Christmas Morning 2021

[ChrisGreaves]

Each year for the past eighteen years I have celebrated the pagan festival of the 21st on the 25th by sitting in bed and gorging myself on disgusting foodstuffs, but not any old disgusting foodstuffs, only selected foodstuffs that begin with the corresponding letter of the alphabet.

This year is 2021, and the 21st letter of the alphabet is, unfortunately, the letter “U”

I have so far found no disgusting foodstuffs that start with the letter “U”.

My mistake was starting this tradition back in 2003. I did not realize that “C” was too easy a letter, and assumed that Christmas would be so much fun every year.

Kelly’s Corner Convenience Cornucopia provides a great many packages of truly disgusting foodstuffs that could be dropped down the hatch and past the UlvUla, but they all have the letter “U” as the SECOND letter.

Some packages have two letters “U”. One has Three letters “U”. Should I use a weighting method of scoring based on the counts of the letter “U”?

U will notice that turnips wormed their way into my survey, but that’s alright. Turnips are a doubly-disgusting food, and at the second “dégueulasse” they do a U-turn and head right back out of the list.

Suggestions, as usual, encouraged.

Cheers (perhaps)
Chris

[GeoffW]

Upside down cake
Udon noodles
Sea urchin
Unsweetened chocolate
Unleavened bread

That's ok - but what are you going to do with x, y and z? And after that?

Perhaps you're better off to start this year again, and fill in the missing a and b before recycling.

[HansV]

Just for its name: the Ugli fruit.

[StuartR]

Unbleached flour made into unleavened bread and spread with unsalted butter

[silverback]

Here you go.

Silverback

[ChrisGreaves]

1) Upside down cake
2) Udon noodles
3) Sea urchin
4) Unsweetened chocolate
5) Unleavened bread

Thanks Geoff, for the suggestions, but I fear that I might have misled you. Or for the pedants in our midst, and they both know who they are, that I may have misled you.
"Disgustiing" was meant more in terms of "things that my doctor would upon frown". Which is why 2003 was such a disgustingly good year.

1) I have never made an upside-down cake, although I have made lots of cakes that have made an effort to invert themselves after being taken from the oven. Any chance you could bake me a fruit cake and mail it to me, plastered with sticky labels (well, it IS a fruit cake) that read "Other side up"?
Too I have my worries about being able to drop off to sleep with bedsheets riddled with cake crumbs. I would have difficulty falling asleep atop a half-dozen sultanas.
2) Please excuse me while I go search for Udon noodles.
2) I should have used a different search engine. DuckDuckGo sucked up the images as fast as they came onscreen, thinking, I guess, that they were anemic worms.
Too I have been in far too much hot water in bed to contemplate hot soup in bed.
3) We have sea urchins here, and Gerry Hussey could supply me with some were I to ask. But again, they require work, cooking, in boiling water at least, and a sharp-pointed blade in bed, capable of prying open a sea urchin on Christmas morning, is not my idea of fun.
4) Ah! The world-famous laconic humour of the Aussie!; un sweetened?
5) Unleavened bread does not sound at all disgustingly health-threatening unless it is draped liberally and lovingly with melted cheese (2003) but here we go full-circle again. How in the name of all that's expensive am i to buy an aromatic cheese whose name begins with "U" here in Bonavista? Already I have to lean on Tom to pick up plain old Asiago when he is in Clarenville.

That's ok - but what are you going to do with x, y and z? And after that?

Frankly, I dunno. I was trying not to think of V and W until the New year. I have vague memories of chips/crisps called "Miss Vickies", but that could refer to something other than foodstuffs.

Perhaps you're better off to start this year again, and fill in the missing a and b before recycling.

SpeakEasy's post gave me some hope back on the 13th. I began to ponder the use of hexdecimal nibbles to convert, somehow, "2021" in decimal to a hexadecimal value and use the nibbles to, well, to classify nibbles. One thing is for sure, if Kelly Catches Chris Calculating with a hexdecimal calculator up and down the potato crisp aisles, she will toss me out on my ear. Or rear.

But again, "A" for effort.
Cheers
Chris

[ChrisGreaves]

Just for its name: the Ugli fruit.

"“UGLI” is a brand name that plays on the word “ugly,” as the fruit does not look particularly appetizing" Caution: Trackers!
Hans, you get points for intelligent use of the letter U, but what if everyone did that?
It would take all the fun out of Christmas in bed:-
(a) Unopened packet of apricots (dried)
(b) Unopened packet of Bengali iced-cream
(c) Unopened packet of Vache Qui Rit
... but a few bonus points for leading me towards next year's target with the letter "V".
Also the thought that perhaps, just maybe, if I brush up my French Vocab in the region of the letter "U" (Canada is, after all, not a Uni-lingual nation ...)

A for effort.
Keep trying.
Can do better etc etc

Cheers
Chris

[ChrisGreaves]

Unbleached flour made into unleavened bread and spread with unsalted butter

Stuart, you may have noticed that Grinch is blasé after 2007.
Chris

[ChrisGreaves]

Here you go.

In a word - Unappealing.
I can't pronounce most of them,
And where would I find someone from Finland who could Furnish "the first milk of a calved cow"
In Bonavista
Cheers
Chris

[silverback]

And where would I find someone from Finland who could Furnish "the first milk of a calved cow"

Duh! In Finland.
Silverback

[ChrisGreaves]

And where would I find someone from Finland who could Furnish "the first milk of a calved cow"

Duh! In Finland.
Silverback

But cows don't have fins⁽¹⁾. Double back to you.
Cod have fins, but the ones I planted last spring didn't come up.

⁽¹⁾I know that English fish have fingers, though.
Cheers
Chris

[LisaGreen]

How about naming something with a name beginning with U.

It seems a bit like cheating but if you for examle name your goldfish Ushi instead of Wanda you could have Ushi in bed!!

Lisa

[Graeme]

How about getting loads of things that start with W and cutting them in half?

You could try Whelks Waffles and Weetabix?

HTH

Regards

Graeme

[ChrisGreaves]

How about getting loads of things that start with W and cutting them in half? You could try Whelks Waffles and Weetabix?

Graeme, thank you for this erudite approach to lexical analysis. I shall not give this much thought because time is running out; Kelly's opens around 12:30 today, for it is Sunday here in Bonavista.
I will limit my debate to the business of whether to treat "W" as "double-U", or whether to think of it as "Double-V"⁽¹⁾, but by now your agile mind will have realised that the halving technique would impact both this year and the next! I could go either way.
Brill!
It all boils down to whether I am one of the "halves" or one of the "halve-nots".

A year has passed since I bought a packet of breakfast cereal, and that was when I noticed that Tim Horton's had a breakfast cereal on the shelves. (I think that they are reallky just Coco-Pops coated in even more cocoa powder)

I am doubtful about finding a "Whelks Waffles and Weetabix" cereal here on Church Street Bonavista. It sounds disgusting enough for a place where every local recipe starts with "Pour two cups of molasses into a mixing bowl and add ...". OTOH Whelks is shelfish, right? and cereal is found on the shelfs at Kelly's so it might happen ...

Right now I am inclined to got for singlets rather than triplets.
Wagon Wheels, for starters.

The one downside that I can think of is that "W" threatens to take the fun of the chase out of the following two Christmas seasons, and it is depressing enough right now to think that in only five more months, the first crocus should be poking its head above the snow. Unless spring comes late next year.

⁽¹⁾ To mess with an Iowan's mind, just congratulate them on coming from a state whose name is composed only of vowels!

DJD
Chris
P.S. Say if I went for the components. What do you know about cutting whelks in half and retaining one portion for the next year. Do they keep well? C