Food UI

I was enjoying some English muffins with a friend recently.  As she was waiting for her muffin to toast, she noticed some intriguing marketing text on the packaging. 

“New Look! Same Great Taste. Heartier Nooks & Healthier Crannies”

“Heartier nooks and healthier crannies?”  What the heck is a hearty nook and a healthy cranny?  This is why I could never work in marketing.  Someone out there wrote that copy to be prominently plastered on the packaging with the sole reason to convince an indifferent buyer that they want to put it in their shopping cart (and of course I never even saw the text when I bought the package).  I literally could never have come up with that copy.  Wait, I take that back.  I could have come up with it, but I never would have thought to submit it for approval to be shipped into production.

I digress.  When I was a kid, English muffins and bagels were the big breakfast bread showdown.  I was a bagel girl.  I didn’t understand why we even bought English muffins in the first place.  Bagels were clearly superior.  They were so chewy and delicious.  They broke apart easily along their pre-cut seam.  English muffins needed the help of a knife or else those with unsteady dexterity risked a torn muffin or gummy fingers.

But the real difference occurred once the toasting was complete: slathering on the butter.  I loved the effortless swipe of buttering a bagel and watching the butter seep cozily into the hot bagel.  In moments, I would be merrily chomping away.  But with English muffins, those pesky nooks and crannies infuriated me.  You’d try your bagel swipe with panache only to be thwarted by the infinite trap doors of nooks and crannies.  Disgruntled, I’d then try prying some of the butter out of the initial holes to distribute to the rest of the muffin.  Then I’d panic as the butter pooled into the hot abyss of those nooks and crannies ruining any chance at an even distribution.  (Yes- the perfectionism started manifesting itself at a young age.)

The sole reason I preferred bagels over English muffins was because of those nooks and crannies.  They just annoyed me. 

This is also why, in my lifetime, I have consumed significantly fewer waffles than pancakes.  I feel compelled to fill each waffle hole with syrup, but that much syrup just makes me sick.  So I try to evenly distribute a reasonable dose per hole instead.  Then I think to myself, “I could have been chowing on pancakes by now.”  This problem is the worst for small holed waffles.  At least with the Belgium waffle style I have a chance to dole out the syrupy goodness with some accuracy.  I actually think waffles are very tasty, but I just never find myself ordering them.

These days, I probably eat bagels and English muffins equally.  Perhaps as I’ve gotten older, my ability to swipe the muffin has gotten a little better.  I still think bagels are tastier, but maybe that’s the refined white flour talking.  I’m not so excited about whole wheat bagels, but I’m ok with whole wheat English muffins.  So I suppose in the end, I’m benefiting from those healthier crannies after all.