there aren’t any misconceptions, I don’t mind not being part of the event – while it was nice to briefly have been on the list, I chose not to be involved for the reasons above and events since then seem, for me, to have further justified that decision.

eating, food, local, macarons

Short and sweet: it seems Adriano Zumbo will be a Melbourne fixture

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The Age newspaper this morning mentioned in it’s local gossip column that Sydney patissier and MasterChef regular Adriano Zumbo is on his way to having a presence in Melbourne. I wonder if that explains his increasingly frequent visits!

In some ways I often hope that good pâtissiers will stay on their home turf, giving a reason for visiting their city for a special treat, rather than succumbing to the business temptation of expansion. I imagine many will disagree vehemently, given that Asian outposts of Pierre Hermé and Lenôtre have made it possible to sample good macarons without travelling all the way to Paris. 😉

Of course, until recently Melbourne hadn’t produced any entrepreneurial pâtissiers with the skills to produce good macarons (there are some I haven’t tasted in a while that might have improved… but I don’t spend money on macarons in Melbourne anymore. Too many utterly mediocre experiences.) So I guess Zumbo is giving Melbourne what it deserves.

I visited Zumbo’s shop in Sydney two years ago and wasn’t as thrilled by his macarons as the large number of devotees in Sydney (half of Sydney’s foodbloggers think he’s cute too, so perhaps there’s extra enthusiasm!). I don’t know what his average quality is, but clearly it’s held in high esteem. He’s a creative fellow well beyond just the macarons, and if nothing else he will bring a breath of fun to the patchy but improving (albeit not as much as PR-sponsored reviews might indicate) retail pastry scene in Melbourne.

eating, food, hl, travel

Hoarding food novelties from my travels

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The lure of supermarkets and convenience stores is irresistible when I travel. The novelty of different packaging, mysterious powders, new chocolate brands (mostly disappointing), and the cornucopia of snackfoods can keep me entranced for ages. I have enough trouble escaping from Tatsing (Newmarket) or Minh Phat (Richmond) and neither of those are new to me! But it’s the extra weight in my luggage when I fly my way home that really shows the lure of new things.

Before recent travel I thought it time to examine my Shelf of Travel Food Mementoes. The intention of the shelf was originally to encourage me to sample and continue to eat my way through the collected bounty, but I seem to have failed, as many years’ travel appears to have accumulated without sufficient attention from me.

You might notice, for instance, an abundance of Ricola lollies. There’s aux Plantes, Verveine citronée, AlpinFresh, Argousier, CitronMélisse, Fleur de sureau, OrangeMenthe, Spearmint Fresh Pearls and LemonMint. The Frenchie ones were acquired in France (2009) when I was on the wave of Ricola discovery (I didn’t use to like hard sugary lollies, but times changed and long-ignored products suddenly caught my attention). Little did I know that what I thought was a very narrow range of Ricola in Australia (thank you, Coles), was nothing of the sort. I returned from travels to find the Reject Shop selling most of the above flavours in English 😉 for half the price! Of greater embarrassment than this, however, is the fact that most of the packets were unopened when I took this photo, despite having been bought over a year earlier. Tsk tsk. At least the Spearmint Fresh Pearls were only about eight months old (Kuala Lumpur in October)… still unopened.

Meanwhile, from Sweden (also 2009) are Läkerol, a few flavours of which are found at IKEA in Australia. But mine, collected in the “home” country are the rather tasty Yuzo Citrus (yes, opened that one), and the as-yet-untasted Eucalyptus, Pitaya (dragonfruit) and Licorice-Watermelon. Actually, I just opened the Pitaya and discovered that it comes “with strawberry pieces” and tastes, um, sweet and acidic and lightly perfumed. It’s lucky that chewy lolly connoisseurism isn’t a big thing, or Läkerol would have to try a little bit harder (and who would try to seriously capture the flavour of dragonfruit??).

I rarely use chewing gum, but new flavours always catch my eye. Fond memories of a Wrigley’s sage and lemon chewing gum linger from a trip to, um, the Czech Republic I think (I found the almost empty package in the bottom of a laptop bag the other day… too gory to reveal to you here). In the picture below, however, you see Green Tea Mint chewy (foul) and Lemongrass (obscured at the top) which was new in Malaysia last year (and rather difficult to find once I was addicted).

On the top right we have the rather awful pseudo-macarons made of fruit-flavoured chocolate from the otherwise excellent Michel Cluizel. They were awful when I bought them, and over a year later they were downright spit-out-able (I know, should have chucked them out a year ago). In complete contrast, the neighbour in the photo are tasty little cinnamon flavoured Pastiglie Leone. I have a few half-eaten packets of other flavours from previous years lying around the house. I emphatically do not recommend the green tea “Tuareg” flavour, astringent enough to shrivel your tastebuds for a day unless you’re a hardened green tea lover! Putting that flavour to one side, I was delighted to discover that you can find these pastilles in Australia — on a visit to Liaison café in Melbourne I saw an artfully arranged pile of boxes.

The coloured tins with heart-shaped figures are OralFixation Mints from the US (but bought in Malaysia). I’m a sucker for small tins, and US sweet and gum manufacturers are great at feeding my fetish. (Come to think of it, a star in the tin world is Altoids, actually British, but better known in the US.) Anyway, these OralFixation thingies in cinnamon (yum, but not steroid-strength like Altoids) and green tea (meh) are very stylish.

Almost finished, and we have three favourites at the bottom left. Starting with the childhood nostalgic disappointment is the Jacobs orange Club biscuit. Knowing that, as a child, I loved the greasy chocolate and the gritty biscuit just didn’t save them from disdain. Having bought a six-pack with glee at Tesco, most of them lay unloved at the back of the shelf, with good reason. Then there’s the Fazer Viol licorice chewy lollies. Lovely. Clear violet flavour. A pleasant suck. And finally, childhood hit and enduring favourite, violet flavoured Anis de Flavigny — hard, lightly fragranced sugar balls with a smooth exterior and a tiny aniseed in the middle.

I know of many others who hoard tasty treats (flavoured KitKats seem to be a recurring theme among bloggers), but most do manage to devour their bounty within a brief time. What do you hoard from your travels and then find months or years later?