His affectionate majesty made a decree: go to work on an E

[venta]

Recently, owing to a great special offer followed by a freezer apocalypse[*], I've been eating my way through a lot of bagels. Bagels are incredibly smug-looking foodstuffs.

Bagel: I'm nicely toasted. I wonder what topping I'm going to get. Something cool and very New York, I should think. Smoked salmon and creamed cheese, maybe some pastrami, perhaps.... Aargh! What the hell is that ?
Venta: It's Marmite.
Bagel: Ewww! Get it off me! I'm meant to be eaten!
Venta: Don't fret, little bagel. Marmite is a perfectly respectable breakfast foodstuff.
Bagel [grumpily]: Looks like toxic waste, if you ask me.
Venta: I didn't. You're a bagel.

The bagel perked up a bit when I told it that Bagel Factory sell toasted bagels with Marmite, which somehow legitimises the whole thing. It looked briefly suspicious when I admitted, under close questioning, that Bagel Factory don't mention it anywhere on their menu; you have to ask for it.

In the end, I think the bagel decided to pretend it was in the Mob, part of a network of under-the-counter Marmite racketeering.

[*] Don't panic, hendybear, it wasn't our apocalypse. Or our freezer.

Comments

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Bagel Factory don't mention it anywhere on their menu; you have to ask for it

Stands to reason. If you're a Marmite consumer you know what you want, but you wouldn't want people who didn't know what it was ordering it speculatively!

[venta.livejournal.com]

Maybe I'm not princessy enough, but I don't usually demand things which shops don't advertise that they sell :)

I was vaguely alarmed when I went to Boston to be offered a bagel with "cream cheese and sprouts" for breakfast.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Actually I don't either. Does this mean I'm not princessy enough?

[venta.livejournal.com]

I guess you're not. More pink, glitter and a crown is the order of the day. I suggest Number 1 Daughter as a consultant :)

[keris.livejournal.com]

Yay glitter!! And a wand with a star on it! Now!!!

(I'm trying to get more demanding so I don't feel bad about being fussy ;) )

[rabbit1080.livejournal.com]

what sort of sprouts?
my experience of breakfasts provided by various hotels in the USA contained way too much fried stuff dusted with icing sugar.

[venta.livejournal.com]

It turns out that sprouts in the US come prefixed with a silent "Alfalfa" rather than a silent "Brussels".

I was staying at someone's home rather than a hotel. My limited experience of hotels in the US (ie 3) showed a 33% bagels-and-stuff breakfast plan, which featured neither fried things nor icing sugar. The New Orelans hotel provided a rather limited toasty breakfast, which also didn't feature icing sugar. I can't actually remember what the B&B in Boston furnished us with.

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

Bean, not Constantinople Brussels.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Alfalfa, but close enough.

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

Alfalfa? I 'ardly knew 'er!

[venta.livejournal.com]

I think this is exactly analogous to something I said last week ("Alpaca? Nah, she went of her own accord!")

I'm not 100% sure whether there is a canonical joke to which your punchline belongs, though.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

I thought alfalfa was a bean?

[venta.livejournal.com]

Er... er... I bow to your superior knowledge of weird-arse healthfoods :)

[lathany.livejournal.com]

How did you find out if you didn't demand it on spec?

[venta.livejournal.com]

Either (a) they used to have it on their menu but don't now, or (b) the one at London Bridge has it on the menu but the one in Reading station doesn't.

Either way, I knew I'd eaten it in the London Bridge branch, so chanced my arm in Reading :)

[leathellin.livejournal.com]

She's gone, finally completely gone. Not only is that talking to bagels, it is also eating marmite. :-)

[hendybear.livejournal.com]

Of course she's gone look at who she lives with!

[venta.livejournal.com]

Not gone. Here! Yoohoo! Also, I have all your things and I'm between you and the attic hatch :)

[leathellin.livejournal.com]

Hmm. What - right now :-) If we can recover things from the attic we can cook again. Actual cooking and eating off plates.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Technically no, not right now. I'm mentally standing on the landing ready to repel invagers, though :)

Do you want to collect stuff tonight ? Both Johnson and I are free and willing to assist.

[leathellin.livejournal.com]

Tonight would be great. Johnson could also help us collect furniture from elsewhere which would useful.

[venta.livejournal.com]

OK. I should be home (traffic permitting) about half six, so any time after that.

[hendybear.livejournal.com]

oh err that reminds me, I have your sofa, are you going to want it back any time soon? As the logistics of me delivering it might be a tad tricky.....

[leathellin.livejournal.com]

We did think about that before specifying what furniture we wanted in the flat.
We decided the logistics might well be tricky and asked for a sofa :-)
The damn thing is orange though.

[al-fruitbat.livejournal.com]

Untoasted bagel, marmite, cream cheese & cucumber. It was one of those little sandwich shops on Broad St that introduced me to that. Mm... hungry now.

[venta.livejournal.com]

By coincidence, that is today's lunch.

Well, if you'll let me off with cheap Dairylea knock-off cheese instead of proper cream cheese it is :)

[al-fruitbat.livejournal.com]

Telepathy! Or food-empathy or something.

My lunch is leftover homemade thai red curry ;-)

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

It's Jung's Collective Lunchtime all over again!

[shrydar.livejournal.com]

But the contract stipulated Brie..

[venta.livejournal.com]

I've not thought of that for ages :)

[shrydar.livejournal.com]

We listened to it rather often whilst driving around t' Moors :-)

[triskellian]

Morton's. I was about to say the same thing ;-)

[stegzy.livejournal.com]

Marmite is just dirty. That poor bagel. I really feel sorry for it. Surely a better way would have been with some cream cheese and a slice of pastrami. Or toasted. With jam.

[shrydar.livejournal.com]

What has that poor bagel ever done to you?! I don't think I'd even inflict Vegemite on a bagel, never mind Marmite.

*airfreights the poor thing some pear and marscapone*

[venta.livejournal.com]

pear and marscapone

Oooooh, get you :)

[mr-tom.livejournal.com]

The only thing better than bagels with marmite is bagels and bacon.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Bagels with marmite and bacon ?

Actually, no, I suspect that's a dreadful idea.

[(Anonymous)]

Get your rs into gear - it's mascarpone