Sunday, November 19, 2017

Artisanal Stuffed-Animal Repair, Paternally Curated, Familially Sourced, & Gifted by Me

 My sister asked me to restore a pair of stuffed toy chickens that my mother bought for our father back in the 1960s, back when they liked each other.

I am very happy to. 

Here's the rooster of the pair,Taouk. > 
The hen is Livia.

Mostly the chickens are just in need of a bath and new stuffing, but you can see this felt beak needs repair.

I was a little surprised that during lunch my sister referred to something else (nothing to do with toys) as "artisanal", a word that strikes me as ridiculously overblown in most cases.  
E.g., artisanal sea-salt.

Words coming into and out of vogue don't usually bother me much, but this trio of related words---artisanal, curated, and sourced-- bugs me with its pure puffery. Oh, and there's gifted too, as in, someone gave you a present.

"I was gifted with a curated set of artisanal salt sourced at the sea."
I.e., someone gave me some high-priced salt.

This craze for using salt "to take your food to the next level" [actual ad copy] really bugs me.
I first noticed it with sea-salt caramels. Chunks of salt on candy makes some sense. (Pearson's Salted Nut Roll!) But it spread, and the other day I was served a croissant at a swank restaurant with salt dandruff on top. Even after I brushed the flakes off, they made for a very salty croissant.
I miss when unsalted butter was in vogue.

And it doesn't matter what you call it, salt is salt. It's all sodium chloride, and all of it comes from a salty body of water––a sea––even if the sea evaporated eons ago.

What's next, artisanal MSG?

3 comments:

  1. Artisinal MSG? Yes: “New Artisan Food Trend Sweeping San Francisco: MSG.”

    I strongly dislike curated, esp. when used with reference to websites. There was a kerfuffle about it a few years ago, after the introduction of “The Curator’s Code.”

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  2. Oh — artisanal. Another word I misspell.

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  3. MICHAEL: Ha-hahahha--thanks for the link about MSG, " the cocaine of the food world".

    I see I spelled "artisanal" both ways--correctly in the title, and incorrectly in the post itself [which I went in and changed].
    S/b easy to remember that it's anal.

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