THREAD ??
As the fasting month of #Ramadan comes to an end, Muslims are preparing for the festival of Eid al-Fitr.
But with #coronavirus-related restrictions, celebrations will be very different this year.
Here's all you need to know about Eid al-Fitr https://t.co/q41X6vh1qA pic.twitter.com/QUQjGAWPhQ
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) May 20, 2020
Hardly the usual celebratory holiday, but people are doing their best to help keep everyone safe. Also from Al Jazeera, “Michigan Muslims find new ways to celebrate Eid amid a pandemic”:
Eid al-Fitr in the US state of Michigan this year is going to be very different, said Mahmoud Al-Hadidi, a physician and chairman of the Michigan Muslim Community Council.
There will be no mass prayers in the mosques, no communal breakfasts, no carnival and no evening parties. Even family gatherings will be limited.
“Usually we have a huge party at my house with 400 to 500 people,” Al-Hadidi told Al Jazeera.
“I’m not gonna be doing that this year,” Al-Hadidi said. “I’m going to be with my immediate family, and we’re staying at home.”
But the curbs on mass social gatherings put in place to contain the spread of the coronavirus, expected to last through at least May 28, have not dampened the holiday spirit. And residents of southeast Michigan, home to one of the largest Muslim communities in the United States, say they have found innovative ways to welcome the three-day holiday marking the end of the fasting month of Ramadan, while adhering to social-distancing measures…
Thousands are expected to tune in on Sunday morning for a live Eid sermon that will be aired on local television and streamed on social media. Later in the day, cars will be able to line up outside several mosques to enjoy live music and to receive gift bags for children, in this year’s first-ever drive-thru Eid event.
***********
Speaking of the disruption of religious holidays…
I do not celebrate Easter, but I think I speak for my fellow Jews when I say we are willing to pitch in to shoulder this difficult burden. https://t.co/twDygZrWLz
— (((Yair Rosenberg))) (@Yair_Rosenberg) May 22, 2020
Homes are needed for thousands of chocolate eggs ?? left over after #coronavirus forced the cancellation of Easter events https://t.co/tLDhqM1nfr
— SkyNews (@SkyNews) May 22, 2020
They've already donated 50% to hospitals, food banks and community groups. They're now asking for more groups to get in contact so they can donate the rest before the use by date.??
— Esther Gee (@OMGee_e) May 22, 2020
And some of my fellow Olds might be reminded of a certain Bob & Ray sketch…
OzarkHillbilly
Blech.
ThresherK
Last week I got better-than-decent leftover Easter candy at a CVS, 90% off. I wish the Whoppers people would use real goddamn chocolate; I hear it’s a popular item in all sorts of confections. Or that some company would let the marketplace decide and make malted milk balls with real chocolate.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@ThresherK: The difference between good chocolate and fake chocolate is night and day.
Also dark chocolate is the only way to go.
WereBear
@ThresherK: It was W who relaxed the regulations and let any old crap be called “chocolate.”
I get my chocolate either from a specialty shop or get Lindt, which is still using their original Swiss recipe.
debbie
Huh, I’ll have to check Russell Stover’s website. Their chocolate truffle eggs are the best.
WereBear
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I agree, and sadly, Mr WereBear’s diet plan, per his doctor, allows dark chocolate.
My stash is now endangered in a whole new way… so I have to play Yours and Mine not only with my cats, but with my husband :)
Amir Khalid
@WereBear:
Obviously, there is only one solution: Moar Chocolate!
debbie
Eleven-hour workdays means I’ve lost track of what’s been going on. At least now I know the real reason Trump didn’t wear a mask when he visited Ford. Distraction. Again.
Come back to us, Philip Roth!
OzarkHillbilly
@WereBear: Just remind him that you know where he sleeps.
WereBear
@Amir Khalid: That is the path I am taking :)
It has also helped me explore the many countries which appreciate its joys, which is the good side. This winter, Finland was prominent: those folks know their stuff!
WereBear
@OzarkHillbilly: Heh heh. He used to dislike flavors but now is into mint, durn him.
Both of us have reached that age where we are “cheap dates” so chocolate and my homemade cheesecake is getting us through quarantine times.
germy
germy
ThresherK
@Dorothy A. Winsor: My story with dark chocolate began in my freshman year of college, when people try weird and new things.
ThresherK
@WereBear: That’s the thing, it’s not called chocolate. It’s “chocolatey”–not that I’m obsessed, but that’s the word used on Baby Ruth, Butterfinger, Whoppers, and various otherwise cromulent popular candy.
Palmer chocolate (and yes, I’m naming names) has sucked forever.
