brigid | Nutella

Mirrored from Words, words, words, art..

The first time I had Nutella was in 1993. My mom’s best friend had moved to Australia a few years earlier and super expensive trans-atlantic phone calls once a year and letters written in cramped writing on both sides of onion skin paper and sent airmail just weren’t enough. So she used my graduating from 8th grade as an excuse to fly the both of us out to visit them. Happy graduation, let’s go to Oz! I’m not complaining, mind. It was an incredible trip. I fell in love hard with Melbourne, and it’s the one place in my life I’ve ever felt homesick for, which is weird considering I was only there for about 3 weeks. But man, I loved it so much. We stayed with our family friends and I tried Nutella for the first time. We’d been sending them care packages for years of stuff like graham crackers and Oreos and Captain Crunch and some other stuff they couldn’t get over there (coffee that wasn’t instant? lasagne noodles that you had to boil first? I forget what else.) and they’d send us Vegemite. After our return they sent Nutella as well, something you couldn’t get (or couldn’t get easily?) in the States.

OF COURSE I shared this with my friends.

They thought I was crazy.

Putting CHOCOLATE on BREAD? How ridiculous is that! No wonder you’re such a fat fatty! These FOOLS who enjoyed chocolate chip cookies, chocolate chip muffins, chocolate croissants, white and yellow cake with chocolate frosting, pound cake with chocolate ganache, chocolate bread pudding, etc could not FATHOM putting CHOCOLATE (and hazelnut) on BREAD. Ewwww, gross! I made them eat it, because that’s the kind of friend I am, and they all saw how amazing it was and liked it. And for years, Nutella was a staple in my cupboard.

Now it’s super popular and you can pick it up in almost every grocery store and there’s weird ads for it on television and in magazines where it sounds like it’s health food (it’s chocolate, people. chocolate. tasty, not healthy.) and there’s a million recipes and memes about Nutella online. You can find it pretty much everywhere… except my kitchen.

Why?

Because of Nesko.

I married a man who’s allergic to hazelnut. He’s also allergic to chestnuts and brazil nuts.

How allergic is he? I’ll tell you. Years ago, I worked at Fannie May and part of the job requirement was to be familiar with the product. I was sampling the new deluxe truffles (which were INCREDIBLE) and one of them was a hazelnut mousse filling (AMAZING). HOURS after I tried one single truffle with hazelnut Nesko came in to buy some Advent calendars for his cousin’s kids and I gave him a little kiss and his lips started tingling and got a little swollen.

Despite his allergic reactions (swelling, vomiting when he eats chestnuts) he continues to eat stuff with hazelnuts in it unless I remind him not to. His reasoning is that the allergic reaction isn’t THAT bad and hazelnuts taste good. My reasoning is that each exposure ups the chance his allergy will get worse, so stop making bad decisions you fool. So we don’t keep Nutella in the house.

Recently, some peanut butter companies have tried to jump on the Nutella bandwagon and put out their own chocolate spreads. Every time I see them I scrutinize them for hazelnut. Peanuts, after all, are tasty and they are peanut butter companies. Wouldn’t it make sense for them to use peanuts instead of hazelnuts in their java chocolate caramel whatever spreads? But no, they all cram hazelnuts in there.

