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Comment by 082349872349872 | Hacker News Reader

The first time my father was in the UK, he had just come from the Netherlands, where they put chocolate sprinkles (Hagelslag) on toast, so he thought the open Marmite jar must be something Nutella-like, and slathered it liberally onto his bread.

He had just been engaged in the process of pondering how awfully civilised the Brits were when he bit into it.

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My brother in law had a similar experience when he poured our tart ayran over his cereal.

"This milk's gone bad!", he cried he as he spat it out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayran

Seems like a tangier Egg cream of NYC fame and lore.

these two are worlds apart.

Same thing happened to me when I moved to the UK: I went to the supermarket, bought one jar or Marmite, went back home, had a toast with it expecting to have some sweet-close-to-chocolate flavour and then I was shocked. I have to admit that I actually liked although I don't eat it regularly these days because that wild amount of salt cannot be healthy in any manner.

My parents brought Vegemite to my elementary school cultural day. Some kid snuck a spoonful thinking it was chocolate. Vomiting ensued.

A teaspoon of Vegemite, eaten rather slowly, took the edge off the worst hangover I've ever had.

At least that's an honest mistake. Unlike all those YouTubers who clearly know only to spread a little but pretend it's Nutella and dig in with a spoon so they can overreact.

As a kid, and indeed as a young adult, eating a teaspoon of Vegemite was something I did fairly frequently. It was just a snack, with no mucking about, just instant food. A sort-of after school thing.

It was way better than a spoonful of peanut paste, which was just over-the-top, way too much, and left your mouth and teeth gummed up and gagging.

Milo was also not unknown, albeit a smaller teaspoon, because it too was pretty intense.

But the king of the "instant spoonful of food" category was powdered milk. You had to more-or-less hyperventilate first, because you weren't going to be breathing for a while without making a lot of mess, but the gummy, sweet, mouthful of saliva-mixed-with-milk-powder was good enough that the difficulty of doing it successfully was kinda worth it.

I'm somewhat tempted to try a teaspoon of Vegemite now, you know "for science", but perhaps it's better left as just a memory.

Did you ever try a teaspoon of the Nestle Malted Milk drink powder?

No. Strawberry Qwik (sp?) was given a go though. Once.

My dad had some American friends come to stay once, with similar assumptions, and a similar lesson.

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