francs, many things confection-related, sonder

Swiss francs are denoted CHF, for Confoederatio Helvetica. Yes, that Helvetica. In greater detail: The origins of Switzerland have been memorably described to me as 'a bunch of cantons that basically agreed to not kill each other', (though i'm certain that description applies to pretty much every country). The 'Switzer' part of the name might be from "Suittes, ultimately perhaps related to suedan "to burn", referring to the area of forest that was burned and cleared to build " (reference here), but the current confederation calls itself after an early attempt to establish a central authority over this group of (formerly-self-ruling) cantons, the French-ruled Helvetic Republic. That name is historical, from the Helvetii tribe that covered that area during its first exploration by the Romans. My generation is familiar with the font Helvetica, created by Max Meidinger, a Swiss typeface designer.

American chocolate versus the rest of world (this is the phrase i've been using to remind myself to cover this topic, and i like it enough to keep it): American chocolate tastes are largely formed by Hershey's Chocolate, specifically the milk chocolate variety, which has a very specific, 'cheesy' soured note when compared to milk chocolate from other countries. It is speculated that this flavor is an artifact of conching (the process of refining chocolate via mixing/rolling, to incorporate cocoa butter and remove volatiles, discovered accidentally by Rodolphe Lindt when a mixer was left on overnight); in Hershey's milk chocolate, likely some butyric acid remains to impart this distinct flavor. My favorite part of that is a bit of a complementation assay: some companies specifically add butyric acid to their chocolate to increase marketability in the US (ugh). Something i didn't realize is that Hershey's chocolate is kosher.

Another distinction between American candy and its European counterparts is the difference in praline. In essence, praline is a mix of nuts, sugar and lipids/dairy; for European chocolate (prah-leen), this is an extremely fine paste, frequently used as a filling. For American pralines (pray-leen), this is more of a brittle, with chunky nuts (almost always pecans) bound in sugar and cream, probably due to French influences on local pecans in New Orleans.

Something else of note is Gianduja (the chocolate/hazelnut confection, not the archetypal Italian arts figure, whose hat the confection is shaped for). In order to stretch very expensive chocolate, folks in the Peidmont region of Italy began adding local hazelnuts to the mix. This was turned into a spread by chocolatier Michele Prochet. It is unclear (at least, fron the wikipedia page) as to how close the remarkably popular Nutella is to this regional product, but Pietro Ferrero, a baker from that region, whipped up a spread he called 'paste gianduja' in 1946, also to further stretch the chocolate supply limited at that time by WWII. This was later made into the current incarnation of a paste by the addition of palm oil, and renamed Nutella. Traditional gianduja has a 31% hazelnut ratio, while Nutella is 13%.

A recent visitor at work came to us from Sweden, and was kind enough to bring an huge bowl of Swedish candies to share. These were the Ahlgrens' Bilars (or, Ahlgrens' cars), a sort of foam/marshmallow candy with a vaguely minty, tangy flavor. Somewhat tongue-in-cheek, these are marketed as "Today, Ahlgrens bilar is the worlds’ top-selling car by far. And despite their somewhat low resale value, new generations are continuously discovering their beautifully timeless design, their tasteful profile and their position as the number one classic in the world of automotive sports " from the candy company's website. Ah ha, 'low resale value'...

Speaking of cola musical references, Kishi Bashi has a new album out, and the last song on it mentions drinking Coca Cola on a Sunday. The album is called Sonderlust; researching this word, it appears to be a recent invention, to mean " the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk ", from The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows (itself a rather interesting tumblr account of embroidered word meanings). The word exists in French, meaning to probe (specifically, something's depths).

There was a time when the TattooLit website was no longer being updated, but it would appear that time is. Lovely stuff.

My coworker Rachel kept giggling while checking her phone the other day, and finally i asked her what the deal was. Apparently, she had been exchanging pick-up lines with her boyfriend, specifically, pick-up lines used by/based on the Big Bang Theory character Howard Wolowitz. These are terrible though funny; a lot of them have been floating around associated with science for years ("Girl, your name must be phylum, because you are above class."). That same site offers Game Of Thrones-themed pick up lines, and those are even MORE terrible. So. "Did it hurt... when you fell from the Moon Door? " Oh Noes!