Then I found these little single-serve packs by Jif. They’re one of the

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Mirrored from <a href="http://brigidkeely.com/wordpress/2013/03/24/nutella/" title="Read Original Post">Words, words, words, art.</a>.The first time I had Nutella was in 1993. My mom’s best friend had moved to Australia a few years earlier and super expensive trans-atlantic phone calls once a year and letters written in cramped writing on both sides of onion skin paper and sent airmail just weren’t enough. So she used my graduating from 8th grade as an excuse to fly the both of us out to visit them. Happy graduation, let’s go to Oz! I’m not complaining, mind. It was an incredible trip. I fell in love hard with Melbourne, and it’s the one place in my life I’ve ever felt homesick for, which is weird considering I was only there for about 3 weeks. But man, I loved it so much. We stayed with our family friends and I tried Nutella for the first time. We’d been sending them care packages for years of stuff like graham crackers and Oreos and Captain Crunch and some other stuff they couldn’t get over there (coffee that wasn’t instant? lasagne noodles that you had to boil first? I forget what else.) and they’d send us Vegemite. After our return they sent Nutella as well, something you couldn’t get (or couldn’t get easily?) in the States. OF COURSE I shared this with my friends. They thought I was crazy. Putting CHOCOLATE on BREAD? How ridiculous is that! No wonder you’re such a fat fatty! These FOOLS who enjoyed chocolate chip cookies, chocolate chip muffins, chocolate croissants, white and yellow cake with chocolate frosting, pound cake with chocolate ganache, chocolate bread pudding, etc could not FATHOM putting CHOCOLATE (and hazelnut) on BREAD. Ewwww, gross! I made them eat it, because that’s the kind of friend I am, and they all saw how amazing it was and liked it. And for years, Nutella was a staple in my cupboard. Now it’s super popular and you can pick it up in almost every grocery store and there’s weird ads for it on television and in magazines where it sounds like it’s health food (it’s chocolate, people. chocolate. tasty, not healthy.) and there’s a million recipes and memes about Nutella online. You can find it pretty much everywhere… except my kitchen. Why? Because of Nesko. I married a man who’s allergic to hazelnut. He’s also allergic to chestnuts and brazil nuts. How allergic is he? I’ll tell you. Years ago, I worked at Fannie May and part of the job requirement was to be familiar with the product. I was sampling the new deluxe truffles (which were INCREDIBLE) and one of them was a hazelnut mousse filling (AMAZING). HOURS after I tried one single truffle with hazelnut Nesko came in to buy some Advent calendars for his cousin’s kids and I gave him a little kiss and his lips started tingling and got a little swollen. Despite his allergic reactions (swelling, vomiting when he eats chestnuts) he continues to eat stuff with hazelnuts in it unless I remind him not to. His reasoning is that the allergic reaction isn’t THAT bad and hazelnuts taste good. My reasoning is that each exposure ups the chance his allergy will get worse, so stop making bad decisions you fool. So we don’t keep Nutella in the house. Recently, some peanut butter companies have tried to jump on the Nutella bandwagon and put out their own chocolate spreads. Every time I see them I scrutinize them for hazelnut. Peanuts, after all, are tasty and they are peanut butter companies. Wouldn’t it make sense for them to use peanuts instead of hazelnuts in their java chocolate caramel whatever spreads? But no, they all cram hazelnuts in there. Then I found these little single-serve packs by Jif. They’re one of the <a href+http://www.jif.com/Products/Details?categoryId=276&productId=1191>Jif To Go</a> products and they are chocolate and peanut butter and hazelnut free and I ate some with pretzels and I almost died because it tasted so good. I wish they came in a full sized jar, but apparently they don’t. If you want to try out a great tasting nut and chocolate spread but can’t do hazelnut, give this a try because it’s really REALLY good. This is a totally uncompensated post. Nobody asked me to write it, nobody’s paying me for it, I just wanted to share something super tasty with you because I love you. <div id="apf_post_footer"> <h4>Related Articles:</h4> <ul> <li class="apf_footer"><a href="http://brigidkeely.com/wordpress/?p=838">Nutella</a></li> <li class="apf_footer"><a href="http://brigidkeely.com/wordpress/?p=813">Hoarding and Purging</a></li> <li class="apf_footer"><a href="http://brigidkeely.com/wordpress/?p=765">I took a step back, and wound up in 1996.</a></li> <li class="apf_footer"><a href="http://brigidkeely.com/wordpress/?p=763">If I had a million dollars…</a></li> <li class="apf_footer"><a href="http://brigidkeely.com/wordpress/?p=742">Yet Another Post About Shoes</a></li> </ul> </div> Post Footer automatically generated by <a href="http://www.freetimefoto.com/add_post_footer_plugin_wordpress" style="color: #B4B4B4; text-decoration:underline;">Add Post Footer Plugin</a> for wordpress.

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Peanut Butter and Company's line! It's more expensive than Jif, but when I went gluten and soy free, I couldn't have Nutella (I don't recall why, the last time we checked the ingredients, it's me-safe; it could have been the dairy free issue at the time, but whatever) and I was...cranky. Also, being forced to be dairy-free at the time and therefore even more cranky. The following made the year of dairy free and cranky far better:

http://ilovepeanutbutter.com/index.php/peanut-butter-1/darkchocolatedreams.html

The first time I encountered Nutella was in the Netherlands, during my first European jaunt. And yes, it was there on the breakfast buffet, and you were expected to spread it on white bread -- white processed, pre-sliced bread like Wonder or something. Like your friends I went eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeuuuuuuuuuuuu because 1) the bread; 2) wtf is this stuff?; 3) this for breakfast??????

And you know, I didn't get over that. I could and did leave it alone.

All the USians around me were crazy for the stuff.

Without noticing really, it seems in the last years Nutella is in our supermarkets, having crept in from more speciality small food emporiums, particularly those that cater to the ex-pat English community here.

There was even a story in the NY Times this last week that Columbia University food services have had to discontinue providing Nutella as a condiment because the students steal it all. And students sharing dorms or whatever get into fights over each other stealing the Nutella.

Before that story I saw in the Style section now and again in the peripetetic columns that cover new cocktails and bar drinks, that Nutella has been used, sort of like Baileys. Again I say, eeeeeeeeeuuuuuuuuuu -- to both Bailey's and Nutella. They both seem kind of slimey to my senses.

Love, C.

I grew up with Nutella in the house. It wasn't such a rarity in Canada (especially Eastern Canada) than it was in the US back in the 80s and 90s. Although you could typically only find the smaller sized jars for awhile, but now they have the huge jars that, when my mother gets in a Nutella kick, she can finish in a couple of weeks from sneaking spoonfuls of the stuff! Haha.

For chocolatey kicks, I know MaraNatha makes (or made?) peanut and almond based dark chocolate spreads. My boyfriend was disappointed because they weren't as smooth and rich as Nutella gets. I'd still check for ingredients, as they may have been done on the same line as other tree nut butters.

Their nut butters are all natural, if not organic, so they are pretty pricey but I'm partial to their toasted almond butter on apple slices. Sooo good!

I have a really mild allergy to walnuts. They make my mouth, especially my palate and my gums itchy and tingly, but I get no swelling. I also don't react to trace amounts, so I'm lucky in that way. But I play it safe and avoid walnuts as much as possible, without going crazy when it mentions the possibility of trace contamination.

Nutella

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