I actually won a prize for a Lindt recipe contest. Let’s say if you put three kinds of Lindt chocolate, by name, in a recipe, the judges will look on you favorably.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Love me some dark chocolate with chili peppers. Salt flecks, cacao nibs or masa are the bomb, too.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Dark chocolate malted milk balls would be sublime.
OzarkHillbilly
@WereBear: My wife and I are both cheap dates and introverts. For us, a “night on the town” means taking the dogs for a walk on one of the local trails and then returning home for a nap.
ThresherK
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Have you tried it with bacon?
OzarkHillbilly
I must be an outlier here. A world without chocolate wouldn’t be all that different.
mali muso
One of my fondest memories was spending an afternoon at a chocolate factory in Switzerland and being let loose in a tasting room. Sadly, the richness of the chocolates meant that I only managed to eat a few before feeling a bit sick. Sigh.
WereBear
@ThresherK: On ice cream!
WereBear
@mali muso: That is the beauty of high quality (and expensive) chocolate, is that it is satisfying in those Barbie-sized portions.
mali muso
@WereBear: yeah, and it only took my companion and I a few minutes to realize we’d get to taste a lot more varieties before saturation if we shared. So we each took a piece, ate half and then swapped.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@ThresherK:
I have – I never have found one that rocked my world, though. It’s either too much or too little.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone ???
rikyrah
???
Immanentize
Look, people, Google can be your friend!
Dark CHOCOLATE Malted Milk Balls.
Immanentize
@WereBear: That is the secret of high-quality sweets. Although more costly, one ends up eating less.
(Or more, I forget how that works in practice)
debbie
@Immanentize:
Ooh, a thick coating!
hells littlest angel
Cadbury Eggs probably shouldn’t be going to hospitals. But they’d be a great treat for people in hospices.
Oh, and I’ll take five dozen or more.
Spanky
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Sounds like some Seattle Chocolate Mexican Hot Chocolate truffles may be in your future
Immanentize
@debbie: I knew such things existed because I was at a fancy hotel two years ago and they stocked them for free in the rooms (milk chocolate, not dark). Because that is the type of thing a fancy hotel does to be fancy.
mrmoshpotato
@ThresherK: Mmmmmmm whoppers.
Malt that milk!
Dorothy A. Winsor
@ThresherK:
Is there a happy ending to that story?
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Immanentize:
I actually find that’s true–that I eat less. If the sweet is low quality, I wind up eating more, looking for some sort of flavor.
mrmoshpotato
@ThresherK:
I love a good Saturday-morning Name and Shame. :)
mrmoshpotato
@WereBear: ??
debbie
Walkers makes a lovely ginger cookie bathed in dark Belgian chocolate. No way not to be a bit messy eating it, but boy, I’ve found my new favorite cookie.
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
SFAW
@germy:
Think of it as evolution in action. I hope.
Immanentize
@Dorothy A. Winsor: My wife and I had a “high quality sweet” rule in the house. I did recently break it by buying some poptarts…. I shouldn’t have.
SFAW
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
“And I only am escaped alone to tell thee.”
OzarkHillbilly
Probably old news around here: Tara Reade got dumped by her lawyer. But he still totally believes her story, he just needed to spend more time with his belly button lint.
Immanentize
@germy: I used to live in San Antonio — Bexar County — and people just didn’t seem that crazy 20 years ago. I finally looked at the viddy in that tweet. There is some serious and ubiquitous, as Nancy would say: “morbid obesity” in that Republican Party leadership group.
MagdaInBlack
Roshen makes a weirdly delicious aerated dark chocolate bar that tastes, to me, like a flourless chocolate torte.
Roshen is based in Kiev, I believe.
My neighborhood grocery has a large selection of good chocolate. ?
Baud
@SFAW:
Makes you wonder if right-wing ideology is what really killed the dinosaurs.
SFAW
@Baud:
Interesting. I bet you could get a grant to research that. [Although, according to Gary Larson, it was smoking what done them in.]
Frankensteinbeck
I hate dark chocolate, and there is a story behind it. When I was a wee sprat, an innocent moppet, I had a close relationship with my father and often accompanied him shopping. He had an idiosyncratic love for bakers’ semi-sweet chocolate. Now, you know that bakers’ chocolate is meant for cooking, not eating, but I was an ignorant whelp. I begged for chocolate, he shared, and the stuff was foul, utterly unlike the milk chocolate I knew and couldn’t have. I was on the Feingold Diet (which has vanished in history) and bakers’ was the only chocolate available that matched it. The result has scarred me. Any chocolate but milk chocolate triggers that association with me, and they taste nasty and I can’t eat them.
