food – Sokorra Lewis

So…Today is Chocolate Day

Posted on July 7, 2017 by sokorra

halloween-candy-1014629_640 — Chocolate! (photo source)

When searching for topics to write about this month, I came across a website that claimed that July 7th is Chocolate Day. They don’t know who created it, where it was first celebrated, except they suspect that it was candymakers.

I don’t even mind. I love chocolate, and I know many of you do too. My personal favorite candy bar is a Reeses, which is chocolate and peanut butter. I also am a big fan of Nutella (chocolate and hazelnut spread). There are many ways to eat chocolate, or make use of chocolate. Sadly I did not eat any today, although my diet is probably happy I refrained.

My second favorite chocolate bar is actually not even a bar, its nuggets. It’s the Hershey Nuggets with peanut butter or caramel inside.

So if you are up to it, and like chocolate, feel free to eat some today in honor of Chocolate day! I’m going to go see if I still have some of my chocolate milk left. That counts.

food, general, rant

Brofixes. A Pet Peeve.

Posted on May 20, 2016May 20, 2016 by sokorra

I wish Male-focused Marketing would stop renaming things. They make it sound like men need to be told that its manly to be able to enjoy thigns. It drives me nuts, even more so when I get an unnecessarily gendered product geared for women Like Bic for Her . Its a pen. I don’t need to say Lady or be in pastel to know I can use it. But do read the customer reviews, they make its existance almost worth it.

But lately I keep seeing things that have prefixes added on to them to make them more palatable to men. Bronuts (That would be donuts, which I’m pretty sure I saw men eating long before someone thought to make money making it bro), Brogurt (that article annoys me on several levels beyond the brogurt name),Man bun, Man braids, and most recently Man Perm.

Its a freaking Perm. Learn to enjoy what you enjoy and not let it effect how you few your gender expression. If you want to braid your hair, go ahead and do it. If you want to eat healthy and get a yogurt, go ahead and do so. But please don’t do so because somehow adding “Bro” or “Man” to it suddenly makes it socially acceptable to be seen doing.

I also find it hard to believe, going back to brogurt category, that people think women wouldn’t like bigger containers of yogurt. So I feel no threat to my femininity to go out and purchase something that says bro- or Man as part of the title.

Mainly I think this is an excuse to charge people more money, and fed on social norms to do it.

But seriously, stop calling things “Man-” just to take a thing done all the time and make it more suitable because you are a guy. Its a braid, a perm or a donut. Enjoy it.

There is way too much unecessarily gendered products out there. And I feel marketing has just continued to push gender seperation to get us to pay more just because it makes you believe that something is more feminine (the so called woman’s tax on bathroom and personal products) or masculine (the urge to rename ordinary items to make it more palatable to men).

On a happier note, there is a bronut I will happily consider, and that is Bronuts a company that makes donut holes that was founded by a pair of brothers (so the name actually makes sense and has less to do with who eats them as much as who made them).

Also I learned not to click on the Urban Dictionary links because sometimes there are completely different answers on the page and some of them I really wish I could unsee and also makes me detest the terms .

food, general, history, Uncategorized

Ancestry & Tradition

Posted on January 4, 2016January 4, 2016 by sokorra

As an American it is difficult to find oneself connected to any particular tradition. I know some of my friends who have parents or grandparents who are recent immigrants have a stronger connection to their past then I do. My family has been here for awhile. And there are so many groups of people mixed in there its hard to really connect to any of them.

My last name is German. However, the most recent member of my family to not live in the US was actually Greek, so does that make me more German or Greek? And do I actually have any traditions or family recipes that come from those links?

My family also contains people from Ireland, Wales, Scotland, England (yep, we have the UK down. Definitely Anglo), Poland, and apparently a French Jew although I never had that one particularly explained.

I suppose when I think about it, I identify as “American” first (for that is what I am) and if I have to go into something connecting my family history I go for German-Irish. There is alot of Irish in my family, but that is not unusual for someone living in the US. And like I said, my last name is German.

The tradition my family has of eating pork and sauerkraut for New Years is believed to be a German tradition, so I suppose there is that. Although apparently in the US it seems to be more of a Pennsylvanian tradition then one held country wide.

sauerkraut-655062_640 — Sausage, Sauerkraut, and Potatoes. Source: pixabay

Sometimes I feel odd, not having that connection any tradition or what feels like culture. I know that there are probably many things I do that are uniquely American in nature, and someone from another country might observe that as my ‘culture’. But sometimes I just feel like I should be more knowledgeable about the places my family came from.

Although I once read on a website that my family comes from a part of Germany that keeps switching hands with the Danes so…maybe I’m Danish too.