Sideswipe: November 15: Plush man-bear

Scare bear.

Have you been looking for a giant stuffy with the “shape and size of a male human body” and the “head of a half-asleep bear”? Look no further, the Loving Bear Puffy is here! This somewhat creepy man-bear measures 5′7″ and is said to replace “the need for physical presence”. Also: He becomes part of the family and is always at home waiting for you. He doesn’t snore, he doesn’t sweat and … he doesn’t complain. Furthermore, he arrives naked, he is a bear after all.

Unfairly maligned cruciferous

Did you have a childhood aversion to Brussels sprouts but now you love them? How did that happen? Brussels sprouts really do taste better. “In the late 1960s, our industry switched over to mechanised harvesting, which required a plant that would mature fairly evenly over the entire stem,” says sprout farmer Steve Bontadelli. “They were “horribly bitter”, he explained, “and we turned off an entire generation”. Anti-sprout sentiment began to dissipate in the 1990s, largely because the sprouts themselves became less bitter thanks to a group of Dutch biotechnologists. The success of the culinary celebrity and cooking shows helped catapult the once-maligned vegetable to culinary stardom. That magic typically involved oven-roasting, which had finally started to supplant boiling as Western culture’s de facto method of vegetable preparation. When seasoned with fish sauce or thick balsamic vinegar and roasted to crispy perfection, a spinkle of chilli flakes and you’ll never look at a Brussels sprout sideways again.

The wind beneath my chicken wings

What the cluck.

Because he disliked “gnawing on stringy chicken wings”, Peter Baumann bred wingless chickens. This was back in the 1940s. Unfortunately, they didn’t take off (excuse the pun) within the chicken industry.

Marriage is...

“Just told my sleeping husband I lost two kilos, to which he replied, with his eyes still closed: “I’ll help you find them. We’ll look later”. With no help from my husband at all, I did, in fact, end up getting the two pounds back, thanks to my friend French Fries.”