Choose Your Own Cauliflower Adventure...

This video is long. Over thirteen minutes long, and that’s with some brutal, ruthless editing done by Netanya. But it was so much fun to make, and we kept giggling and the finished product was so delicious that 13:04 was as tight as we could make it and still keep the heart of the video intact. So with that being said, I’m not going to write my usual epic, complex and deeply moving standard post. I’m going to just leave it here and let it stand alone and not overwhelm you with my brilliance and genius. Gotta save something for next week, amirite?

However, I do want to have a brief discussion about black sesame as suddenly it’s EVERYWHERE. In pastries, ice cream, lattes, babka and bagels…black sesame is the HOT ingredient this week. Black sesame, which is what that black tahini is made from, is just a different variety of sesame seed from the tan ones. But it’s also so not. The taste is different; darker, nuttier, kind of earthy and to me, there’s almost a tiny undercurrent of salt, but that may be me just imagining things. I love it, and have used it for a while now, PRE-DATING the trend. Just to let the record show. Not that I care. But I do. I was on that black sesame train before it ever left the station.

For example, a few years ago I was hired by Proctor and Gamble to do a Product Road Show with them (this must’ve been right before I started my Substack because I’m sure I would’ve written about it back then, or maybe I signed an NDA? I can’t remember). What’s a product road show, you ask? Well, it’s when the managers of a product line travel around the country to meet with the buyers from all the major chain stores, and they put on a song and dance and wine and dine event to get them to buy millions of pallets of whatever new chemical-laden, pthalate-loaded, non-recyclable packaged “health and beauty” products they manage. And to pitch the new fragrance or flavor or variety of product they’ve dreamed up that year, because America can’t have just five different Old Spice fragrances, they need twenty. Or Secret or Ivory or Olay any of the other P&G product lines that have new variations that year. This was in the antiperspirant and deodorant category, and the new product trends for that year were flavors and scents that were food-centric. Like vanilla and cinnamon, coconut and citrus.