ThresherK
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Oh, of course! And it ends in a chocolate-chip and bacon cookie recipe. Or a chocolate and cranberry bread pudding. Or a flourless chocolate torte.
satby
I’m sitting up here at the farmers market across from the plague rats from MI, and waiting to here if the threatened cease and desist letter comes from the health department today. Probably not, but god I would enjoy it.
SFAW
@Frankensteinbeck:
Many years ago, the CEO/president of the company I worked for told a similar story about Baker’s chocolate. Except he was telling it to try to demonstrate something-or-other about product development, or engineering, or something. Most of us were a bit baffled. At least your story makes sense.
germy
Symone Sanders wrote a book: “No, You Shut Up” and my wife and I are buying it today.
Josie
@Immanentize:
There have always been people that crazy in Bexar County, but they are definitely in the minority.
ETA: In more ways than one.
Amir Khalid
@hells littlest angel:
Alas, the organisation with the15,000 surplus Cadbury Eggs is in Scotland. I think they’ll expect you to pay for the shipping.
laura
Hi Amir Khalid – wishing you a joyful Eid Mubarak. Very curious about breaking the fast and what your celebratory meal will consist of.
See’s Chocolates are so good. For me, it’s the dark chocolate nuts and chews. They make one called summertime. It’s a creamy milk chocolate rolled in pulverized walnuts. The best part us when you enter the store, you’re immediately offered a freebie. The I Love Lucy episode where Lucy and Ethel get jobs on the candy line with mixed results was based on See’s Candies.
H.E.Wolf
@Amir Khalid:
Eid Mubarak to you and your loved ones! Greetings also to Bianca.
And Eid Mubarak to everyone else here to whom it applies.
ThresherK
@Frankensteinbeck: As a child, I once took a bite out of a 1-oz chunk of unsweetened baking chocolate.
It was years before I learned what to do with it.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@ThresherK: Those all sound excellent.
Geminid
@SFAW: Well, the Republicans have been warning of a rise in suicide if the economy is not opened back up.
gene108
After reading this thread, I want chocolate.
Sigh…
Getting cravings from Balloon-Juice…
O. Felix Culpa
@Immanentize: You deserve a Noble Prize for that find. ;)
Kristine
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Masa? The only you variety listed that I have not tried.
If anyone out there enjoys brownies with a little heat, Aarón Sánchez’ recipe is good. I would increase the cayenne, but that’s just me.
I would also add unsweetened chocolate pieces.
Tenar Arha
@Immanentize: you’re the ? you are
page open, temptation made, ?where’d I put my credit card…
Robert Sneddon
@ThresherK: Long time back I was at a convention in a hotel which had a commercial-grade chocolatier in the basement. We found out they had 5kg bars of Belgian cooking chocolate, dark, white and milk, for sale. By the end of the convention we had pretty much cleaned them out of anything ready-to-eat and the folks at the convention went home with about a ton and a half of bar chocolate between them, getting odd looks at the airport check-ins as bags were weighed and inspected.
We only discovered the shop sold 10kg sacks of chunk chocolate on the Monday after the convention was closing down. “We didn’t think you’d want any of these.” the shop owner said as we returned for a last loot and pillage session.
Amir Khalid
@laura:
I visited a See’s Candies store once — in San Diego’s Horton Plaza — and still have fond memories of the place.
Uncle Cosmo
Well, it’s not a necessity to be morbidly obese. But it is a requirement for membership to be morally** obtuse.
** Or morbidly, or moronically, take your pick.
frosty
@OzarkHillbilly: I’m with you on chocolate. I can take it or leave it. I dislike the protein/granola bars with chocolate. I have them for breakfast and CHOCOLATE IS NOT A BREAKFAST FOOD!!!
/flame away/
frosty
@rikyrah: I don’t get it. If the bots can be identified, why can’t Twitter shut them down?
Phylllis
@Immanentize: I bought some of those pretzel crust poptarts this week. Disappointing. Not enough to not finish them off, you understand.
dww44
@germy:
l can attest that Loeffler’s throwing gobs of money at that senate seat and she doesn’t need the ill-gotten gains from her recent stock sales to finance the incessant tv ads telling us voters how she ‘s donating her salary to Covid relief and how she’s all about Georgia’s citizens.
It is nauseating but too many will still vote for her because she has an “R” after her name.
Amir Khalid
A question for any honey-roasted peanuts connoisseurs out there: Fisher or Planters?
SFAW
@frosty:
Given their apparent political leanings, I think it’s a volitional thing.
