The Hoddle of Coffee: Tottenham Hotspur news and links for Wednesday, December 12

Hey, all!

The Hoddle will officially return to its regular randomness. Good thing, because it’s been a while since I’ve rambled about food.

Ramble of the Day

It’s not a secret that I like food, and that I also like rambling about food. That said, food is always a little spot of bother for us all. There are things that we don’t like to eat for a variety of reasons, but sometimes we also end up with some peculiar weird habits. I probably have a few, but today, I’m going to tell you about how I find snacking difficult.

I don’t know exactly what it is, but I like meals much more than I like snacks. As I think about it, I like to eat things that very obviously had some recent work put into them, which I think means that I liked things that are freshly cooked. That makes sense, because I can’t say that I genuinely love dry snacks. I’m going through the list now: chips, pretzels, crackers, trail mix. I don’t like any of them, and can only eat them in very small quantities. The only exceptions to the dry snack rule are nuts, and even then, I’m a bit picky. Almonds and walnuts are my go-to snack, but I won’t bother with any other nuts.

When it comes to sweet snacks, I’m just as picky. I’ll eat bananas and blueberries relatively easily, but I despise yogurt for the most part. I crave chocolate a lot, but have had difficulty finding chocolatey snacks that provide the sustenance I’m looking for in a snack. I sometimes opt for baked goods when I need to go find a snack, but not always with joy. Fruit or chia seed pudding are go-tos when I have to go out looking for food, but they aren’t as easy to find as you might think (I’m obviously talking mostly about the fruit).

As I think and type, I find myself getting put off by the idea of all these snacks. Maybe it’s because I’m writing this after a full day of eating and am no longer hungry. Seriously, though: nothing that I’ve listed seems attractive as a snack, and I’d probably rather eat a smaller version of a meal than an actual snack.

I get why people don’t make small servings of grilled chicken sandwiches or whatever. For starters, it’s frequently impractical and would require a lot of effort for little benefit. There is something about those flavor profiles, though. A good meal has several flavors layered on top of each other to create a really interesting and fun experience. Try adding a little bit of ginger to a vegetable omelet seasoned with salt and a pepper of your choosing (I’ll say a green chili pepper). You’d think the ginger and the pepper would be overwhelming in combination, but there’s quite a bit of depth that comes from it.

That’s an extreme example, but think about your average meal. It has a few different things going for it once you bite and chew, something that snacks don’t have. Again, there’s an issue of practicality, but I can’t say I care much. I just love full-fledged meals.

tl;dr: Snacking is hard.

Links of the Day

Bournemouth defender Tyrone Mings pulled out of a Talksport interview in protest of the radio station’s coverage of the racist abuse suffered by Raheem Sterling over the weekend.

Yaya Touré has left Olympiacos three months after joining the club.

Goalkeeper Zack Steffen will join Manchester City from the Columbus Crew in July.

CONMEBOL misspelled the name of the 2009 Copa Libertadores champions Estudiantes on the tournament’s trophy.

David Squires’s latest cartoon is about Raheem Sterling and racism in football and outside of it.

Today’s longer read: Musa Okwonga on Raheem Sterling and the education the English media needs on racism for The Guardian