cerealjoe | Take cookie - make it into spreadable thing. (Reply)

Have you ever noticed that sometimes some products just miraculously start appearing everywhere "du jour au lendemain". One day you only have some crappy peanut butter variation* and fake chocolate spread** on the shelves next to the Nutella... and the next there are jars of spreadable Speculoos in virtually every single shop on those shelves.

Alright, so that's not totally true, those jars did not pop up everywhere at once. The first time I saw that jar was in a Monoprix in Paris in November***. At the time I thought that it was the craziest thing ever, spreadable Speculoos... the things that Parisians eat. I wasn't going to bring one back with me on the train and so I forgot all about that jar. Then one day my mum bought one at a local store and I think I scared the neighbourhood with my squeeing when I saw it. I wanted to try it right away but did not. It's the same with funky cookies, just knowing that the box is right there and that I will be able to eat and enjoy them when there I need some food comfort brings me a lot more joy than tearing into the jar/bag right away. Right now I have some funky cookies from the Asian shop stashed away just like that.

In the end, I opened the jar the other day.

Now, we won't get into the whole battle of who created the Speculoos, it's very dangerous ground. We'll just say that they're from up north. And now there is no need for one to spend energy chewing them! Amazing stuff guys!

First thing I learnt is that one should refrain from just taking a bite right off the spreading knife, unless one has a preference for sugar eaten by the spoonful. Yes, it's that sweet. Then again, it's made with cookies which tend to be sweet (and yet go very well with proper roquefort).

Once I accepted the taste, it was quite an enjoyable experience. I did not attempt to eat some again for about a week but still, there is a taste that one just doesn't expect - Speculoos on bread.

The next attempt to eat some was with buckwheat crêpes and it was rather a hit. The almost-saltiness of those crêpes goes perfectly with the sweetness of the spread. I did not try to make a buckwheat crêpe/roquefort/spread combination but I'm quite certain it would have been a wonderful thing.

* no really, it's terrible. I'm a peanut butter snob. I want the non-sugary stuff and here the first peanut butter started appearing in normal-ish stores only about a decade ago and I doubt that demand is high... so we're still at the stage where if one doesn't like the brand they offer, well, too bad. We still have some time before non-sweetened peanut butter appears. Actually I've already told everyone that if one day I finally find a place to settle (I can always dream, right? Can't be a traveller forever), I want one of those peanut butter making machines. Along with a Hello Kitty toaster and a waffle machine. Will I ever actually use those? No, I do not eat toast and I do not really like waffles... but the thought that I could have toast with Hello Kitty's shape on it and some waffles would make me happy. And most waffle machines can be used as a croque-monsieur machine and sometimes I do want a croque-monsieur but I'm too lazy to get the frying pan out.
** anything that is not Nutella is fake chocolate spread. That's my opinion on it and it's not going to change. There. It's like for chocolates, there are Lindt's dark chocolate Pyrénéens and then there are other chocolates. Totally different things, should not even be mentioned in the same sentence.
*** yes, we do have Monoprix here and they're also full of random stuff (really, they seem to have some of the randomnest products way before they hit other store chains - like "ancient" vegetable crisps, those are amazing). But they're all rather far away, I'm not going to waste time going to one of them here. In Paris, why not waste time, sometimes you just don't have better things to do at 7:30pm, too early for dinner, too cold to stay out.