Geminid
@dww44: Have you seen any Doug Collins ads yet? I’m hoping Loeffler stays in and she and Collins tear each other down all summer and fall. The Democrats will have a good shot at that seat; Raphael Warnock is the likely nominee. Stacy Abrams talked him into running.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@frosty:
There, that’s better.
Luciamia
Are there are traditional dishes for the end of Ramadan feast?
Amir Khalid
@Luciamia:
Yes; but they vary from country to country, and indeed from family to family.
Calouste
In the 2000’s, Harrod’s had a chocolate bar. And it was everything you’d expect from a chocolate bar in the fanciest department store in the world.
dww44
@Geminid: I hope you’re right, but I’m afraid that the result will be a runoff between the two of them. As much as I dislike Collins, he was wronged by Kemp and the state GOP (because they said they needed to lure back suburban women voters) who opted for the money and not the strong Trump supporter. Now they both are strong Trump supporters, so, yes I hope they tear themselves apart. I’ve more hope for the candidates running against Perdue ( I like Tomlinson, although I see lots of John Lewis ads in support of Jon Ossof) than I do for Rev. Warnock’s chances in that open primary contest for Isakson’s vacated seat.
A true miracle would be if we managed to grab both those seats. It’s been a very long time since Georgia Democrats had anything to crow about.
cope
How about some love for Bob and Ray? As an old-old, I have fond memories of their TV appearances on various shows. Bob Elliott, of course, is the father of Chris Elliott who in turn passed solid comedy chops on to his daughter Abby Elliot. This generational link makes the Elliott clan the only one so far to have had three generations appear on SNL.
Thanks for the clip, I’m off to jump down a YouTube rabbit hole.
dww44
@Amir Khalid: i actually opt for the Kroger brand. Decent quality and much less expensive. Although I know this doesn’t answer your question at all.
Amir Khalid
@dww44:
You are right, nobody here carries Kroger’s house brand.
PST
A few years ago on Eid al-Fitr I ran into our visiting IT guy in the office. I assumed he was Muslim because of his Arabic name and wished him a cheery Eid Mubarak. He laughed and said that his family had been Christian pretty much since Christianity had been a thing, but he appreciated the sentiment. it was a little lesson in both making assumption and in gracefulness.
Noname
@Amir Khalid: Fisher’s! No corn syrup and less greasy, crunchier.
PST
I love chocolate, but for some paradoxical reason the smell of chocolate being made nauseates me. The Blommer factory is on my cycling route home from work, made worse by being on a hill (actually an overpass because it’s Chicago and we have no hills). Panting chocolate fumes might excite some people but not me. I remembered this the other day when I made a rare visit to pick up mail.
Geminid
@dww44: Correction: I said Warnock was the likely democratic nominee, but there will be no nominee as it will be a jungle primary. Warnock was ahead of Democrats Lieberman and Tarver in the last poll I saw. Georgia Democrats can crow a little about Lucy McBath, though. Especially if she wins reelection. Hers was one several districts flipped in 2018 that had been Republican for decades.
Steeplejack
@Immanentize:
Great Caesar’s ghost! Thank you for that. I gained a pound or two just looking at the link.
Steeplejack
@Immanentize:
Possible upgrade for Pop-Tarts: Trader Joe’s rugelach. Lots of crust and a shmitz of raspberry, which hits that Pop-Tart profile, to my mind. It’s my go-to with morning coffee.
Be sure to get the purple label. There’s one with a pink label that is not as good, for some reason.
evodevo
@Spanky: See the movie Chocolat for a riff on that…
Brachiator
Oh, wow. From watching that enjoyable Eid video, I can see that a lot of greeting and touching must now be avoided because of the virus.
I wonder. Is the greeting and fellowship common to other holidays, or is is an essential part of Eid?
evodevo
@PST: Yeah, there are (or were) a lot of Arab Christians in Lebanon, Syria and Israel…most American Xtians, especially the right wingers, don’t know that
Brachiator
@Immanentize:
Coming very late to the thread with a sad, true story. I used to love chocolate malted milk balls. Just love them.
During my high school years, I once ate too many and got tremendously sick.
Have not had any since.
PST
@evodevo: I think what might really surprise some of the wingers is the role of Christians in the rise of Arab nationalism and such Palestinian organizations as the PFLP.
TomatoQueen
@Amir Khalid: Planters generally is better quality. Best of all is any brand that uses Virginia peanuts, which are larger and have a bright fresh flavor, such as Hubs brand, from Sedley, VA.
dww44
@Geminid: My granddaughter and grandson volunteered in McBath’s campaign. GOP is gunning for her seat this cycle.