{"id":15330,"date":"2016-05-30T06:22:11","date_gmt":"2016-05-30T11:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=15330"},"modified":"2016-05-30T06:22:11","modified_gmt":"2016-05-30T11:22:11","slug":"reflections-on-vegemite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2016\/05\/30\/reflections-on-vegemite\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflections on Vegemite"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/bsgfx\/vegemite.jpg\" width=\"300\"><\/p>\n<p>On a lark, I ordered a small jar of Vegemite, the Australian sandwich spread.  Come on, you know, the one mentioned in Men at Work&#8217;s &#8220;Men Down Under&#8221;:<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/XfR9iY5y94s\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>So yesterday was the day to try it out.  I made a sandwich for myself and a couple small quarters for my children to try, and&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>I had one bite.  Which I managed to chew and completely swallow.  Although not in the time it took me to throw the rest of the sandwich out.<\/p>\n<p>Never in my life have I had a hankering for a beer\/sardine\/salt\/coffee sandwich.  <\/p>\n<p>Although my children started complaining about it before it was served in their normal resistance to something new, I came to agree with them, and they tried it themselves after I took my bite and reacted comically to it.<\/p>\n<p>I mean, I grew up in poverty, but my family was not poor enough to serve this.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m blessed to have grown up in a bountiful land where one can go pick food from outdoors instead of a desert surrounded by twenty-foot-long crocodiles.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Vegemite\" target=\"_new\">wikihistory of Vegemite<\/a> is that an entrepreneur wanted to make a food out of industrial by-products.  <em>And he did it.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>God help me, I saw in the Wiki entry that they use it as a <em>pastry filling<\/em>.  I suspect that the Australians do this to keep other people away from their doughnuts.<\/p>\n<p>You know why Australian rules football is so vicious?  The winners get a Vegemite sandwich.  The losers get a year&#8217;s supply of Vegemite and a sixty-DVD Paul Hogan complete film set.<\/p>\n<p>It does give me a couple insights into the Men At Work song, though.  Now I know why Australian men chunder.<\/p>\n<p>Needless to say, of the 220 grams of Vegemite shipped to Nogglestead from England, the total consumed was probably a gram before I dumped the jar in the garbage.  Which I&#8217;m frankly afraid to admit on the Internet lest it&#8217;s a felony to dump Vegemite in an American landfill.<\/p>\n<p>(For other Brian Tastes frivolity, see <a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2013\/03\/26\/one-swedish-history-book-and-i-am-a-changed-man\/\" target=\"_blank\">lingonberries<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2013\/04\/11\/the-continental-palate-of-brian-j\/\" target=\"_blank\">sesame seed bread<\/a>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On a lark, I ordered a small jar of Vegemite, the Australian sandwich spread. Come on, you know, the one mentioned in Men at Work&#8217;s &#8220;Men Down Under&#8221;: So yesterday was the day to try it out. I made a sandwich for myself and a couple small quarters for my children to try, and&#8230;. I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brian-j-tastes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15330"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15334,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15330\/revisions\/15334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}