The Hoddle of Coffee: Tottenham Hotspur news and links for Wednesday, January 22

Hi, all!

If you didn’t guess who was at the top of yesterday’s Hoddle, it was Dele. Today, we have forward Angela Addison, who’s been with the club since last season.

Ramble of the Day

I was a picky eater as a kid, which is a mostly insignificant tale considering how common it is. One very specific (and from my point of view, more noteworthy) habit of mine, though, was that I was fairly apprehensive about eating home cooked meals that didn’t come out of my home. It turns out that it runs in the family — my dad was apparently worse than I was back in the day — but it feels like a particularly picky habit to have.

It’s interesting to figure out where your boundaries are — I didn’t mind food from professional establishments, be it at an actual restaurant or from Burger King. For a while, I also didn’t mind cafeteria food, so I clearly drew the line at some level of professionalism. Quickly enough, I started building higher standards — cafeteria food was quickly taken out of my diet, and this was my mom’s decision after she found out about the horrors of cafeteria food. That said, I hardly minded — if you need the reminder, I was traumatized by the food that came out of that cafeteria. It might also have to do with the fact that my mom is a pretty good cook, and I always enjoyed eating at home.

That’s also probably why I had a certain hesitance when it came to other people’s home cooking. I didn’t eat many meals cooked by other people growing up, and it became rarer as I got older. We can rule out trauma, but perhaps my lack of experience made me more hesitant.

I like to think that if I walked into someone else’s home for a home cooked meal, I wouldn’t reject it outright. Right now, though, my biggest fear is that if I didn’t enjoy something I ate, I wouldn’t be able to hide it.

tl;dr: My picky eating as a child extended towards a dislike for other people’s home cooked meals (and I fear a little bit that I may not have gotten over it).

Links of the Day

Liga MX side Atlas will play a closed door match as punishment for fans using a homophobic slur.

Osasuna’s former secretary said the club fixed matches in 2013 and 2014 to avoid relegation from La Liga.

David Squires addresses the return of Nigel Pearson in his latest cartoon.

Transfer updates: Newcastle signed Nabil Bentaleb on loan from Schalke; Sheffield United signed Jack Robinson from Nottingham Forest; LA Galaxy signed Javier Hernández from Sevilla

Today’s longer read: Jonathan Tannenwald interviews Stephanie McCaffrey on retiring at 26, inequity in sports team ownership, and aiming to own a women’s team one day for The Philadelphia Inquirer